Netflix Suggestion: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Netflix+Suggestion%3A+Unbreakable+Kimmy+Schmidt

Helen Burdier, Entertainment Editor

The reward after completing a load of homework, or the reason no homework is completed, is Netflix. Instead of streaming Orange is the New Black again before its new season on June 12th or watching the new season of House of Cards, there’s another Netflix original series that deserves to be binge watched, and it’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

Co-produced by Tina Fey, the comedy centers around a woman named Kimmy, played by The Office alum Ellie Kemper, who was abducted by a reverend and forced to live in an underground bunker for 15 years with three other women. At the age of 29, she’s freed, and instead of returning to her town like her fellow abductees, she decides to live in New York.

Kimmy soon finds herself as a tenant to a drug dealing neurotic older woman, played by Carol Kane, and as a roommate to a failed broadway actor and robot advertiser named Tidus, played by Tidus Burgess.

The show was originally meant to air on NBC but was rejected, probably to make room for the network’s seemingly 20th season of The Voice. Netflix saved the show, after realizing that anything stamped with Tina Fey’s name is probably brilliant, and it is.

The show shares similarities with Fey’s former comedy, 30 Rock, in that it’s full of social commentary and stars Jane Krakowski.

Although the shows brilliance is partly due to Fey, it’s also because of Ellie Kemper. She manages to make Kimmy seem childlike – since she was abducted as a teenager- but not idiotic. She’s sweet but not annoying, cheerful but not overwhelmingly, and she’s someone to root for but it’s not because of her situation. Basically, she’s likable, so likable that she’s worth streaming nonstop for an entire day.

Throughout the episodes, audiences will get to see Kimmy struggle with her rich boss and her spoiled teenage daughter, getting accustomed to Iphones and “selfies,” getting her GED, romance, and confronting her past.

The first season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is now available on Netflix.