Emmy Episodes: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend

It’s always my policy to watch every Emmy-nominated episode each year, which leads me to sample a handful of shows that I don’t tune in to on a regular basis. For the fifth year in a row, I’m making a special effort to spotlight each of those installments to offer my perspective on shows that I don’t review each week.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend (B)

I recently watched the last three episodes of this show, which netted no Emmy nominations last season, so that I could screen this interactive special, which did earn a bid for Best TV Movie and for supporting actor Tituss Burgess. In some ways, I’m not sure that this movie needed to exist because the show had a decent enough ending, but I did appreciate its interactive nature. It does seem hard to assess its quality since I definitely experienced a slightly different version than other people who watched it, and I’m not even sure if the default choices that Netflix makes if you don’t click something are standard or if they’re random. I liked that, when the clearly wrong picks were made, characters appeared onscreen to tell you that this isn’t how things were supposed to end. My favorite part was when I clicked “Skip Intro” and was punished with an even longer remix. As usual, there’s a tendency for this show to be wholly ridiculous, whether it’s in a slapstick way like the Reverend crawling under the glass and waving to Jack McBrayer’s clueless guard or in a much more society-critiquing manner like Jacqueline being shown to be a liar making it so that women can no longer be trusted and men will do whatever horrible things they want to again. Daniel Radcliffe was well-cast as her prince fiancé, relegated mostly to his own absurd plotline with Lillian. I think the MVP was indeed the nominated Burgess, who indulged in trying to avoid exercise as much as humanly possible and feasted on not one but two spontaneously-appearing, hallucination-induced woodland buffets. I imagine this show might return again for another special like this, and while it’s hardly something the world needs, I wouldn’t mind watching.