Kimmy, Jessica and Walt or Titus, Luke and Jesse?
New television drama and comedy series are being produced at the faster rate than ever before. More characters are being produced and more plot lines created, making a wider variety of characters able to represent societal groups and be relatable to as many people within their development as possible. But the real question is, how much have these characters and plots been developing over the years and are these shows really broadcasting characters in a new light, or rather representing the same roles and similar characters in different situations. Taking a look at The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Jessica Jones and Breaking Bad three different popular television series with one comedy and two dramas, we will make comparisons to classic depictions and stereotypical character representations as well as the evolving of characters in comparison to each and how it falls in line with the past TV representations of similar roles/
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a television comedy that began airing on Netflix exclusively and began airing in March of 2015. The show has become increasingly more popular and is now in its second season this year. The story is about a woman named Kimmy who was trapped inside a bunker for 15 years after being associated with a cult religion while she was younger. As her life begins outside of the bunker, she goes through certain forms of culture shock, making for a very comical representation of her character as she adjusts to being a functioning American adult finding her place within society. She is accompanied mostly throughout the series by her best friend Titus, another friend Jacqueline and her landlord Lillian who are all characters that develop using each other throughout the show.
The second show is Jessica Jones which was also a program originally released as a series on Netflix in Novermber of 2015. Based on a Marvel comic, Jones is an ex-superhero that has turned private investigator. She has super human strength and the ability to fly to an extent. She is accompanied in her plot with another super hero she has a sentimental relationship with named Luke Cage, and her arch enemy Kilgrave who has the power of mind control. She is the owner of her own private investigation company and becomes involved in much more than a case when she becomes involved with an investigation of a girl who is under the mind control of Kilgrave. After becoming involved with Cage and the strength of Kilgrave’s power, things get dangerous for Jones, who was already a previous victim of Kilgrave’s mind control.
The final show and characters to be compared is Breaking Bad which is a series that began airing its first season in January of 2008 on AMC. It was widely successful and led to 5 seasons and climactic series. It also led to its own spin off series that came out last year called Better Call Saul, which was also successful and is hopefully anticipating a second season. The story is about a high school chemistry teacher who learns he has lung cancer that will become extremely costly to treat for his wife, Skylar, and son, Walter Jr. as well as a newborn baby. Walter decides to use his chemistry skillset to produce methamphetamine with an old student from the high school who involved in meth dealing named Jesse Pinkman. The two become widely successful, selling the purest meth possible and making millions of dollars, but with all that money comes many more problems and the two experience dangerous and violent hardships on their way to the top of their drug empire.
Throughout all these shows, there are a variety of characters that all play many different roles and project many different personalities important to their character’s place within the plot line of the story. The three main characters; Kimmy, Jessica and Walt, dominate their specific plots and develop the most as characters being the focus of the show, but many of the supporting roles are important to how this character changes throughout.
The first character similarity comes from within the main characters of the two action-dramas, Breaking Bad and Jessica Jones. Both of the main characters are what would be considered antiheros. So when Walter decides to cook and sell meth to help support his family’s financial issues due to his cancer, he is acting on traditional family values as being the man of the house and providing what is necessary for their survival, although he is still breaking the law. Jessica is similar as she consents to not being a hero, and left that behind with her superhero career. However, in Kilgrave’s attempts to attack Jones using other people, she must commit murder in order to save her own life, defeat Kilgrave, and prevent him from being able to harm and manipulate anymore innocent people like he had done to her. So again, Jones needed to break the law and go against traditional heroine values in order to be the hero when it was all said and done. Kimmy is displayed as the all-loving hero, who is willing to help anyone with anything, no matter how rude or mean they are to her initially. She responds to everything with childish enthusiasm but is often the only one who can help to save the day for others and inspire them to be more optimistic in their thinking as well.
The ‘right hand man’ has become something that is fairly common in many dramas and comedies, so these characters can be the most comparable across all of the different shows. One thing that they have in common is that they all represent someone that the main character can turn to for help in their times of desperation. For Kimmy this is Titus, her gay African American best friend who is the token minority representation that plays a major role throughout the show. Titus is a two for one minority being black and gay; he is able to portray a very different character than traditional African American characters in television. Traditional TV representations of African American representations reflect “that African American youths in particular may see a limited range of occupations held by television characters of their own race and may affect their occupational aspirations,” (Hoffner,7) which is why common stereotypes become associated with this race throughout society and media. Titus goes against this portrayal of his TV stereotype as a black man and challenges it by being a gay, aspiring actor who experiences many more hardships for his sexual orientation rather than his race. However, is this racial stereotype truly represented any different in the context of the entire story? Not entirely, because Titus is still a secondary character throughout the show giving him the trope representation of the ‘black best friend’ because they are commonly not found in lead roles. He is also portrayed more similarly to the stereotypical older black woman (sassy attitude and always around the house), holding him still in identification with the African-American stereotype with the illusion throughout the show that the role was a redefinition of this.
Similarly to Luke Cage in the Jessica Jones series, although he is involved in a more romantic relationship, Luke is like Titus, depicted as the large, bald, African American secondary character who also represents his stereotype throughout the series as a the secondary character to Jessica. He is shown throughout as a promiscuous type have relations, or thought to be having relations with multiple women and even other superheroes in his Marvel back story. Titus is portrayed similarly as a large black man who is very promiscuous and not very good with relationships but in the gay community, again not stretching far from his stereotype other than the fact he is homosexual.
Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad is not a stereotypical minority portrayal, but he might as well be. Many of the representations he can be associated with are low class. But these representations are more associated with him being portrayed as a low class druggy, which can be associated with minority lower class neighborhoods. He is shown held captive as a slave at one point during the series and is constantly manipulated by those associated with a higher class that are around him. Most minority roles are often manipulated by their environment and others in it due to their social class or ethnicity associated with their characters. Jesse fits the bill when you look at the portrayal of his character within the Breaking Bad plot.
“Quandaries of marginality and the absence of power,” in minority roles in TV and movies had led to “some minority people opting to operate outside of the mainstream and form their own media,” (Cort, 15). This quote explains why there are such a variety of these minority roles being portrayed on different mediums. The two shows that were originally released outside of the mainstream TV networks on Netflix showed two minority men in different roles than we have been accustomed to mainstream television. Although the roles didn’t stretch far from the stereotypical minority actions, there has been much more freedom and room for expression in the roles. While Breaking Bad, being released on a cable television network, they decided not to include an actual minority character, but yet a lower class character who is constantly discriminated against and beat on by others, but still fights for his place and respect within his community much like a minority would.
Minority roles in classical portrayals of television have led to stereotypes people have embodied and over time realized these created stereotypes can be harmful, even if they are depicted in an unrealistic world like television. However, so much of our media represents our everyday lives that it is hard to draw the line between reality and virtual TV portrayals of reality. The character development and depiction throughout all three of these shows highlight differences from the normal stereotypes and the shift beginning to occur within TV media for changing how we represent people within our world. As times change, people’s values and beliefs begin to change. Showrunners are experiencing more freedom to portray a variety of characters that can break the mold of traditional TV stereotypes for these characters. While they haven’t strayed too far from the mold yet, they are beginning to take steps in the right direction in order to not pigeon hole certain groups of people in their representation because it is not always the most accurate representation of the world around us and makes it un-relatable to the audience. The next major step for these showrunners will be to a greater variety within their main characters and start to break the mold there to truly make an impact as appose to just providing different context for complimentary characters.
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