Kimmy Schmidt

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Kimberly Cougar Schmidt is the

After fifteen years in the bunker, the women were found and released, and made famous in the media as the "Indiana Mole Women", but Kimmy moved to New York City and went by the name "Kimmy Smith" to avoid the attention. She eventually arrived at an apartment building, and shared an apartment with Titus Andromedon (Tituss Burgess) under landlady Lillian Kaushtupper (Carol Kane), and proceeds to get a job working for Jacqueline Voorhees (Jane Krakowski). Here she meets the Voorhees family's tutor Charles (Andy Ridings), with whom she has an awkward, very brief relationship. Jacqueline sets her up on a date with Grant (John McMartin), a wealthy, elderly man with dementia. That relationship, however, doesn't work out either.

She joins a GED class in hopes of finishing her education, but it doesn't work out very well; so, she begins tutoring with one of the other adults in the class, immigrant Dong Nguyen (Ki Hong Lee), who falls in love with her. She teaches him better English, and he teaches her to be better at math. However, at a dinner party at Jacqueline's, she meets Logan Beekman (Adam Campbell), whom she ends up dating. He and Dong get in a fight over Kimmy at her 30th birthday party; however, they break up when Kimmy discovers he called the police on Dong (because of his being an illegal immigrant). She and Dong begin dating. Kimmy goes out of town to testify against the Reverend, who seems to be winning until Kimmy goes back into the bunker and finds a piece of evidence against him. She gets a call from Dong, and discovers he was forced to marry an old woman named Sonja (Suzan Perry) from their GED class in order to stay in the country.

Kimmy gets a job at an all-year Christmas store, but she is fired after she misses work several times on the account of Jacqueline. Later, she attempts a relationship with an Army veteran (Sam Page), but ends after accidentally assaulting him. Eventually, Kimmy and Dong attempt to reconcile their relationship by staying at an abandoned hotel in the Poconos. The two intend to have sex, but they are hindered by Kimmy reflexively hitting him every time he attempts intimacy – a reaction to the trauma that she suffered at the hands of the Reverend^[1] – and because Dong is allergic to latex condoms. The police find them, and later call Homeland Security in order to report Dong. He and Kimmy finally have sex in the back of a squad car. Soon after, Dong is deported back to Vietnam.

Soon after, Kimmy becomes an

Additionally, as the only registered voter in East Dogmouth, Kimmy votes Lillian onto city council. She then goes on to stop Gretchen, who has started a cult, from blowing up herself and a bunch of abducted teenage boys. Gretchen is then sent to prison. Kimmy decides to discover what religion really is, and joins a church with Titus.[3] Kimmy is invited to a special dinner by her professor, where she meets Perry and apologizes for pushing him away. He accepts this apology, but when Kimmy's professor announces that her most interesting students are at the dinner and that Kimmy is a Mole Woman, Kimmy learns about how everybody googles everybody else these days, including Perry. Xanthippe comforts Kimmy and tells Kimmy about her own childhood embarrassing video available online, and then they search for a viral video of an adult – who turns out to be Kimmy's former therapist, Andrea. Kimmy tracks Andrea down by googling her and Andrea encourages Kimmy to accept that now she doesn't have to hide who she is.^[4] Later that day, Perry comes to Kimmy's class to rap about philosophy. It does not go very well, but Kimmy, noticing he is being filmed by numerous people, goes up with him, taking away some of his embarrassment. Their viral video is dubbed "Kimmy Schmidt and Friend Epic Rap FAIL."

Kimmy is also given an opportunity by Xanthippe to talk about her experience as a Mole Woman on her show, Profiles. Kimmy considers it, but realizes she does not want to and leaves the episode after introducing Titus. Kimmy gets kicked out of Columbia due to her poor grades and applies to become a crossing guard. Though she has an exceptionally good interview, she is rejected due to her marriage to the Reverend. She then gets employed by Zach (

Once she discovers a

Years later, Kimmy is engaged to Prince Frederick (Daniel Radcliffe), thirteenth in line to the throne of England. Once she discovers in her old backpack a Choose Your Own Adventure book she had never read, she confronts the Reverend in prison about it, learning he had taken it from a hostage in another bunker in West Virginia. Kimmy decides to go after this bunker, which ends up imperative once she learns the Reverend escaped prison and is headed there as well. She manages to catch up to him when he trips on a branch and severely injures his ankle. When he claims that he cannot remember where the underground bunker is located, Kimmy decides to fashion him a splint and help him return home only to discover the door to the hidden bunker. She manages to free the women inside. Later, she marries Frederick in a wedding officiated by Xanthippe.^[6]

Friends and family

Kimmy, after her abduction, became close to the other women: Cyndee Pokorney, Donna Maria Nuñez, and Gretchen Chalker. However, Kimmy had a special attachment to Cyndee, whom she helped cure of her "Hulkamania" (an affliction which caused her to act like professional wrestler Hulk Hogan). Their relationship nearly was destroyed when the trial occurred, when it was revealed that Kimmy had the opportunity to escape alongside the others when Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne allowed them to leave. However, after Kimmy proved that Wayne did in fact kidnap the women through video evidence, Cyndee and Kimmy's relationship was restored.

Upon arriving in New York, Kimmy met Titus Andromedon, a flamboyant, gay actor originally from Mississippi. The two became best friends after Kimmy moved into Titus' apartment in the pilot episode. Kimmy was also friends with their landlady Lillian Kaushtupper. Initially, Kimmy is on ambivalent terms with her boss Jacqueline Voorhees, but the two soon become allies when Kimmy expresses support for Jacqueline standing up for herself during her divorce from her husband. Jacqueline sometimes insults Kimmy for her look and clothing, though she is never outright mean to her. After Kimmy is released, she learns that she had a stepfather named Randy (Tim Blake Nelson), a state trooper who failed to find Kimmy during her missing years but ended up marrying her mother (who had left the family by the time the series began), and a younger half-sister Kymmi (Kiernan Shipka), a teenager who resents having grown up in the missing Kimmy’s shadow. The family eventually reconciles, however.

At the end of the second season, Kimmy finds her mother Lori-Ann, a rollercoaster junkie, at Universal Studios Florida. While Lori-Ann quickly embraces her daughter (having not seen her since 1998), Kimmy is suspicious of her mother and has some difficulty reconnecting with her. It is also revealed that Kimmy's fear of Velcro is because Lori-Ann never taught her to tie her shoes, which resulted in her being left alone at the time of her kidnapping. Eventually, after several rides on a rollercoaster, Lori-Ann reveals that she was overwhelmed by the sympathy she received after Kimmy's disappearance and wanted to get away from it all. They eventually reconcile, with Lori-Ann promising to visit Kimmy at Christmas.

Reception

Critical response

Kemper has received overall positive reviews for the part; critic Kate Erbland saying "The ever-peppy Ellie Kemper's ...optimism is perfectly suited to this material."^[