--- description: NBC's loss is Netflix's gain, as Ellie Kemper delights in Tina Fey's oddball cult-survivor comedy. title: Review: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Is Must-Stream Comedy image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6b5afc85526da0a7/698781c2cd6848263f099f65/unbre_s1_004_h.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Review: _Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt_ Is Must-Stream Comedy by [James Poniewozik](/author/james-poniewozik/) ## James Poniewozik Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Mar 3, 2015 2:00 PM CUT  Netflix by [James Poniewozik](/author/james-poniewozik/) ## James Poniewozik Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Mar 3, 2015 2:00 PM CUT When they prepare the In Memoriam reel for the next Emmy Awards, let’s hope the academy sets aside some space for NBC’s Thursday comedy block, God rest its soul. It was born in 1981, when the network aired the first in a set of comedy lineups that would include _Cheers_, _The Cosby Show_, _Seinfeld_, _Friends_, _The Office_, and many more legends. It died of old age and neglect on Jan. 22, 2015, with the little-noticed expirations of _Bad Judge_ and _A to Z_. (_Parks and Recreation_ outlived its cohort slightly, exiled to Tuesday.) It is survived by the night’s current occupants, espionage dramas _Allegiance_ and _The Blacklist_, and _The Slap_, the upscale-parenting-drama miniseries [that is a comedy only unintentionally](http://time.com/3702011/review-the-slap-beats-its-viewers-over-the-head/ "undefined"). NBC that euthanized its trademark block, but it is not solely guilty. The Must-See-TV brand indicted a kind of sitcom that at its best was both sophisticated and popular. But as cable grew and the outlets for comedy multiplied, individual audiences shrank. The finale of the urbane, witty _Cheers_ drew over 80 million viewers, the finale of the urbane, witty _30 Rock_, not quite 5 million. CBS still succeeds with retro comedies (_The Odd Couple_), ABC with family sitcoms (_black-ish_), Fox with youthcoms (_New Girl_) and animated shows (_Bob’s Burgers_). But the kind of challenging, idiosyncratic comedy NBC was known for has other outlets now: HBO’s _Veep_ and _Silicon Valley_, say, can be filthily hilarious without the slightest nod toward keeping their characters relatable. Adult Swim, Comedy Central, FX and FXX–all these homes for comedy have sliced-and-diced the audience into ever-more specific niches, which has been great for comedy but not so great for a network like NBC, which requires millions of weekly viewers to keep a show afloat. Today, NBC doesn’t seem sure what its comedy identity is, but it’s ceding “quirky” to others. Netflix, for instance. _Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt_ (season one premieres March 6) might have aired on NBC’s Thursday in another era–like last spring, when the network first picked up the comedy, about an escapee from an doomsday cult making a new life in New York City. (Between this and _Last Man on Earth_, the apocalypse has emerged as 2015’s hottest comedy trend.) It had a Must-See Thursday pedigree, with _30 Rock_‘s Tina Fey and Robert Carlock as co-creators. It had a Must-See Thursday star, Ellie Kemper of _The Office_. But by the time 2015 rolled around, there was no Must-See Thursday to schedule it on. So NBC, whose parent company produces Kimmy, made an unusual decision: it essentially pre-cancelled the show and sold it to the streaming service. The deal was a sad statement about the potential for comedy at the new NBC. (Earlier last year, the network canceled the inventive _Community_, which will stream its sixth season on Yahoo starting March 17.) But it was probably the best thing possible for Kimmy, which is delightful but strange even by the standards of _30 Rock_, and could have easily, quickly died on network TV. Netflix commited to two full seasons of the show before the first even aired. The pilot opens in an underground bunker, where Kimmy (Kemper) is decorating a Christmas tree. She’s celebrated the holiday with the same three women since the ’90s, when she was 14 and kidnapped by an Indiana cult leader who claimed to be saving them from a nuclear apocalypse. After a SWAT team raids the bunker, the “Mole Women” are whisked to Manhattan for a _Today_ show interview (a relic of cross-promo-obsessed NBC), after which Kimmy finds herself on the street, trying to figure out what to do with her life. She stumbles across a roommate share with broke actor Titus (_30 Rock_‘s Tituss Burgess) and eccentric landlady Lilian (sitcom legend Carol Kane). Alien in every way, still 14 at heart, Kimmy sets out to explore the terrae incognitae of the big city, the 2010s, and adulthood. Kemper and Kimmy make one of TV’s most natural matches of actor and character since someone decided to make Lou Ferrigno the Hulk. She’s a terrific physical comic, able to combine naivete with a sense of cunning, and she’s contagiously joyous–it’s as if Lucille Ball had a baby with a rainbow. Kimmy knows almost nothing about today’s world, which means she doesn’t know enough to be jaded about it. When she spies a costume in the corner of Titus’ apartment–his day job is handing out arcade flyers wearing a copyright-violating Iron Man costume–she squeals with amazement: “Is that a real robot? Do people have robots now?” We may be watching a sitcom, but she’s living a sci-fi story. Fey doesn’t appear in the series, but _Kimmy_ occupies a lower-rent corner of the same cartoon-NYC universe as her last NBC show. The show’s zaniness, broad characters and rapid-fire jokes are pure _30 Rock_, as is its overall aesthetic. (It even has similar jaunty incidental music, composed by Fey’s husband Jeff Richmond, who also wrote _30 Rock_‘s.) When Kimmy finds a job as an under-the-table nanny, her vacuous one-percenter boss, Jacqueline Vorhees, is played by Jane Krakowski, who for all intents and purposes is doing Jenna Maroney 2.0 right down to the plastic-surgery connoisseurship. (“Feet are the new butts, Kimmy!”) Kimmy’s a sunnier presence than Liz Lemon, but _Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt_ also has a darker core. Kimmy’s bunker experience is played for laughs (she “made a pet cat out of dryer lint”) but it was also abuse by a misogynistic cult leader who convinced the women their “dumbness” brought on the world’s end–all but Kimmy, who couldn’t be broken. The show’s feminism is even more pronounced than _30 Rock_‘s; even Mrs. Vorhees has become who she is out of low self-esteem and desperation to hang on to her always absent, philandering husband. On its own, the show’s concept might have just been a throwaway _30 Rock_ subplot; what sustains it is how it applies the concept of unbreakability beyond Kimmy. Each character is a survivor, including Titus, who comes across sashaying and stereotypical at first, but is also grappling with growing older as a struggling actor and a single gay man in New York. (“Am I a bear now?” he wonders after failing to seduce a younger man. “Or a daddy? Or a Huxtable?”) Like Fey’s other work, _Kimmy_ is intersectional; it’s connecting and contrasting the experience of outsiders, black and white, straight woman and gay man, sister-wife and trophy wife. And like _30 Rock_, it draws comedy from the myriad ways an expensive, competitive city like New York beats people down. Think of [the scene in _30 Rock_‘s “Cleveland,” ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX4MoaTFp9g "undefined")in which Liz, imagining growing old in Manhattan, watches a handsome elderly woman who strides down the street declaring, “There is nothing like New York in the spring!”–then gets pushed into a pile of garbage. _Kimmy_ is shot from a more distinctly garbage-eye point of view, yet it’s more optimistic. Whether she’s trying to connect with the spoiled Vorhees kids or to earn a GED in a school that has “a cardboard cutout of Michael Jordan teaching gym,” Kimmy is undaunted: if she can do 15 years in a bunker, she’s got this. It will be interesting to see how _Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt_ will do on Netflix, which has focused mostly on binge-friendly serial dramas. It doesn’t quite have a model yet for comedy, which may lend itself more to grazing than bingeing. If _Kimmy_ would have been too odd for NBC, it’s oddly conventional for Netflix. When the streaming service revived _Arrested Development_, it was as a complex, non-linear narrative. _Kimmy_ is structured like a typical network sitcom–more or less 22 minutes an episode, no swearing–with one notable difference. After the pilot, the end of most episodes introduces the plot of the following episode, the better to get viewers to click “Play Next.” (This, curiously, even though NBC produced the first season before ditching the show.) For the six installments sent for review, anyway, it worked on me. In the end, I can’t blame NBC for not taking a chance on a show it probably did not have a place for. But I’m glad that Kimmy the show, like Kimmy the character, found itself in 2015, where Netflix could pull an odd misfit out of the bunker of network-TV limbo and bring it, blinking, into the light of day. _Read next:_ [_Watch the New Trailer for_ ](http://time.com/3678304/unbreakable-kimmy-schmidt-trailer/?xid=time%5Freadnext "undefined")[Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt](http://time.com/3678304/unbreakable-kimmy-schmidt-trailer/?xid=time%5Freadnext "undefined") ### LIFE Watches TV: Classic Photos of People and Their Television Sets  Radio Corporation of America (RCA) executives watch a brand new invention called television, their New York offices before introducing the product to the public, 1939. Carl Mydans—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Writer Russell Finch enjoys a smoke, a bath and a TV show in 1948 George Skadding—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Men gather to watch TV through a store window in Pennsylvania in 1948. Ralph Morse—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  A boy watches TV in an appliance store window in 1948. Ralph Morse—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Sisters at St. Vincent's Hospital in Erie, Penn., watch a program on a new local TV station, 1949. Ralph Morse—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Watching a Western on TV in 1950. Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  A group of swimmers at an indoor pool watch the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Jacob Malik, filibustering in the UN Security Council in 1950. George Skadding—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Grade school kids in Minneapolis watch a video "classroom lesson" on TV while the city's public schools are on strike in 1951. Francis Miller—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  A rapt audience in a Chicago bar watches the 1952 World Series between the Dodgers and Yankees. (The Yankees won.) Francis Miller—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Six-year-old girls use a "Winky Dink" drawing kit on their home TV screen as they watch the kids' program, 1953\. The show, which aired for four years in the 1950s, has been cited as "the first interactive TV show," especially in light of its "magic drawing screen" — a piece of plastic that stuck to the TV screen, and on which kids (and, no doubt, some adults) would trace the action on the screen. Walter Sanders—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  A performing chimpanzee named Zippy watches TV in 1955. Michael Rougier—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  An adopted Korean war orphan, Kang Koo Ri, watches television in his new home in Los Angeles in 1956. Allan Grant—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Milwaukee fans watch the 1957 World Series, when their Braves beat the Yankees in seven, behind three complete-game victories by the gutsy Lew Burdette. Francis Miller—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  A railroad worker's family watches TV in a trailer at a camp for Southern Pacific employees in Utah in 1957. Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  An awe-struck baseball fan is seized with utter delight as he watches the Braves win their first and only World Series while based in Milwaukee in 1957. Francis Miller—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  A traveling businessman watches TV in a hotel room in 1958. Nat Farbman—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Tenant farmer Thomas B. Knox and his family watch Ed Sullivan and ventriloquist Rickie Layne on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1958. Ed Clark—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Picketing workers watch TV in a tent outside the gates of a U.S. Steel plant in Gary, Indiana, during a strike in 1959. Francis Miller—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat, watch the 1960 GOP convention in Chicago from their hotel suite. Hank Walker—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  The Kim Sisters — a Korean-born singing trio who had some success in the U.S. in the 1960s — watch television in Chicago in 1960. Robert W. Kelley—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Eventual VP candidate Lyndon Johnson watches TV during the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. Thomas D. McAvoy—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  A "Three-Eyed TV Monster" created by Ulises Sanabria which permits simultaneous two- and three-screen viewing, 1961. Francis Miller—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Astronaut Scott Carpenter's wife, Rene, and son, Marc, watch his 1962 orbital flight on TV. Carpenter's was NASA's second manned orbital flight, after John Glenn's, and lasted nearly five hours. Ralph Morse—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Die-hard New York Giants fans watch the 1962 NFL championship game against the Packers outside a Connecticut motel, beyond the range of the NYC-area TV blackout, December 1962\. Green Bay won, 16-7. John Loengard—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  A crowd watches John F. Kennedy address the nation during the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962. Ralph Crane—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Frank Sinatra watches his son, Frank Jr., 21, emcee a TV show, 1964. John Dominis—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Different CATV (Community Antenna Television) stations available to subscribers in Elmira, New York, in 1966. Arthur Schatz —The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Actress Diahann Carroll and journalist David Frost watch themselves on separate talk shows. Carroll and Frost were engaged for a while, but never married. Bill Ray—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images [_Listen to the most important stories of the day._](http://time.com/newsletter/the-brief/?sl%5Fautoplay=true&xid=spl-fullbrief-article "undefined") ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3729244/review-unbreakable-kimmy-schmidt-netflix-tina-fey/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3729244/review-unbreakable-kimmy-schmidt-netflix-tina-fey/"},"headline":"Review: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Is Must-Stream Comedy","datePublished":"2015-03-03T14:00:53.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:05:17.627Z","description":"NBC's loss is Netflix's gain, as Ellie Kemper delights in Tina Fey's oddball cult-survivor comedy.","url":"https://time.com/3729244/review-unbreakable-kimmy-schmidt-netflix-tina-fey/","keywords":["Television","Netflix","review"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6b5afc85526da0a7/698781c2cd6848263f099f65/unbre_s1_004_h.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"James Poniewozik","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/james-poniewozik/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6b5afc85526da0a7/698781c2cd6848263f099f65/unbre_s1_004_h.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"unbre_s1_004_h","caption":"","creditText":"Netflix","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3729244/review-unbreakable-kimmy-schmidt-netflix-tina-fey/","name":"Review: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Is Must-Stream Comedy"}}]}] ```