The Atlantic

The Bleak Truths of <em>Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt</em>

In its fourth and final season, the Netflix comedy continues to spin its cotton-candy humor around a world that’s rotten inside.
Source: Netflix

The biggest joke of , now in its fourth season on Netflix, is that Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) is still smiling. When she emerged in 2015 from her 15-year imprisonment in a bunker, dazed and bleary, Kimmy’s immediate response to finding the world (mostly) the same as she left it was a broad, irrepressible grin. And her sense of joy came to define the show’s aesthetic. was lilac-painted walls in a condemned East Dogmouth basement. It was a unicorn frappuccino in a sludgy Folgers universe. It was fudgin’ , given what the audience saw but Kimmy didn’t: that the world she was so unabashedly thrilled to be reunited with was also a dark, absurd,

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