Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. The Reverend

TV Interactive Special, 2020, TV-14

Premise - Kimmy Schmidt is back, and she's getting married, to a prince no less! Three days before her wedding, however, she discovers a book in her bunker-backpack checked out from a library years after she had been kidnapped in the bunker. As it didn't belong to any of the other rescued mole women, where could the book have come from, and does someone else need saving from the Reverend? Told in an interactive choose-your-own-adventure style!

Review - I watched the entirety of the original show, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, purely because I knew that this interactive special was being made with Daniel Radcliffe as a guest star. Literally four seasons had been leading up until this moment. (And I wrote that review separately).

I have mixed feelings about an interactive medium. I think it really lends itself to only very specific genres - those where you are hyper-aware of the fact that you're watching a piece of entertainment, where it's okay to be meta and to lose any and all possibility of the concept of "canon." It works, fortunately, for Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt because it's such a ridiculous, sketch-like comedy. I don't care about any concept of canon because the show is just for entertainment purposes. If a drama were to try to do this, however, I'd be furious because you lose all sense of reality. It makes the content weightless, too, because if a character dies you just do a do-over.

Essentially, in the choose-your-own adventure format, there are a vast number of combinations of possible realities. Meaning, if you only watch the special once through with one combination of choices, you're missing a large fraction of the content. I had to watch this for several hours to make sure I completed every possible combination and didn't miss any content, because hey, I couldn't miss any DanRad content thrown in there! It's a bit inconvenient, and also makes it impossible to watch anywhere else besides Netflix (or perhaps a DvD if they ever release one).

Inconvenience aside, I sure laughed out loud a lot while watching this. There is something inherently funny about making characters make stupid choices - having the power to click "make out" and watch them do so. And every single option is equally funny in its own way, even if only certain choices move the story forward. I actually found the comedy of it even stronger than the original series because it was so outright ridiculous. The story was good, the nostalgia of seeing old characters was great, and Daniel Radcliffe was a prince. (92/100)

Quote - "These might as well be a clown in a sewer, because these are IT."

What to watch for - I truly think there is immense value in choosing every (and I mean EVERY) possible option and combination of choices. You don't want to miss any of the details. There's a random choice thrown in there for Daniel Radcliffe marrying Lillian, for example.

If you liked this special, I'd recommend Black Mirror's "Bandersnatch"!

Sequel to the television series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Directed by Claire Scanlon

Television characters created by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock

Distributed by Netflix