Tina Fey’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Already Looks Like A Pale Comparison to 30 Rock

When you’re as seasoned in the TV game as Tina Fey, it can be difficult to meet the challenge of always surpassing yourself every time. Fey’s latest project, a Netflix original series called Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, appears to be a hair on the trying too hard side in terms of its intention to be as smart/zany/playfully dark as possible.

Co-created with Robert Carlock, veteran writer of The Dana Carvey Show, Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock, Friends and, um, Joey, the daffy premise of Kimmy Schmidt (the lead character of which is played by the annoyingly plucky Ellie Kemper) is this: cult member Kimmy Schmidt has been living in a bunker for the past fifteen years under the misguided notion that the apocalypse has taken place. When she and her fellow acolytes are discovered by a news crew, Kimmy decides to start her life over again in New York where she meets Titus (Tituss Burgess, who played D’Fwan on 30 Rock), her soon to be roommate.

Like some sort of depraved cross between Kenneth Parcel and Tracy Jordan, Kimmy Schmidt has the potential to be one of the most annoying characters ever rendered to the small screen. The only ray of light is Jane Krakowski’s appearance in the show as wealthy Upper Manhattan housewife Jacqueline Vorhees. And while it looks like Fey is hedging her bets in terms of working with the same people and setting the story in New York again, it would be nice, for once, to see what she would be capable of without relying on the same madcap formula.