When you see the world through her eyes, it doesn’t seem particularly better — but you believe it can be. Liz Shannon Miller, Indiewire, about Kimmy Schmidt
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Ellie Kemper) now has a second season in which it and she continue to shine. Not only that, in the later episodes therapy and therapists are now a significant part of the zany mix.
But first, the trailer:
If you haven’t yet finished watching the season you may wish to skip the possible spoilers ahead.
It’s in Episode 9 that this Kimmy Schmidt season hits “Peak Weird,” states Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture. This is in large part due to Tina Fey‘s entrance as “Drunk Andrea,” Kimmy’s slurry-talking ill-behaving advice-giving Uber customer who, as it turns out, by day is a seemingly sober and successful therapist.
As Lauren Le Vine, Refinery29, points out, even a way-too-inebriated backseat Dr. Andrea Brayden can readily see that Kimmy’s got big issues she’s never addressed. What Kimmy needs is therapy, the actual kind versus the drunk kind.
Although Kimmy’s first impulse is to resist, she then experiences a dissociative fugue that scares her into wanting to be “therapized.”
Unfortunately, when [Kimmy] goes to Andrea’s office, Andrea also has no memory of what happened the night before. She, too, compartmentalizes her experiences so that she can be a very successful psychiatrist by day and a drunk by night. She says she can’t see Kimmy as a patient, because Kimmy knows the nighttime version of Andrea. Kimmy figures out how she can become one of Andrea’s patients, though. She records her during a drunken rant and uses it as blackmail…
When the usually happy-go-lucky Kimmy Schmidt officially begins therapy in Episode 10, she learns it’s actually okay to be angry. (Drunk) Andrea takes this further, recommending out of the blue that Kimmy work on her repressed anger with her mother (whom Kimmy hasn’t seen since she was kidnapped).
That cut-to-the-chase feedback is one of the major differences between drunk and not-drunk therapy. As the EW recap notes, “Daytime Andrea maintains that therapy is an ongoing process, but Nighttime Andrea asserts ‘actually, it’s always the parents’.”
Meanwhile, Andrea’s not the only game in town. Episode 11 brings Jeff Goldblum as “Dr. Dave,” a TV talk show shrink who’s gotten Cyndee, one of Kimmy’s bunkermates, into his clutches. Part of Kimmy’s mission is to undo his strong effect on her. Mariella Mosthof, Romper:
The character of Dr. Dave is a spot-on satire of talk shows that air out the sordid circumstances of people’s lives for TV audiences. It’s pretty clear that he doesn’t actually care about his ‘patients,’ considering he interrupts them to pivot to a sponsor mention whenever he can manage it. He’s not even a real psychologist — Dr. Dave admits that he merely went to pharmacy school (which is a feat on its own). His elaborately staged ‘exposure therapies’ in front of a live studio audience are clearly more for spectacle than for the good of a guest…
By Episode 12 Dr. Andrea has become a day-drinking therapist, and Kimmy, afraid of losing her to rehab, tries to provide the needed assistance instead. “Kimmy’s inability to help Andrea with her problems actually proves to be a teachable moment,” says Le Vine. “Kimmy’s therapist tells her that she doesn’t need to help everyone; she should focus on helping herself.”
More-Drunk Andrea, you see, still has the ability to say stock therapist things (and be darn proud of it). She repeatedly emphasizes, for instance, some needed reassurance that it’s not Kimmy’s fault that people like her mom have abandoned her.
This insight carries Kimmy Schmidt into the 13th and last episode that involves finding and confronting Mom (Lisa Kudrow) and accepting some harsh realities—just as you now have to accept that my over-sharing stops here. I mean, it is the cliffhanger, you know.
Will drunk therapy prove effective in the long run? Perhaps—in Sitcomville, that is.
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