NBC censors pretty much let Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David get away with whatever they wanted on “Seinfeld.” One of the few exceptions was a proposed episode in which George got in trouble for observing, “You know, I have never seen a black person order a salad.”
Uh-uh, said NBC. An entire episode on masturbation? Fine by us. But there will no joking about the dietary habits of African-Americans on this show. The script was nixed.
Fast forward 15 years, and Tina Fey’s new comedy “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” was rejected by NBC, which commissioned it. That turned out to be excellent news, because the show wound up on Netflix. Netflix doesn’t have a Standards and Practices division.
The networks’ inability to think outside of their cramped and fearful mindspace, in which the overarching concern is to refrain from being interesting lest the advertisers get spooked, is why they’re becoming as irrelevant as the VCR.
In the very first, hilarious episode of “Kimmy,” a co-creation of Fey and writer Robert Carlock, four women are rescued from a wacko cult whose members lived underground, believing humanity had been wiped out in an apocalypse.
We watch the women get interviewed on “Today,” which runs the chyron, “BREAKING NEWS: WHITE WOMEN FOUND.” Under that, in much smaller letters, are the words, “Hispanic woman also found.”
The satiric jibe at the way network TV news obsesses over missing, murdered or kidnapped pretty white girls but largely ignores minority women in the same situation is spot-on. But it’s also safe, because it plays into the idea that minorities are victims — in this case, of the media.
But then Matt Lauer (playing himself) ventures into riskier territory by asking the rescued Latina why, after 15 years spent living with English speakers, she still doesn’t speak English.
Ouch: Hinting that some Latinos are slow to assimilate is even meaner than suggesting black people don’t eat salad.
And so “Kimmy Schmidt” was off, sending random jokes in every direction. Targets include: dodgy transporation companies (“This isn’t the Chinatown bus! You can’t just choke someone who’s sleeping!”), feminine vanity (an Upper East Side matron gets plastic surgery on her toes) and teachers unions (a tenured New York City educator refuses to do any actual teaching because he wants to be paid to sit in a rubber room for the rest of his career).
Kimmy’s black roommate claims it’s Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday whenever he’s asked for a favor; Kimmy’s boyfriend insists that “straight guys can be vegetarians!” and Jane Krakowski plays a Lakota Indian who is terrified that anyone might suspect she isn’t white. There’s a Vietnamese guy named Dong.
“Kimmy Schmidt” is a pot into which Carlock and Fey have thrown all of the elements of the rich, intoxicating bouillabaisse we call New York City. How do we know “Unbreakable” is a success? Aside from a 96% five-star rating on Rotten Tomatoes, humorless liberal scolds are all over it.
They’re outraged over the “offensive” and “marginalizing” jokes (Vulture), calling the show “an uncomfortable footnote to the debate about diversity in pop culture” (The Washington Post) and declaring “when it comes to race . . . leaves much to be desired” (The Daily Beast).
On the Jezebel-wannabe site Ravishly.com, a writer huffed, “I was not prepared for how incredibly tired, hack and downright offensive this show would be when it comes to race. I’ve never seen a show with such a diverse cast that was written so obviously and exclusively for privileged white people.”
As the adorably clueless Kimmy might put it: Hashbrown knickerstwisted! (Hashbrown is her word for hashtag.)
Though it seems like political correctness has been around forever, it’s actually just getting going. The absurdities are going to multiply exponentially.
That new trend of parents sharply attuned to gender inequality who give their kids a hyphenated, double-barreled last name? Two more generations of that, and hapless Park Slope children will be lugging around eight surnames.
What about pre-operative transsexuals who want to have a choice of which public restroom to use? Clearly we’ll soon need third and fourth categories beyond those stifling, cisgender Men’s and Women’s-room designations. We’ll need loads of sensitive new terminology, too, for all those five-biological-parent families and their genetically miraculous offspring.
And all of this will be rich fodder for comics. But they won’t be able to joke about it on NBC, which seems to think it best to dial back the comedy clock to 1930 and do sheer brainless slapstick. Hey, have you seen Mark Wahlberg slapping Jimmy Fallon with a giant rubber hand? Ha, ha.
Great comedy writers take in the reality around them and put a twist on it: Race, class, sex and culture are, as always, great places to start. Lowbrow comics tell you nothing that’s true or interesting.
NBC is a donkey pulling a cart. Netflix is a Tesla.