From Kyle Smith at the New York Post:
Tina Fey’s new comedy “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” was rejected by NBC, which commissioned it. That turned out to be excellent news, because the show wound up on Netflix. Netflix doesn’t have a Standards and Practices division.
The networks’ inability to think outside of their cramped and fearful mindspace, in which the overarching concern is to refrain from being interesting lest the advertisers get spooked, is why they’re becoming as irrelevant as the VCR.
In the very first, hilarious episode of “Kimmy,” a co-creation of Fey and writer Robert Carlock, four women are rescued from a wacko cult whose members lived underground, believing humanity had been wiped out in an apocalypse.
We watch the women get interviewed on “Today,” which runs the chyron, “BREAKING NEWS: WHITE WOMEN FOUND.” Under that, in much smaller letters, are the words, “Hispanic woman also found.”
…
“Kimmy Schmidt” is a pot into which Carlock and Fey have thrown all of the elements of the rich, intoxicating bouillabaisse we call New York City. How do we know “Unbreakable” is a success? Aside from a 96% five-star rating on Rotten Tomatoes, humorless liberal scolds are all over it.
They’re outraged over the “offensive” and “marginalizing” jokes (Vulture), calling the show “an uncomfortable footnote to the debate about diversity in pop culture” (The Washington Post) and declaring “when it comes to race . . . leaves much to be desired” (The Daily Beast).
On the Jezebel-wannabe site Ravishly.com, a writer huffed, “I was not prepared for how incredibly tired, hack and downright offensive this show would be when it comes to race. I’ve never seen a show with such a diverse cast that was written so obviously and exclusively for privileged white people.”
Read the rest of the article here.
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