In its second season, "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" follows its titular character's journey through therapy and offers a surprisingly heartwarming conclusion: Kimmy reunites with her long-absent mother. It's still an absurdist comedy, so the cathartic bit happens as the two shout their feelings while repeatedly riding a roller coaster in Florida, but even so, the scene managed to leave viewers with a sweeter aftertaste.
If "Kimmy" star Jane Krakowski -- who plays the bougie former Mrs. Voorhees -- is correct, the next season could bring fans even more oddly touching moments.
"I actually wrote Robert Carlock after watching Episode 13, and I was like, 'Wow, now I feel like we can go to a whole 'nother place in Season 3," Krakowski, who was in New York as part of her new role as the Honorary Good Humor Woman, told The Huffington Post.
"I think the show shifted a little bit, tonally, in Season 2, and I feel like that was from the cliffhanger of Episode 13 of Season 1, and I feel like they did the same thing for Season 3 -- they brought us to another depth where all the characters can go."
Krakowski's Jacqueline Voorhees also evolved from her Season 1 desperate-housewife schtick, turning back to (try, and fail, but keep trying to) support her Lakota family and connect with her son. In that way, the actress sees her "Kimmy Schmidt" role as fundamentally different than the character she played on "30 Rock" -- the similarly image-obsessed Jenna Maroney.
Describing her as something of an "artisan" and "limited edition, fat-free sorbet," Krakowski said that Jacqueline "is far more grounded and vulnerable and actually trying to learn how to be a better person than Jenna would ever even consider."
Yet it's OK if you can't help but draw comparisons between the Netflix series about a former doomsday cult member struggling with life in New York and the NBC series about an overstressed late-night show writer struggling with life in New York. Both "Kimmy Schmidt" and "30 Rock," as Tina-Fey-and-Robert-Carlock-produced comedies, share the same joke-dense style of writing that asks fans to revisit it again and again, each time picking out subtle new references we'd missed the first time around.
We asked Krakowski whether she could immediately pick out every joke in the scripts or -- like us -- she had to give it a couple passes. Her answer made us feel better:
"When we're working on the scripts, I think I do miss a lot of the jokes the first time around. Or I think I know there's something there, and then you see it come more to fruition as we are filming it. But I love that that's their style," Krakowski said. "If there's, like, a TV on, the scroll on the bottom is all written with jokes and the fictional entities and storylines ... or the callbacks to previous episodes or even '30 Rock.'"
BRB, we have some TV to watch.
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