I want to preface this with something. This is an essay about the television shows Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Enlightened, an essay that looks for similarities in two vastly different styles of comedy programs that were never on the air at the same time. Since Laura Dern is the unequivocal star of Enlightened \u2013 and if you know only one fact about Enlightened, that is probably the one \u2013 at some point during reading this you will think, \u201cAlex is obviously writing this essay because Laura Dern made a guest appearance in episode 3.03 of his relationship with Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laura Dern does appear in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, that I cannot deny (nor would I want to; her appearance was a wonderful surprise). But I can promise you I was thinking about Enlightened earlier in May, before the new season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt started streaming. I had been thinking about Enlightened for reasons that were entirely unrelated to Ellie Kemper\u2019s temporary televisual acquaintances, the rise of Netflix, or even the concept of television at all. Which surely proves the quality of Enlightened more than the words that follow this preamble ever could.<\/p>\n
And yet I feel compelled to try. Read on, fair bored person, but read on knowing that I have no editor to please. Nobody encouraged me to write this to capitalize on the upswing in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt internet content mixed with a half-throwback critical reprisal of an HBO show that went off the air almost five years ago, because there is no capital for me to gain here. I am doing this on my own time, entirely for my own pleasure. Cultural criticism is a bizarre hobby, but this is the hobby I have.<\/p>\n
In what has preceded and what is to follow, though, I am aware you will believe what you will.<\/p>\n
Since premiering on Netflix in 2015, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt has been one of my favourite television programs. A Sunday in March was hijacked after a friend told me to give one of the episodes a try, and that one quickly turned into thirteen. I do not recall why a 30 Rock-loving dummy such as myself did not immediately run to this show, but that matters not. What matters is that the show was fantastic, and only got more so when season two came a year later.<\/p>\n In discussing the show with others, I often find that people do not have the same level of adoration for it that I do. This is not uncommon with things in my life, be it the cinematic adventures of Tom Cruise, the overlong post-rock stylings of Godspeed You Black Emperor, or consuming Oreo Thins, but it did seem surprising that many of my fellow 30 Rock fans were not supporting this show quite like they had Tina Fey\u2019s NBC output.<\/p>\n To say that 30 Rock was a great television show somehow feels like I\u2019m underrating it. I love 30 Rock with every fibre of my being, and I would imagine that I accidentally quote it more days than I do not (and have been doing so since 2006). But somehow, I never felt an attachment to the show the way I did with most of my favourite shows; typically I prefer some sort of thematic attachment to the characters, and outside of being kind of grumpy and sharing an appreciation of eating whole boxes of cookies in one sitting, Liz Lemon and I did not have that much in common. She was the lone human in a show of caricatures, and I did not see much of myself in her. I don\u2019t mean that as a detraction of 30 Rock; if anything it shows how truly impressive that well-oiled joke machine was. 30 Rock was a show I loved from six days after it premiered (which is when myself and then-roommate James watched the pilot), and that love only grew stronger as time passed and the show somehow got even better. All that said, I never found myself thinking about it when I wasn\u2019t watching it. The same cannot be said for Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.<\/p>\n Now, given my reasoning for not<\/em> being attached to 30 Rock due to not finding enough similarities between myself and the show\u2019s lone non-caricature, saying I see a reflection of myself in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt \u2013 a show with a core made up entirely of caricatures \u2013 seems bizarre. I understand this, and there is no clear parallel here either; I am not Lillian and she is not I. Somehow, though, it seems that by removing the one grounding character from the zany stylings of Fey and Robert Carlock makes Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt easier to view through an abstract lens. With Liz Lemon, it felt like 30 Rock was meant to be viewed as this one normal woman surrounded by a world of insanity; in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, the world and the people in it are pretty much top to bottom nutso. Which only feels more appropriate with each passing day.<\/p>\n When watching Enlightened\u2019s first season soon after it finished airing in 2011, I was struck by a number of elements: Laura Dern was fantastic (as was Mike White and pretty much every other supporting actor), the cinematography was patiently gorgeous, and the score was the best score I had ever heard in a television show. Tonally the show felt like it picked up where Six Feet Under left off, where (I\u2019m told) Transparent would continue once Enlightened was canceled. It was the real world, slightly askew.<\/p>\n These were all side aspects to the thing I loved the most though, the element that carried through every aspect of Enlightened: this was a show about a woman who had been emotionally broken by the world she was in, and sought to change it. But in attempting to change her world, she found that others had different problems that needed to be accepted as well.<\/p>\n Now, Amy doesn\u2019t do this all the time; most of the time she learns reluctantly after forcing her ideas on others for the first twenty or so minutes of the episode. The best example of this is probably the river retreat episode, which features much meddling on the part of Amy, meddling that ends with her recounting how everybody on the trip with her had a different journey to experience without her interference. That guy who wrote for the Rockford Files maybe didn\u2019t want to spend his time in Hollywood anymore; Levi has his own path to sobriety (or perhaps he doesn\u2019t at all). The old couple is what Levi and Amy could have been, the couple that the young lovebirds could grow into if they manage to avoid the myriad sadnesses that affected Amy and Levi.<\/p>\n But most of the time throughout Enlightened, Amy so fully believes she is the wokest one in the room, despite the fact that this show was canceled before the term \u201cwoke\u201d was adopted by the masses. She is trying to find enlightenment, but believes so firmly in what she wants to that she can\u2019t accept others having a differing path to happiness. Amy\u2019s path to so-called enlightenment often involves her being more selfish than one can take; the scene at Krista\u2019s baby shower where Amy derails the festivities with a speech about her starting an Abaddonn Women\u2019s Group is still impossible for me to watch even though I have technically hit play on that episode (at least) three times. Amy is the one who knows everything, she thinks, and yet she cannot read the room.<\/p>\n When we first meet Amy, she is in the midst of a complete breakdown: it seems a combination of infidelity, alcoholism and a corporate lifestyle have emotionally demolished her. So she goes off to her retreat, where she encounters a sea turtle that may or may not be God, and comes back to Abaddonn Industries a new woman willing to live laugh love and be the change she sees in the world and whatever other hacky quotes adorn office-bound coffee mugs.<\/p>\n The best part about Enlightened \u2013 and the part that seems mildly prescient watching it six years after its initial premiere* \u2013 is how well the depiction of Amy captures the way we picture the average social justice warrior today. Near the beginning of an episode late in season one, Amy drives past a protest that seems to be being held by a group of janitors, honking her car horn to imply that she is down with the cause. Today, this scene is spectacular, as it plays Amy\u2019s contributions to the protest as little more than noise pollution, a person simply screaming something instead of nothing; it\u2019s pretty easy to imagine Amy doing the same thing via Twitter today over whatever Trump\u2019s latest world-endangering folly**. By the end of this episode \u2013 because, per the show\u2019s core idea that we all can grow and we all can learn \u2013 Amy gets out of her car and physically joins the protest. Whether or not they are able to accomplish something is neither here nor there, but at least for the time being Amy is present with those she wants to help.<\/p>\n *The other notable thing is that, when I was watching this in 2011, the twenty-six minute episodes felt kind of long for a comedy, whereas now it almost feels short. We have become totally used to comedies like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Master of None, season four of Arrested Development, and even the final season of Community crossing the thirty-minute mark that anything slightly less than that now feels breezy. <\/p>\n Something that is always discussed in passing when Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is brought up is the idea that the show is about trauma. Which it obviously is, but to such an extent that almost nobody feels comfortable spelling out exactly why. That said, Emily Nussbaum said it best in a March 2015 review for the New Yorker: \u201c[Kimmy, after being kidnapped] then endured\u2014the show strongly implies\u2014pretty much what you\u2019d imagine. When Kimmy escapes, however, she doesn\u2019t look wrecked: instead, her expression is pure sunshine, a toothy grin of astonishment and delight. In her intractable optimism, she shares something with another Indiana native, Leslie Knope, from \u2018Parks and Recreation,\u2019 except that this is a Leslie Knope who has been to Hell.\u201d Later in the piece, after describing the bright appearance of the show, Nussbaum describes Hell more explicitly: \u201cYet, without any contradiction, it\u2019s also a sitcom about a rape survivor.\u201d*<\/p>\n *Even if the show were to run for twelve seasons, I find it difficult to imagine anybody writing a better piece about Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt than what Nussbaum wrote during its first. It should also be noted that Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt actually used the word \u2018rape\u2019 this season for the first time.<\/em><\/p>\n This survivalist theme permeates pretty much every core character on the show in differing capacities: Titus escaped a small-town in Mississippi that did not approve of his sexual orientation, Lillian is a widow*, and even Jacqueline is adjusting to a normal-ish life after being trapped by her own long-held capitalistic beliefs. At one point in season three, Lillian\u2019s new lover Artie casually mentions his PTSD from fighting in the Vietnam War. None of these things are played for drama, in fact they\u2019re all played for exactly the opposite, but this bubbly and rapid-fire joke machine of a show still remains deeply dark. Here is a selected list of moments from the third season I could remember and scribble down:<\/p>\n *Admittedly, she shot her husband Roland in the face herself, but that\u2019s still something one has to work through. She does seem to want to keep her neighbourhood like it was in the 1970s, a time not so coincidentally before Roland died.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"kimmy1\"](\"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/kimmy1.jpg\")
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\n<\/em>**It should be noted that Enlightened tackled Twitter head on in season two, and the results were unsurprisingly thoughtful and funny.<\/em><\/p>\n\n