What I’m Watching: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Season 2, Episode 5 “Kimmy Gives Up!” (B+)

If there’s one thing that drives this show more than anything, it’s Kimmy’s positive spirit. So little gets her down, and even her limited understanding of the world given her out-of-date “Frasier” references and all that has not kept her from seizing the day nearly every day and overcoming so much to endure in New York City. Dong choosing his green card over her was a huge blow, and that she still felt compelled to help him prop up a made-up marriage when it hurt her so much shows how she cares for him. Kimmy falling asleep during the GED and yelling at the proctor for not waking her up was funny, yet obviously a huge stumbling block for her educational development. I love that, as soon as she realized that Kimmy was just a chalk drawing, Jacqueline struggled so much to be alone with Buckley, something that had never in her life happened before. Giving him Dyziplen, a hilarious medication, did provide a perfect solution, but when her consumption of the drug led to a horrible fashion choice, she realized that she couldn’t do that to her son, no matter how much of an annoyance he was. Using Transformers commands to get him to calm down and then to wreak havoc on a saleswoman who thought she was an 8 was great, and that’s where this show manages to use its absurdity to its advantage. Titus’ obsession with awful fake musical numbers was most effective for the closing montage that revealed, among other things, that Dong hangs on to Kimmy’s scrunchie and hasn’t moved on, and wrapped all of this episode’s plotlines up quite nicely.