SNAPSHOT
After 15 years of living in a cult, the unbreakable and wide-eyed Kimmy (Ellie Kemper, The Office) is rescued along with three other women, causing a national sensation that culminates with an appearance on the Today show. Before getting back on the bus to Indiana, however, Kimmy decides it’s time to reclaim her life. Armed with just a backpack, light-up sneakers, a couple way-past-due library books and a big wad of rescue-fund cash, she’s ready to take on New York City. It’s easily the best time of Kimmy’s life and she makes a spontaneous decision to rent a room from Titus, a wannabe Broadway actor who makes a living as a robot in Times Square. Motivated to start moving forward, Kimmy gets a job as a nanny for an Upper East Side family and it quickly becomes clear to her that money and status aren’t synonymous with happiness (or even sanity). Determined to have a romance and take advantage of everything life has to offer, Kimmy is using her optimistic spirit to finally start having all kinds of adventures in a world she never knew existed.From Writers and Executive Producers Tina Fey and Robert Carlock (30 Rock) comes a new comedy about a modern day Mary Tyler Moore, ready to make this city her own! (official synopsis via GeekyNews)
“You can curl up in a ball and die, or you can stand up and say ‘We’re different and you can’t break us!'”
There is something undeniably attractive about sheer unbridled enthusiasm.
Sure it may lead to all sorts of spur-of-the-moment decisions like renting a shoebox bedroom from wanna Broadway actor Titus (Tituss Burgess), taking up a job as a nanny with a tony Upper East Side socialite played by Jane Krakowski, and doesn’t preclude the possession of a deep-seated and fearfully irrational fear of velcro, but it is an enormously and wonderful thing …
… and Kelly Schmidt (Ellie Kemper), newly released from a bunker-dwelling doomsday cult, has it in delightfully kooky spades and then some.
It’s even useful for dealing with sassy construction site cat-callers!
And it lends this new series from Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, which received an initial 2 season order when it bounced from NBC to Netflix recently, the sort of joie de vivre that powered The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Third Rock From the Sun and really any comedy which has featured new-in-town characters discovering the full wonders of the big wide world for the first time.
Those of us who have never been locked away believing the world has ended may find her irrepressible glee a little hard to process but I am hoping her whimsical glee will rub off on all of us who think life stopped being super-exciting and wonder-inducing somewhere around the middle of our twenties.
What I find also appealing about Kimmy Schmidt is that she is not wilfully ignorant of the realities of life.
As the trailer makes all too clear, she learns very quickly through Titus and others that life can be cruel and capricious sometimes but that doesn’t mean you gave to surrender any hope of it being a thing of joy and beauty and unbridled happiness too.
Frankly I think there’s to be learned and to be enjoyed about Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and I’m looking forward to checking it out when it premieres on Netflix in all its territories (including hopefully Australia where the streaming service will be newly launched) on 6 March, 2015.