Comic takes on what women endure
The Show: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Season 3, Episode 3 The Moment: The face-squish
Richard Wayne Gary Wayne (Jon Hamm) kidnapped Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) and forced her to marry him. In prison, he now wants a divorce so he can marry Wendy (Laura Dern). Kimmy’s roommate Titus (Tituss Burgess) asks Wendy why in hell she’d want to marry Wayne.
“With Richard I know what I’m getting,” Wendy says. “He won’t cheat on me with my neighbour — because he can’t. He can’t scream at me when the Steelers lose. He can’t flip my cereal bowl in my face and call me a dummy.”
“A man flipped cereal on you?” Titus asks, hands on his face in horror.
“Because now I eat my cereal at home before I go to the prison,” Wendy barrels on. Titus grips his face so hard the flesh squishes between his hands.
On Monday I wrote about sitcoms delivering a social message. Here’s another one. The jokes here fly thick and fast, both high and low, everything from pooping in a body cast to Kimmy’s applying to “Roy Cohn Community College” (that’s hilarious; look him up).
But there’s a steel girder supporting the far-fetched premise: At heart, this series is about the crap some men pull, and the women who put up with that. Kimmy’s former boss Jacqueline (Jane Krakowski) is an ex-trophy wife awakening to her mistakes. Kimmy’s neighbour Lillian (Carol Kane) only reluctantly broke up with (real-life) accused murderer Robert Durst (Fred Armisen).
Kimmy herself is the ultimate baby feminist, gradually owning and defending her selfhood.
Under the funny, show creator Tina Fey addresses some serious . . . poop. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is on Netflix. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.