'Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt' and Tina Fey's Race Problem

I'll be upfront and admit: I'm an avid fan of Netflix's "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt." I began watching the series after being inundated by the subway ads Netflix bought throughout New York City, and I found the show's take on the "young woman takes New York" trope to be refreshing in its ridiculousness.

The show follows Kimmy Schmidt (Ellie Kemper), who was locked in a bunker by a Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne (Jon Hamm) for 15 years. After being released, Kimmy decides to start a new life in New York City. The first season details her efforts to move beyond life in the bunker and her subsequent personal entanglements.

Image: Netflix

The first season of "Kimmy Schmidt" was at times flawed, but is all around better than the average sitcom. Tina Fey is exceptional when it comes to writing callbacks and sight gags: jokes that are not only smart, but also expected in a post-"30 Rock" comedy era.

However, Fey faced pushback from viewers for the show's depiction of Kimmy's GED classmate Dong (Ki Hong Lee) and the mid-season reveal that her boss, Jacqueline Voorhees (30 Rock alum Jane Krakowski), was actually a Native American passing as white.

Vulture's Libby Hill wrote one of the most pointed critiques of the show's Native-American subplot, emphasizing that the treatment of Krakowski's character goes much deeper than a woman wanting blue eyes and wearing contacts to fake it:

"The fact is, no matter what Krakowski looks like, we are asked to believe the character is Native American, a device that only serves to add color to the backstory of a character played by a very white actress. If we take the show at its word, we are laughing at a Native American woman who felt so uncomfortable in her skin and in not being a member of the dominant culture, she sold her soul to look the way she thought she should. That’s not funny; it’s disturbing. Not just because the pressure to Anglicize exists for so many cultures in America today, but because of how this very country systematically stripped the Native American people not only of their culture, but of their lands, too, not so very long ago."

And watching the second season, it seems that showrunners Fey and
Robert Carlock haven't learned much from the well-reasoned criticism "Kimmy Schmidt" received the first time around.

Titus (Tituss Burgess) in "Kimmy Goes to a Play!" Image: Netflix

The third episode of season two follows Kimmy's roommate, Titus, as he puts on a show about his previous life as a geisha. Asian-American activists soon show up to protest Titus' show; they claim to advocate for "Respectful Asian Portrayals In Entertainment."

Terrible acronym aside, the portrayal of Titus' critics as unwilling to engage in productive conversation is a thinly veiled dig at those who took to the internet to air their grievances after the first season premiered.

Ultimately and bizarrely, the protestors are touched by Titus' performance in yellowface, and this exchange takes place:

Protestor: Corbin, what do we do now that we're not offended?

Protestor 2: Yeah, I feel weird. It's like I can't breathe. Wait, I'm not allowed to say that! I offended myself.

The second protestor is then beamed up, supposedly by some sort of space-time paradox that occurs when an Asian-American character says a phrase that alludes to the systematic marginalization of another group.

The problem is not that "Kimmy Schmidt" is talking about race and trying to create comedy from it. Some of the show's greatest moments come from lines that subvert racial stereotypes.

"Kimmy Schmidt" is capable of joking about race, as they did with this sight gag. Image: Netflix

More often than not, "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" flips the script and satirizes a racist U.S. society. The second season takes cues from its audience, somewhat salvages Dong's storyline and uses his learning English through "Keeping up With the Kardashians" to create a great callback throughout the season. Jacqueline Voorhees spends this season trying to reconcile her Native American roots and her learned scheming of the Upper East Side, instead of simply flashing back to when she wanted to run away from the culture of her Sioux parents.

And then there's the Geisha episode.

An unfortunate episode and a more unfortunate acronym. Image: Netflix

The (misguided) lesson learned from "Kimmy Goes to a Play" is that online criticism is usually unfounded and people are offended too easily.

But using Asian-Americans as an example trivializes a very real problem Asians are facing with the entertainment industry. Significant Asian roles have been cast with white actors, and entire plots of movies have exploited stories and aspects of Asian culture.

Titus truly believes that he was a Geisha in a past life and he has good intentions, but making a mockery of the people who criticize Titus also makes a mockery of those who have legitimate concerns with the way Asians are portrayed in media.

I'm not saying that Tina Fey should apologize for "Kimmy Goes to a Play" or should explain the reasoning for poking fun at Black Lives Matter in the process. Fey said after the first round of backlash over "Kimmy Schmidt" :

"My new goal is not to explain jokes. I feel like we put so much effort into writing and crafting everything, they need to speak for themselves. There’s a real culture of demanding apologies, and I’m opting out of that."

I get that. But what's more productive and significant than an apology is listening and understanding. That's what viewers and critics of "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" are clamoring for. Decision makers in media need to see where critics are coming from — not to just make them the butt of another joke.

Native Americans and Asian Americans are both marginalized communities that are not very visible in mass media. So when a show as good as "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" blunders, the community online will call it out. But beyond the deafening amount of sound that has come from "Kimmy Goes to a Play," there is a love for what "Kimmy Schmidt" tries to do when challenging race. Along with that love, there is frustration that the show's execution could be so flawed.

The call from commentators is not for Tina Fey to apologize or cater the show to political correctness. It is to have the show's creators see that we care enough about Kimmy and her band of friends that we want to see it improved with more poignant storylines than "a bunch of people on the internet are mad." We care enough to do more than just write off Dong's character as another classic depiction of an incompetent immigrant. We write because we know Jane Krakowski and Ki Hong Lee have the chops to add more depth to their characters than the what was initially written for them.

So when the next season of "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" comes out on Netflix, I'll be there watching. I'll be full of anticipation and also anxiety, because I want Kimmy's world to be inclusive without making an inclusive representation a punchline.