Netflix
The first six episodes of the fourth season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt are a disjointed bunch.
The season tackles some heavy themes: the necessity of being sensitive to others’ needs and preferences; men’s entitlement, especially to women’s bodies; and what it means to be an adult.
Of course, that doesn’t mean the episodes weren’t ridiculously hilarious in a very Kimmy Schmidt kind of way. Despite some of its serious undertones, the show’s mix of zany humor, commentary on the absurdity of the mundane, and pointed cultural criticism are as potent as ever.
But there is a divide between the first three episodes of this half-season, and the more successful, more coherent final three episodes.
Recap of Episode 1: Kimmy is….Little Girl, Big City!
The first episode of the season starts right where we left our characters last season. Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) is now the HR rep at the start-up Giztoob. Jacqueline (Jane Krakowski) is attempting to become an agent and find work for Titus (Tituss Burgess), but so far it’s not going so well. And Lillian (Carol Kane) must scheme to spread the ashes of her dead boyfriend, Artie, on the land where his old summer camp was located, as it’s now an exclusive men’s club.
Kimmy is thrilled about her job but hits a wall when her boss tells her to fire one of the workers. The employee’s bad at his job, sure, but Kimmy doesn’t want to have to fire him.
So, Kimmy decides she’s going to do it in a nice, “Kimmy” way. Not surprisingly, the Kimmy way comes across as completely inappropriate and the employee accuses her of sexual harassment.
Meanwhile, Jacqueline and Titus decide that with the hundreds of TV shows around, no one will notice if they make one up for Titus to “star” in. They make a fake poster for the hit show, “The Capist” and plaster it all over town.
When Titus’s ex, Mikey sees it, he calls Titus. Titus, who’s still hung up on Mikey, uses his fake show as an excuse to ask Mikey to teach him how to do construction stuff.
Kimmy puts herself on leave as she investigates the accusations against her. After the sexual harassment complaint, the Giztoob employees told her they don’t like all her high-fiving, hugging, and nick-naming.
At first, she just thinks they don’t like fun, but then she realizes work can’t just be her personal playground. She has to be sensitive to her co-workers and their needs. Kimmy returns to work with a new perspective.
After his construction date with Mikey, Titus calls Jacqueline in a panic. He invited Mikey to The Capist’s nonexistent set.
Fortunately, Jacqueline, who’s taken up residence in an empty office at Giztoob and christened her company “White Talent,” has an idea. Greg Kinnear, the unthreatening white guy they included in The Capist’s poster, has a child that goes to her son’s old school. They invite Mikey to the school and Titus corners Kinnear during school drop-off. Titus convinces him to improvise a scene with him.
Kinnear actually has fun. He tells Titus he has a deal with YouTube Brown. He asks Titus to write a script, so they can pitch it together.
Best lines:
C.H.E.R.Y.L., the Giztoob robot: “Speaking of late, why did these guys program me to get a period? Men.”
Titus: “So, the hammer, that has nothing to do with ham?”
Mikey: “That’s a common misconception, but it’s actually for whapping stuff.”
Jacqueline: “This is about building a fempire!”
Titus: “Female vampire? Lose, lose.”
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Recap of Episode 2: Kimmy Has a Weekend!
Kimmy learns about binge-watching. Titus explains the Al-Gore-rhythm to Kimmy, the helpful recommendations for what to watch next while binging. This leads them down a rabbit-hole of true crime movies.
Jacqueline and Lillian scheme to get Jacqueline’s apartment back from her sub-letter, who turns out to be a rich idiot. Jacqueline convinces him she should represent him as an actor.
She shows him off at a party. His talent is irrelevant because he’s rich and white. Jacqueline finds him a job in L.A. for the next day.
At a nail salon, Kimmy realizes the Asian workers “have kind of a bunker vibe.” But Titus tells her she can’t understand their lives because of white privilege. Kimmy points out that she knows hardship given her 15 years in the bunker. Titus shows her that it doesn’t matter what she’s been through, the world sees her as a privileged white person.
Back at home, Kimmy and Titus start to watch a documentary recommended the Al-Gore-rhythm. It’s called Party Monster and is about DJ Slizzard. Something about that DJ looks familiar…
Best line:
Titus: “Girl, you need to stop, drop, and roll. By which I mean stop talking, drop the subject, and go get me a cinnamon roll.”
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Recap of Episode 3: Party Monster: Scratching the Surface
The entire episode is the documentary Party Monster. It chronicles DJ FIngablast’s (Derek Klena) investigation into what’s become of his inspiration, DJ Slizzard, who just happens to be Richard Wayne Gary Wayne (Jon Hamm), Kimmy’s captor.
The episode is a parody of the popular true-crime documentary genre.
By the end of the episode, FIngablast, Wayne, and men’s rights activist, Fran Dodd (Bobby Moynihan) come together to rant about the evil of women. Their lives would be so much easier if women weren’t able to make decisions.
It’s “Directed & Everything by DJ Fingablast” and it’s idiotic, and not nearly as funny as the writers seem to think it is. More on that later.
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Recap of Episode 4: Kimmy Disrupts the Paradigm!
Kimmy’s understandably upset after watching the documentary about DJ Slizzard. She has to go to a tech conference in Pittsburgh for work, which Lillian convinces her will be fun and take her mind off things.
Jacqueline makes Titus go to an audition for an acting troop called Choices Matter, which performs at school assemblies. The audition goes well but instead of the jock role he was trying out for, the director is interested in him for the role of the nerd. Titus is outraged.
In Pittsburgh, Kimmy meets a man, Danford (Drew Gehling), who, like Kimmy, isn’t into all the tech stuff at the conference. When the couple go dancing, the DJ recognizes Kimmy from Party Monster as DJ Slizzard’s wife. Kimmy flees.
In New York, Jacqueline convinces Titus that as an actor he should be able to play against type. So Titus decides to research nerds for his Choices Matter role. The office of Giztoob gives him the perfect outlet.
He shadows an unsuspecting Giztoob employee. The employee explains that he grew up in a small town in the South but came to New York because he never felt like he belonged.
Titus thinks the man is describing him, after all, that’s Titus’s story too. And just like Titus the man has a roommate and likes Broadway musicals. Titus is flabbergasted: Nerds are just like him!
At the conference, Danford finds Kimmy. He confesses that he’s married too, so he gets what she’s doing. Kimmy can’t believe it. She wants to tell everyone Danford’s a bad man, but he talks her out of it.
Performing with Choices Matter, Titus realizes the show makes nerds seem one-dimensional. From the stage he stops the performance to explain that nerds can be more than one thing.
After Titus’s performance, the school principal asks him to direct the school’s upcoming musical and Titus agrees
At a presentation at the conference, Kimmy sees Danford making out with another girl. She outs him as having a Hotmail account and still making phone calls. This makes him persona non grata with the tech crowd.
Best lines:
Lillian: “There’s no truth anymore. People can find facts to back up anything. For example, did you know that the Lincoln assassination was faked. John Wilkes Booth was an actor.”
Titus: “Choices matter? They do? That can’t be true.”
Titus (trying out for Choices Matter): “I don’t need drugs to have fun. My drug of choice is being patient with my step-father.”
Kimmy: “Isn’t it classy how his first name sounds like a last name? That means our kids could be named stuff like Jackson or Square-Pants.”
Danford: “Let’s, like, bust the paradigm, or whatever.
Kimmy: “They do say bustin’ makes you feel good.”
Titus: “Jacqueline, I’m gay!”
Jacqueline: “Yes, Titus, I know. That’s how you end every phone call.”
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Recap of Episode 5: Kimmy and the Beest!
Titus holds auditions for his play, “Beauty and the Beest,” which features talking soda along with the traditional Beauty and the Beast characters.
A publishing house wants Kimmy to write a book about her bunker experience. Kimmy doesn’t believe she can get her message out that way, though.
She decides she’s going to talk to Fran Dodd, the men’s rights activist from Party Monster. If she can get through to him, she can change his followers’ minds about what Richard Wayne Gary Wayne did to her.
Meanwhile, Jacqueline and Lillian hatch a plan to scalp the tickets from Titus’s play. They buy them all and try to sell them at a premium to the kids’ parents.
But the parents call their bluff and refuse to buy the tickets. After all, they’re the show’s only market. What will Jacqueline and Lillian do if the parents don’t buy them? Lillian refuses to back down.
Kimmy goes to see Dodd. He works at a bridal shop and is bitter that none of his clients will go out with him.
Kimmy tries to tell him Wayne is a monster. Dodd is shocked. He thinks someone must have gotten to her.
Dodd thinks women have it easy in America. When Kimmy points out that all guys like him do is blame everyone else for all their problems, Dodd claims that that’s whose fault it is. He thinks the bunker was a return to traditional values.
Kimmy beats him at arm wrestling and then just beats him.
Titus is making things impossible for the kids in his show. Beest quits. Titus, having never been in a play when he was in school, wants to take over the role. He gets the kids to think it was their idea. They beg him to play the Beest and he graciously accepts.
Lillian and Jacqueline decide to lie to people on the streets of New York about the play. They tell people it’s an immersive theatrical experience, making it sound sophisticated and esoteric. Tickets sell like hot cakes.
Titus overhears his lighting guy, Hudson, singing. He has a voice just like Titus’s. Threatened, Titus tells Hudson he should get into wrestling instead of continuing to work on the play.
Kimmy comes to watch a rehearsal. She is down on men after her experience with Dodd. Hudson is watching too and sings to her.
After hearing Hudson, Kimmy realizes that Titus just wants to make the play about him. Are there no good men at all?
The night of the play finally arrives. None of the kids’ parents have come, it’s just people Lillian and Jacqueline have duped into buying tickets.
Kimmy tries to convince Titus to give the role of the Beest to Hudson. When Titus realizes he can’t fit into the Beest’s boots, he has a change of heart, and finally hands the role over to Hudson.
Titus may no longer be in the play, but Kimmy takes the role of a villager. She was in the bunker for most of her childhood so she never got to be in a school play either.
As the play ends, Kimmy takes to the stage to deliver a message: The Beest is not a good model for how to treat girls. Boys can and should learn to be different from the men who were influenced by the princes’ treatment of girls in fairy tales.
Best lines:
Auditioning kid: “a 5, 6, 7, 8.”
Titus: “You forgot 1 through 4! Next!”
Titus: “Books! As if my day couldn’t get any worse, now we have books! Who would do this to me?”
Kimmy: “It says it’s from Random House.”
Titus: “So it could be any of them?”
Kimmy: “You cut off the head, you kill the snake.”
Titus: “Isn’t that true of any animal?”
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Recap of Episode 6: Kimmy Meets an Old Friend!
At the school, Kimmy sees a boy with the purple backpack she lost in the very first episode of the series. She trades him her new backpack for it. She’s thrilled to have her old backpack back.
Meanwhile, Lillian’s dead boyfriend’s family is looking for him. Lillian neglected to tell them he died. She meets his daughter, Sheba (Busy Philipps).
Titus is scheduled to pitch The Capist to YouTube Brown, but he hasn’t written a word of the script. Kimmy tries to use her backpack, which she sees as a living entity, to help him use his imagination.
They come across boys playing Quidditch, the game from Harry Potter. Kimmy is amazed. She realizes she can reach boys by writing a book about how boys should treat girls.
Unfortunately, the publishing house she takes it to isn’t interested in her book. She’s known as a mole woman and that’s the only thing they want her to write about.
Disenchanted by her meeting with the publisher, Kimmy gives her book to Titus for his YouTube Brown pitch.
The YouTube Brown executives don’t like Titus’s pitch but do like Titus. They ask him to read for a role on a different show.
Lillian goes to Artie’s funeral, but it’s already over. Sheba gave her the wrong time. She wants control of the trust her father’s kept her under because she’s a mess. She’s trying to trick her brother, who she believes will be named her conservator in her father’s will, into thinking she’s become responsible. She wants Lillian to stay away because she knows Lillian is on to her.
Lillian goes to the reading of Artie’s will and outs Sheba. But it’s irrelevant because Artie left Lillian in charge of Sheba’s trust.
Kimmy has a frank conversation with her backpack. She explains that she’s a grown-up and needs to face reality, but her backpack, with its focus on imagination, is holding her back. She prepares to throw her backpack into the river.
Before she can go through with it, she gets a call. The son of one of the YouTube Brown executives has found her book in the garbage and loves it. He wants to hear more of the story.
Kimmy continues to write as the episode ends.
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Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Season 4, Part 1 Review
These six Kimmy Schmidt episodes include both hysterical moments and pointed commentary, some of it more successful than others. The first three episodes are more isolated and scattershot. It’s not until the last three episodes that the half-season really starts to come together.
While the premiere picks up right after the last episode of season 3, the episode feels like a one-off. The writers are speaking to our #MeToo moment with the accusation of sexual harassment against Kimmy, but the commentary doesn’t quite work, given Kimmy’s ongoing innocence and naiveté.
Instead, it comes off as a commentary on how people need to learn to be compassionate and sympathetic towards others. While that’s a valuable message and part of what #MeToo is about, it minimizes the reason that movement has taken off.
Similarly, episode two wants to comment on the meaning of white privilege but mostly falls flat. While the episode makes some good points, they seem out-of-place and don’t really land with the resonance they should.
The worst of these first three episodes is the third one, “Party Monster,” the true crime mockumentary about DJ Slizzard, AKA Kimmy’s captor, Richard Wayne Gary Wayne. Kimmy Schmidt has drawn attention in the past for its pop culture parodies. For example, last season included a meticulously crafted homage to Beyoncé’s “Lemonade,” featuring Titus.
Unfortunately, the mockumentary doesn’t work. First, except at the very end, none of Kimmy Schmidt‘s main characters appear in the episode. In addition, a whole episode is too long to devote to the joke of the mockumentary. The characters are stupid and ignorant, and often not in a funny way, so a half hour is too long to spend with them.
Plus, this territory was already visited with Netflix’s true crime drama parody, American Vandal. That show was both much funnier and much poignant than the Party Monster mockumentary. While the episode is the foundation for the rest of the season, it doesn’t work as an individual episode.
The back half of the half-season is when things really get going. It’s here that the show gets to say what it was starting to get at in the first episode: people need to take ownership of their lives and realize they don’t have ownership of anyone else’s. It’s a serious message but it’s punctuated with a lot of zany moments that let each character shine in all their cracked glory.
The episode in which Titus directs the school musical is an especially high point, complete with Disney references and lots of anthropomorphized soda.
The actors continue to play their roles with conviction. Their comic timing and ability to banter with one another make these characters a lot of fun to spend time with.
Kimmy continues to learn about the world and grow into adulthood with all the optimism and bright-eyed wonder we expect from her. But she’s also starting to realize that it isn’t just Richard Wayne Gary Wayne that didn’t have good intentions.
This does make it feel like Kimmy’s story may be reaching an endpoint, as the producers indicated it was.
It’ll be interesting to see how Kimmy and her friends continue to evolve when the back half of the season hits Netflix on January 25, 2019.
Did you watch the part one of Kimmy Schmidt’s fourth season? Tell us what you thought of it in the comments.