Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Season 2, Episode 1 – “Kimmy Goes Roller Skating!”

Here’s what you need to remember from Season One of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt:
Dancing is about butts now.

So now that everyone is caught up, we can move on to Season Two.

All right, if you need a slightly more detailed recap, here are some of the highlights:

  • Kimmy Schmidt escaped Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne’s underground bunker.
  • She decided to stay in New York City to make a life for herself, where she met her landlord Lillian, her new roommate Titus Andromedon, and her boss Jacqueline Voorhees.
  • Hilarity ensued.
  • By the end of Season One, Kimmy fell for her classmate Dong (who ended up marrying the incredibly quirky Sonja to get his green card), it was revealed that Titus left a wife back in Mississippi, and Jacqueline—aka Jackie Lynn—abandoned her life in New York (along with her cheating husband and blue contact lenses) to get back in touch with her family’s Native American roots.
  • Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne (hilariously played by John Hamm) was finally found guilty of his heinous crime, thanks to Kimmy (and not thanks to the incompetent prosecuting lawyers, played by Tina Fey and Jerry Minor).

Season Two jumps right in with some surprises.

  • It’s Christmas time, and Kimmy is celebrating with Lillian and Titus.
  • Titus kisses someone dressed as Santa Claus, implying a possible boyfriend.
  • Jacqueline is back in New York, yelling, “The Jews took my painting!”
  • Jacqueline’s friend Mimi (played by Amy Sedaris) is passed out on the couch.
  • Sonja jumps through the living room window calling, “Ho, ho, ho – you ho! I’m gonna kill you!” to Kimmy, and falls to the ground.

Now if you’re wondering what you missed from Season One, as I was, fear not. We immediately jump three months into the past, where unfortunately most of our questions will remain unanswered until later episodes. So let’s dive in!

Dong
Kimmy still loves Dong (that’s my one and only intentional dong joke, I promise). Despite trying to move on and date other people, Kimmy keeps picturing Dong leaving Sonja for her. Lillian encourages Kimmy to try and meet new guys, so Lillian takes her roller skating. Before they get there though, Kimmy runs into Dong at the drugstore and Lillian suggests they all go skating together. Once Kimmy realizes it’s too hard to be around Dong if he’s married, Lillian suggests she leave behind her “Midwest morals” and embrace the moral relativism of New York: Kimmy should date Dong, despite his sham marriage. Dong made it clear to her that he just wants to convince the immigration rep that his and Sonja’s marriage is legitimate, and he’s having a brunch to prove it. Kimmy is torn about what to do, but she finally has a realization when she sees Titus eating a ham and clam pizza.

Kimmy: “That’s wrong. Those toppings are wrong. But it doesn’t matter does it? Because this is New York, where everyone’s moral relatives. Just order a deep dish ham-clam, and some sicko will make it for you.”

(Titus’s hysterical response: “I’ll have you know I didn’t order these; I found them.”)

“Am I the only person in the city who doesn’t just do whatevs, whenevs?”

And then, Kimmy drops the most amazing euphemism in her anger I’ve ever heard:

“Well fudge that sugar. Fudge it to heck! Where a demon with a thousand weewees fudges it forever. I’m crashing Dong’s brunch!”

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Just spectacular.

So in her anger at the moral relativism around her (or, moral relatives, as she calls it), Kimmy barges in to Dong and Sonja’s marriage brunch where she confesses to Dong that while she knows they both want to do the right thing, she also can’t wait anymore for her life to start. They kiss, but sadly Dong tells Kimmy that all he wants is not to be deported, and spending time with her at the skating rink was a mistake.

Kimmy leaves heartbroken, and we’re left wondering what the fate of Dong and Kimmy will be.

Jacqueline, aka Jackie Lynn

Jacqueline has left everything she knows in New York City to rejoin her parents in South Dakota. She’s clearly a fish out of water, but she truly believes that she can begin life over and embrace her Native American roots. Unfortunately, everything she does is a thorn in her parents’ side: from replacing a generations old, sacred pipe with a tobacco vape (“Katherine Heigl uses one. Smoking kills you guys.”) to trying to milk a male buffalo because she can’t see without her blue contacts, Jacqueline (aka Jackie Lynn) is riding the struggle bus. In an attempt to keep her out of the way, her parents suggest she go far, far in the fields to perform the “Harvest Super Special Important Dance.” This leads to one of my favorite moments of the episode: Jacqueline dancing the Electric Slide in a cornfield singing

You can feel it (it protects us!)
Boogie oogie oogie oogie
Pray to the corn god (he’s cornlectric!)
Boogie oogie oogie oogie

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Unfortunately, a young girl rides by on her bike and asks why she’s doing the “White Idiot wedding dance” and Jacqueline is mortified that her parents would trick her like that. When she confronts them, they admit to her that, like a dream catcher whose thread has broken, she needs to mend her web and repair her connectivity. And her connections are back in Manhattan. In her frustration, she gets into the back of the cop car she stole on her way to South Dakota and gets locked into the back seat (stupid prisoner locks). There, much like a sweat lodge, she has a vision.

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Suddenly, she screams, “I know what I have to do,” and kicks at the window to escape.

And that’s where we’re left with Jacqueline’s story. We’ll have to keep watching to see how she makes it back to New York.

Runagay
We start the episode with Titus and Kimmy heading to a lawyer’s office to finalize Titus’s divorce. There, we find out a little about Titus’s (aka Ronald Wilkerson) past marriage to Vonda. In 1998, after he said “mmkay” to marrying her, but before their first choreographed dance as man and wife, Ronald vanished. He was never seen again by Vonda, and now she’s tracked him down in New York to make Titus pay her for the past 17 years of spousal support and to get back her wedding jacket he stole.

In his fear, Titus attempts to flee, but Kimmy is convinced she can talk to Vonda woman to woman and make her understand. When she hears Vonda’s side of the story, she feels for her. Vonda knew that Titus loved men, just like she loved “skinny white boys;” she just thought they could live their lie together until he abandoned her. All she really wants is an apology, and she warns Kimmy that Titus could do the exact same thing to her. Once he no longer has anything he can get from Kimmy, he’ll leave her with an unpaid dental bill and a refrigerator full of spoiled wedding shrimp.

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It turns out, though, that Vonda reported Ronald Wilkerson as dead in 2008 and collected on his insurance, so she has no right to sue Titus anymore. He’s elated that he has become a hero to young “runagays” everywhere, but Kimmy is still worried that he’ll run out on her like he did to Vonda.

Kimmy is upset that Titus won’t even apologize to Vonda for hurting her so badly, and she thinks that if she can pull Ronald Wilkerson out of Titus, he’ll be nicer. After going through a couple of other past lives (a great moment in itself), Ronald finally emerges and tells Kimmy he didn’t want to hurt Vonda, but he was scared to face her because she might not accept his apology.

The next time Kimmy sees Titus, he’s packing up Vonda’s wedding jacket, and Kimmy follows him yelling that his guilt will follow him wherever he’ll go. They end up at the Amtrak station, where instead of fleeing Titus finds Vonda and apologizes, because the friendship they had was “deep and real and he should have never abandoned her.”

This leads to the best moment in the show: Vonda and Titus make up, he returns her wedding jacket, and they perform their choreographed wedding dance in the middle of the station.

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It was truly a spectacular ending to a hilarious, weird, and wonderful new season.

Extra LOLs

In addition to the “Cornlectric Slide”, and Kimmy’s outburst about a demon with a thousand weewees, here were a few other moments that made me LOL:

  1. Kimmy and Vonda are having a heart-to-heart about Titus running away on their wedding day:

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Vonda: Ronald Wilkerson would have never done that to me. That was your friend, Titus. I don’t even recognize that man.

Kimmy: For what it’s worth, he did get cheek implants that slipped.

  1. Dong’s English has improved immensely, thanks to watching episodes of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and his multiple impressions of the famous family throughout the episode killed me.

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“Things got weird. Like when Kourtney squirted her breastmilk on Kim’s psoriasis.”

  1. Kimmy asks Lillian advice on Titus:

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Kimmy: Lillian, do you think Titus would ever do to us what he did to Vonda?

Lillian: Chew up crackers and pretend to throw up on us after prom to get out of sex? I could see it happening, yes.

  1. Honorable mention: There’s a running joke the entire episode that Lillian’s first love was Robert Durst, and Fred Armisen makes a cameo, shuffling around and muttering to himself a lot.

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The entire season is now streaming on Netflix, so go check it out!

 

Rachel is a 30 something pediatric nurse currently living in South Carolina with her future wife. Check out what she’s reading over on Instagram at @lesbereaders.

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