THE 2015 POPFILTER TV CHALLENGE: MARCH MADNESS
THE 2015 POPFILTER TV CHALLENGE:
MARCH MADNESS
Round 2
AMERICAN CRIME
VS
THE UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT
I can’t believe Round 2 of the bracket is already here, and I can’t believe these two shows are pitted against each other. It seems like just yesterday that The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was cast off from NBC and swooped up by Netflix, and that American Crime was just a commercial we were inundated with saying that it’s somehow connected to Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, and Scandal. They all probably have the same producers or something, but I’d like to think the network is just letting you know it’s also a drama and there’s no point in resisting.
The similarities between the first two episodes of Kimmy and AC are pretty surprising when you think about it, given one is about an optimistic ex-cult member trying to find her path in the Big Apple, and the other is essentially Crash: The TV Series. But both are trying to say something about the vast human experience while telling a much smaller story. Both second episodes dodge the normal pattern of a TV show, which is to say essentially giving us a different version of the pilot. Surprisingly enough, Kimmy comes closer to this trend than Crime, when Kimmy raps up the events from the first episode in a dialogue with herself (and it’s hilarious). Other than that both shows push their respective stories forward, assuming you’re smart enough to remember what happened in the previous episode. Both shows also deal with race and stereotypes fairly head on. Sure, Kimmy plays the stereotypes for laughs and by its second episode slowly pushes against them while so far American Crime is saying every stereotype your conservative grandma believes about other races is true. But most importantly, both shows (in one way or another) talk about whether any of us can be the perfect foot slut, and if it’s okay if we are. Again, Kimmy deals with this conundrum of living up to other people’s expectations versus your own abilities with a joke (where the aforementioned phrase ‘foot slut’ comes from), and American Crime deals with a (sort of) similar issue when a father decides he might not care his daughter is in a coma because it turns out she might have slept with two guys willingly. Sounds convoluted and ludicrous? It was.
Okay, these shows are nothing alike. I don’t know if you could tell I was reaching up there, but I was. While they’re both telling those focused human stories I mentioned, Kimmy’s is a personal tale of growth and adulthood after a traumatic experience focused on one character’s point of view. Everyone else populates the world for her to push off of and learn from, and though I’m sure they’ll also grow to be more than foils or joke-machines, it isn’t really necessary right now. American Crime is definitely an ensemble piece, with the various characters all revolving around the murder and sexual assault of a young husband and wife in Modesto, California (for those of you who don’t know, Modesto is like a shittier Fresno). If both shows want to discuss trauma, it seems this far in their respective runs that Kimmy is saying you can’t ignore it but you can overcome, and American Crime is saying everybody is the absolute worst so why bother about anything. By having the white characters be just as awful as the minority characters, maybe the showrunners think they’re saying something unique or potent about race relations in the country, but when there’s a scene where Felicity Huffman refuses to deal with a detective because she’s black and she’s also the closest thing we have to a protagonist, I’m not sure where this show is going. And it’s not like Huffman is just in the antihero role, unlikable but relatable/fantasy-enacting for the viewer. I think she’s supposed to be relatable, and she’s in full on racist robot mode in every scene she’s in. If the show floated on better dialogue, or wanted to say something other than we sure are all different or horrible, it could be interesting. But it doesn’t attempt to say anything we haven’t heard before. Go watch the horrible Oscar-winner Crash, and you’ll have wasted less time than trying to get through this whole season. And believe me, you’ll have fucking wasted your time.
American Crime isn’t a procedural, but that does not automatically make it a better drama. And it isn’t. Because it’s not trying to actually be a better drama, it’s just trying to appear to be. Visually, it’s one of the more intriguing shows on network TV but the shaky cuts and chopped edits quickly become old and gimmicky when they’re no longer servicing the characters’ mental states. The first couple of times the following scene’s dialogue are heard over someone walking down a hall, or looking into space, it helps quicken the pace that helps it from being over-bloated. But then when it keeps happening, you realize they’re doing it for that exact reason instead of de-bloating their show. Which is lazy choice, not an artistic one. The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt isn’t a perfect show, but it’s definitely not a lazy one. The rhythm and flow of jokes (not to mention quality), and the darker issues that are being dealt with underneath the happy sheen are cutting an awesome niche for Kimmy, and that’s just taking the first two episodes into account. It’s baffling to me that there are so many think pieces discussing how Kimmy deals with race when it’s not a show that’s pretending to be about that at all. It’s a story following one character’s journey, it doesn’t speak for every issue out there while it does acknowledge issues exist. Meanwhile, American Crime is think piece-less, and really could use the magnifying glass held up to it. I’m afraid too many people will be tricked into thinking prestige drama by the trapping and ignore the hollow bullshit underneath. Without a doubt, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt moves on.