Wanting to break us off slowly for that final goodbye to the series, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is being released in two parts for its fourth and last season, part one having debuted on May 30th on Netflix (or Houseflix, as it gets parodied in the show). While Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) has been largely annoying for the majority of the narrative, it seems as though she’s finally becoming more of a real person as opposed to a caricature of an oversized child ginger. This much is evident in the first episode, “Kimmy Is…Little Girl, Big City!,” in which Kimmy finally engages in her first “real” job (with a cheesy 90s-inspired theme song to punctuate it), real of course meaning a bit more stifling and nondescript, therefore higher-paying.
As the HR Manager for Giztoob, Kimmy learns quickly that there is a double standard on sexual harassment toward men in the workplace as she, in her own naive way, let’s her pants fall to the ground and says, “It’s not gonna suck itself,” regarding a nearby smoothie she had purchased for Kabir (Niloy Alam), the person she’s being forced to fire, yet still wants to “make him feel good” about it. Ah, but that’s always been Kimmy’s fatal flaw: wanting to spread her good will toward others, most especially in a city like New York, where we’d all really just rather not–being jaded and miserable are the city’s emblems of greatness, after all. Yet Kimmy’s sudden revelations about inflicting her ideas, “desires” and beliefs on others at Giztoob bleed outwardly into the adversity-laden climate of men and women at present, with most notable regard to the very overt fear men presently have of their power being taken away. This environment of hostility toward females as misogyny gets a second wave in the male attempt to preserve a final vestige of absolute control is tied back to Kimmy’s oppression by the Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne (Jon Hamm), who Kimmy soon discovers is the subject of a Houseflix documentary called Party Monster: Scratching the Surface. Under the moniker DJ Slizzard, Wayne attracts the attention of popular DJ Fingablast (Derek Klena), on the hunt to figure out what happened to him so that he can get him to come out of retirement to DJ his wedding (his intended future wife being the third Hadid sister, Hello Hadid [Dierdre Reimold]).
With all of episode three devoted to this spoof on crime documentaries, the takeaway quickly comes when DJ Fingablast encounters Fran Dodd (SNL staple Bobby Moynihan), a men’s rights activist who reaches out to DJ Fingablast in his alter ego form of Karen Sorrento on Facebook (yes, it definitely has that absurdist Arrested Development feel–and is most assuredly something that would happen to Tobias). As the founder and CFBro of The Innocence Broject, Fran inspires DJ Fingablast to continue his attempt at freeing DJ Slizzard from prison, even though Hello has broken off the engagement. Describing the The Innocence Broject as “an organization that fights back in the war on men,” Fran explains, “I am telling you, men are under attack… Masculinity is being criminalized in this country and I want something done did about it.”
Thus, the storyline appropriately fashions Donald Trump into Wayne’s “personal hero,” with scenes cutting to Trump saying, “Take a look, you tell me. I don’t think so, I don’t think so” and “Believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you” pertain to Wayne claiming that he was framed for his crime, and that he would never cultivate a bunker filled with such unattractive women.
And as the three men plot and scheme together in the prison where Wayne is being held, Fran declares, “Men are not the problem. Women are the problem. Things were fine until we started letting them make their own decisions.” This ability to have “choice,” according to Fran and DJ Slizzard, is where it’s all gone wrong, and why a return to “traditional American values” must be made. As humorous as it may be to see this satire on men’s fear of a feminine overtaking, it’s also slightly disturbing, for there truly are men (so many) who feel this way and would, in fact, probably not even regard these scenes as mockery, so much as “facts.”
While Fey’s polemic can miss the mark at times–like when she tries her best to address the privilege of white women, but it instead comes across as just another white woman using Asian nail techs to make a statement about class (Sex and the City did it, too, lest you forget), it is her undercutting anger that is most effective in season four (even more than Titus starring in a made up show called The Capist with Greg Kinnear). For it is evident that she is using the unlikely source of Kimmy to delineate the bizarre reality we inhabit (even more bizarre than one in which she talks to her backpack) in which men get up in arms for even the slightest expression on the part of women, most especially in the entertainment industry, who have insisted they will not endure further treatment of this chauvinistic and abusive nature. And, as we come to the end of part one, with Kimmy having penned an allegorical children’s book about the monster inside every man that can be tamed if only he learns how to early on (cue the earlier sendup scenes of men being castrated with a chainsaw, for this is how they interpret being told how to conduct themselves by women), maybe, just maybe, there is hope for a future in which men don’t take what they want simply because they feel entitled to it for being able to piss standing up and they don’t almost constantly say something heinous under the guise of it just being “a joke,” “all in good fun,” etc. Kimmy Schmidt dares to dream of that world, and perhaps make it a little more fathomable–naive dreamer that she is, along with her creator, Tina Fey.
