Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy Goes to Her Happy Place!

May 10, 2016 8:47 AM - Season 2, Episode 10

Kimmy begins therapy with Andrea. Titus helps Mikey come out to his family.
posted by Cash4Lead (26 comments total)

THE PUPPET.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:53 AM on May 10, 2016 [8 favorites]

Kimmy's Happy Place was such a spot-on satire of Disney movies I nearly choked to death.

Tine Fey's therapist is... honestly it's the best work I've ever seen Fey do.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:01 AM on May 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

Apart from the therapy, though (which is great), the show has largely fallen into the Will & Grace trap: Titus and Lillian are much more engaging and interesting characters a la Jack and Karen than Kimmy is at this point.

Also I'd love to know how many gay dudes are on the writing staff because literally every. single. thing. about Titus/Mikey is perfect. Everything.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:38 AM on May 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

The family was amazing. It took me a few passes to realize that Mikey's mother is actually a Satanist.
posted by maxsparber at 12:58 PM on May 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

It took me a few passes to realize that Mikey's mother is actually a Satanist.
Wait, what?
I totally missed that.
posted by teleri025 at 1:07 PM on May 10, 2016

It's because she cries out stuff like a good Catholic when everybody else is shouting, but, if you pay attention, she's actually crossing herself and saying "Put your seed in me Satan" and the like.
posted by maxsparber at 1:11 PM on May 10, 2016 [4 favorites]

Apart from the therapy, though (which is great), the show has largely fallen into the Will & Grace trap: Titus and Lillian are much more engaging and interesting characters a la Jack and Karen than Kimmy is at this point.

Not for me. I really like Kimmy and have found Lillian's ongoing story thread this season to be the weakest part of the show. I want her to be more involved in Kimmy and Titus' lives. That said, I'm okay with Jacqueline having separate story threads, so...
posted by crossoverman at 7:44 PM on May 10, 2016 [4 favorites]

This was around when I started openly hoping that Jacqueline would get Put On a Bus and all of her screen time would just be dedicated to Titus and Mikey instead, because they are TV's best couple. The grandmother was a brilliant gag that only this show could have pulled off, too. Oh my GOODNESS. I love the way they hung a lampshade on it ("Is that even a person?").

Did anyone else find the animated segments nightmarish, though not for the right on-purpose sort of reasons, but because of her Uncanny Valley Archer Face? I seriously found the graphic violence less off-putting than just looking at her unsettling animated face.

Tina Fey is so good at playing her character(s), too. I kind of hope she gets brought back for the third season, though I guess it's possible that there isn't much else development left for her and she runs the risk of becoming a one-note caricature in a world of multi-note caricatures.
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:22 PM on May 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

I kind of hope she gets brought back for the third season

Well it's her show, I think she gets to decide.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:29 AM on May 11, 2016

Heh. I'd meant the character. Actually, I wonder if this pattern will continue and she'll go on to play a new, different character in the third season…?
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:16 PM on May 11, 2016

I hope so. The therapist had an arc, she's not going to change, she's going to be come boring if she stays on the show.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:30 PM on May 11, 2016

It took me a few passes to realize that Mikey's mother is actually a Satanist.
Wait, what?
I totally missed that

I didn't read it that way. She says those things after saying "There is no God!" - Mikey's lack of appetite was to her, equivalent to proof of a Godless universe, where Satanism was the only alternative.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 3:33 PM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]

"Lance Bass? No, I misheard that."

Heeeeeeeee!
posted by angeline at 8:29 PM on May 11, 2016 [2 favorites]

Mikey's lack of appetite was to her, equivalent to proof of a Godless universe, where Satanism was the only alternative.

Okay but when they were going to leave so late they would hit airport traffic she literally said, "Satan, guide them."
posted by angeline at 8:56 PM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]

It's so novel to have a therapist character who actually sounds like a therapist! And she's good at her job! The fact that she's also like, a blackout wreck is incidental!

I will say as bad as it is on race, UKS gets Class really well, especially the weirdness of NYC class markers -- the fact that Andrea reverts to her "IM FROM METUCHEN" working class roots when drunk and thinks "daytime Andrea" is a stuffy yuppie pretending to be a fancy Manhattan doctor was ...interesting. It's like she has imposter syndrome that only comes out when she's drunk.
posted by The Whelk at 10:39 PM on May 11, 2016 [6 favorites]

That's actually a really good point about how UKS handles class stuff well enough that it almost makes up for how have-you-ever-even-met-a-minority-in-real-life the writing gets when it comes to race stuff. Naturally, the intersection of the two as regards such as gentrification seems to just go entirely over the writers' heads, tragically.
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:52 PM on May 11, 2016

Yeah it's kind of werid for an American show to be this exact and on target the Class stuff, even getting into the subtle shading even in a world where people are cartoonishly rich or cartoonishly poor.
posted by The Whelk at 12:02 AM on May 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

It's very British in that sense. I wonder if there are Brits on the writing team, or at least fans of British TV.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:47 AM on May 12, 2016

Kimmy's happy place is amazing and exactly what you would think it would be.
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:44 PM on May 14, 2016

Reminded me a lot of the animated sequence on Community where pop culture itself is both savior from awful experiences and a cage that doesn't let you go. It just stays there forever and a part of yourself is always in there. All of American pop culture, but especially TV, is an escapist fantasy--a collective dissociation that allows us to be happy or tough or funny or sexy--that allows us to return again and again to our places in the great blood machine. Obviously I love this episode and I want to watch it again and again. 😁
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:35 PM on May 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

That was beautiful, Potomac Avenue. Pop culture is our escape from our shitty reality into somewhere much more awesome than here.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:57 PM on May 14, 2016

But its a childish, puerile fantasy that doesn't let you grow beyond the concerns of your youth and cuts us off from connecting with other human beings in a mature way.

Life isn't awesome. We have to face it or be doomed to repeat our mistakes forever like a pathetic Nick At Night. Cf Bojack Horseman, Too Many Cooks, The Odyssey
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:17 AM on May 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

♫ It was a total bangfest ♫
posted by Rock Steady at 2:21 PM on May 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

Titus is just slaying me this season. "Unless you about to sing 'Jump," you better put away that pointer, sister."
posted by radioamy at 8:47 PM on May 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

Not for me. I really like Kimmy and have found Lillian's ongoing story thread this season to be the weakest part of the show.

For serious, I think it's super interesting and well-thought-out that the first season tackled all the obvious a-place-to-live, a-few-friends, some-sort-of-employments, and sending-your-captor-to-jail basics... and this time around, the facade of Kimmy's can-do pluckiness helping her glide over the massive traumas she's endured is being slowly dismantled in order develop some emotional maturity.

Plus she got to get it on with Dong, which is all any of us would hope for, no?
posted by psoas at 10:43 AM on June 13, 2016

Hunh. The Titus/Mikey stuff usually makes me cringe. I get what the writers are aiming for, but for me they only occasionally score.

Otherwise, I'm with the majority here: this show is brilliant on class, and fails on race. Though similar to the gay stuff, I agree with what I think they're trying to say, it's just the writers suck at saying it.

At least with the gay stuff they sometimes are funny.
posted by kanewai at 2:29 AM on June 16, 2016