Possibly only Tina Fey could turn the premise of a girl being locked in a bunker for fifteen years into kitschy comedic gold. That girl, of course, being Kimmy Schmidt (Ellie Kemper)–who still suffers from annoying main character syndrome. But even in the face of this minor hiccup of the show, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt has been a cartoonish mirror held up to our strange century since 2015–specifically one held up to New York City, with many of the show’s jokes and references being uber niche in terms of pandering to the average jaded resident (e.g. Pizza Rat Boulevard and, now, the true reason behind why Cats is so, shall we say, “ragtag”).
And as it has finally come to a close after four seasons of touching us (like Titus to Mr. Frumpus) with its wonderful weirdness, in the end, the message seems to be something that only a person imprisoned in a bunker–away from all the false trappings of technology–could impart to us: the simple life (or at least what’s left of it) is better. Or rather, a life not totally enmeshed in premises and pursuits centered on the new god that is Technology. Of course, this is a long and hard road for Kimmy to understand, considering she’s currently working at Giztoob, a company with the same connotations as the real life one it rhymes with–including its ability to mine data from people’s internet search patterns and tell them what to buy with advertising. This is, of course, unbeknownst to Kimmy, who isn’t smacked with this revelation until the end, her boss commenting, “You really never should have worked here.”
The characters she technically supports as opposed to vice versa, Lillian (Carol Kane), Jacqueline (Jane Krakowski) and Titus (Tituss Burgess), have, in fact, been living a much more analog lifestyle throughout most of the series (minus socialite-era Jacqueline, one supposes), season four being no exception. Lillian continues to suffer the ills of managing her deceased boyfriend’s (Artie Goodman [Peter Riegert]) daughter’s trust fund. This time, Sheba (Busy Philipps) schemes to pry ten thousand dollars from her account to open a year-round Halloween store, conning Lillian without realizing the repercussions of being taught an Arrested Development-like lesson from the master of pulling a fast one (sort of like the writers of the “Sliding Van Doors” episode thinking enough time had passed since Broad City riffed on the same concept for its season four premiere–who knew a Gwyneth Paltrow movie could mean so much to people?).
Titus, meanwhile, continues to revel in his delusions of grandeur, only to have them dashed by a “10” named Ilan (Jon Bernthal), who can take no more of the torture of investigating Titus’ pathetic life on behalf of Mr. Frumpus so as to ensure he won’t come forward about his little “audition” last year. This, of course, is a sendup of Harvey Weinstein (who is, somewhat surprisingly, actually mentioned by name in the show) and his use of ex-Mossad agents to attempt suppressing allegations against him before it all got blown out of the water by Ronan Farrow, all too happy to cameo in the #MeToo-heavy episode entitled “Kimmy Is in a Love Square!” In fact, much of the narrative, which can, at times, border on being almost too mocking of the movement and how it’s opened up a certain door for, let’s say, opportunists looking to bask in the glory of trauma with pins on their lapels, is focused on this 2017-2018 dominating phenomenon. Which never really hit the theater circuit quite as hard. Until Titus got his hands on it.
To the point of concentrating on that which makes one happy through the analog, Kimmy’s extremely homemade book, The Legends of Greemulax (now apparently a real live entity available for purchase), starts to gain some traction through means unrelated to her sneaking it into drugstores. That is to say, she finally uses Giztoob for some good in threatening her boss to continue being a “sexual predator” if he doesn’t target boys using specific search terms with ads for her books.
Jacqueline Vorhees, too, has come a long way from depressed socialite to would-be hotshot talent agent. She herself enjoys the merits of a more lo-fi approach to life in “Kimmy Fights a Fire Monster!” That is to say, capitalizing on millennial men’s redirected energy toward older women now that women in their own age bracket are offended by everything. Pursuing them at the Home Basics store with Mimi Kanasis (Amy Sedaris) and Lillian, Jacqueline is initially pleased with this intel until being bombarded with the epiphany that, “They’re all someone’s son. That’s why women don’t do this! How are men okay with dating girls that young?” To which a nearby millennial responds, “Oh, because we’re gross. We’ll put it anywhere.” Truer words were never spoken. Apart from Donna Maria’s (Sol Miranda) explanation of why she never contacts Kimmy while in New York, which is, to quote Keanu Reeves in Speed (one of many non sequitur pop culture references revisited in the last portion of the season), “Relationships based on intense experiences never work.”
If that’s the case, any relationship with Lillian, an impassioned despiser of gentrification from the beginning of the series, is probably not going to work. Yet it has for so long between her and her duo of tenants. Even so, all good (or semi-tolerable) things must come to an end. Thus, East Dogmouth is about to lose its last true ally when the city seizes Lillian’s sideways tugboat property to do “what New York does best and turn something old into something terrible.”
Determined to go down as a New York legend, Lillian decides to do one of the most analog (at least by 70s standards) things of all and blow herself up with the building. Kimmy, of course, is encouraging when she understands the term “blow up” to mean “get famous.”
Titus, naturally, is all too aware of what Lillian is really doing and doesn’t try to stop her because “I respect people’s choices.” Fortunately for Kimmy, TNT in New York just isn’t what it used to be (like everything else), and so Lillian survives, allowing her the opportunity to haunt in the most poetically analog way possible: by being the voice on the subway that goads and reminds the honkeys and tourists that New York isn’t as vanilla as every Jennifer Lopez movie has painted it. And, in truth, there could be no better aspect of the coda to the alternate reality of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt‘s New York.
