Brow Beat

The Sharing Economy Is the Greatest Gift for Sitcom Writers Since the Laugh Track

Kimmy Schmidt, Uber driver.

Netflix

In Season 2 of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, protagonist Kimmy is looking for ways to make money, and she lands what seems like a plum job for both the character and the show: elf at a year-round Christmas store. It initially seemed so promising for our guileless heroine, such a ripe setting for Kimmy to, I don’t know, meet a child whose situation reminds her of her own traumatic past, or work with a Santa who teaches her it’s OK not to believe in God, or any number of wacky but ultimately soul-enriching scenarios. But in that semi-frustrating sitcommy way, nothing much ever comes of this plot, other than Kimmy walking around the city dressed like an elf. Instead, after a couple episodes Kimmy is asked to turn in her jingle bells, leading her to stumble into what is actually the perfect job for Kimmy Schmidt and for Kimmy Schmidt: Uber driver.

Though most millennials didn’t spend 15 years imprisoned in a bunker by a cult leader, Kimmy’s financial situation is typical for many members of her generation: Instead of the full-time office jobs that sitcom stars of a few years ago held, she’s a millennial drifting through the gig economy of low- and unpaid work, hoping for a leg up. Her babysitting job from last season is technically on hiatus, but she’s still working for her former boss, Jacqueline, even though Jacqueline can’t afford to pay her at the moment, and she’s also trying to prepare for her GED exam. No wonder she has trouble making her shifts at the Christmas store and gets fired.

Kimmy’s decision to become an Uber driver is pure happenstance: A man wanders into her car—she’d been chauffeuring Jacqueline as a favor—and mistakes her for his ride. She needs a job and she’s already in the driver’s seat, so yes, she decides, she is his Uber driver. For Kimmy, it’s a job she can do on her own time, with the minimal qualifications she has, which include a learner’s permit and access to Jacqueline’s car. For the show’s writers, though, it’s a job that opens up all kinds of possibilities.

It may sound like a gimmick, a onetime minor plot intended to capture a bit of the zeitgeist, like something one of those parody Twitter accounts that reinvent an old show like Seinfeld for today would come up with: “After her crush texts her that she should come over to ‘watch Netflix,’ Elaine is appalled when he actually just wants to watch Netflix.” But Kimmy’s Uber exploits make sense within the world of the show and actually drive the plot forward. With this job, Kimmy can meet varied people (like Tina Fey, playing a drunk lady, in a later episode) and go to new places, all while still staying authentic to a character who needs to be available for whatever madcap thing the show might throw at her next. If she stops driving for a few episodes to, say, crash the wedding of one of the women who lived in the bunker with her or check in on another bunkermate’s mental health, no sweat—she can resume Ubering whenever it suits the plot.

Uber is part of the “sharing economy”—all those online marketplaces like Airbnb, Taskrabbit, Handy, and others that make millions of dollars relying on independent contractors and temporary workers for services that, buzzword alert, “disrupt” traditional industries. Say what you will about whether these companies are good for society, but the sharing economy might be the best thing that has happened to sitcom writers since the celebrity guest star or the snowed-in/trapped-in-an-elevator/blackout bottle episode. The sharing economy opens up a new menu of story arcs and setups for comedy writers. Characters can parachute into situations and leave just as quickly, doing random activities that they will never speak of again once the episode ends. They can meet a wide array of people they never would meet otherwise, in organic-seeming ways. They can do the things sitcom characters have always done, all while depicting how the nature of work is evolving and getting real about the need to make money when jobs are scarce.

Recall how Kimmy and her roommate Titus also rent out their apartment in Season 2 on Airbnb to make some extra cash, which allows the show to zero in closer on the season’s gentrification plot thread when hipsters rent the apartment and Columbus Kimmy’s neighborhood. There’s the High Maintenance episode “Trixie,” in which a couple lives with a revolving series of Airbnb-ers—a uniquely modern living arrangement that perfectly jives with the series’ goal of offering a wide-ranging series of slice-of-life urban vignettes.

Broad City’s Airbnb equivalent.

Comedy Central

And there’s the recent episode of Broad City, when Abbi and Ilana, even lower on dough than usual because Ilana is out of work after losing a job at a different kind of economy-remixing startup, decided to put up their apartments on “B&B-NYC,” the fake Airbnb they no doubt created so as not to get sued by the actual Airbnb. With their roommates out of town, both girls decide to list their apartments on the service, figuring that they can camp out on Ilana’s roof for the night. In addition to being something these characters would realistically do, another zany notch on their bedposts, this plotline isn’t just a way for the show to namedrop a buzzy concept for some easy millennial street cred. The writers take the chance to show Ilana playing host, providing ample weed for her meek non-English-speaking tourist guests, because for Ilana, drugs and hospitality are synonymous. Meanwhile, Abbi crushes on her guest, texting with him all night only to return to her apartment to find that he robbed her. The writers deftly used “B&B-NYC” as a way to supply our heroes with more adventures and expose them to even more entertaining secondary characters.

Sitcom characters have always had one-off B-plots, but the sharing economy as a device makes it easier than ever to gin up these B-plots and then discard them. A bunch of hapless, reckless characters trying to cobble together a living through gigs that offer them no stability or benefits: It’s hard to imagine a setup that would better suit the heightened, hyperstylized worlds of many of our urban millennial sitcoms. It may not bode well for our economy, but sitcom writers, at least, are banking on it.