“Kimmy is Bad At Math!” was a very Kimmy-centric episode, with Titus and Lillian only popping up briefly throughout. Instead, the focus was Kimmy’s budding relationship with Dong and Jacqueline’s divorce.
But first... the cold open finds Kimmy in all of her ‘90s glory, listening to Walkman while jogging in Central Park. She spots the fountain in the Friends opening - “Great Chandler’s Ghost!” - and that gets her thinking... “Central Park...Central Perk!” Now she gets it.
After the main title, Kimmy is sitting in the library, disappointed because no one else from her GED class showed up to study. Sonja (Suzan Perry) is there, but she thought Kimmy couldn’t see her because of her magic hat.
Kimmy eventually gives up and heads to Jacqueline’s. There, she learns that Julian has already moved out, but is still trying to win Jacqueline back by sending her gifts (including a bouquet of dogs). Jacqueline needs Kimmy to go with her to the divorce lawyer for support during the proceedings.
Since Titus can’t help Kimmy learn math, she has to go to Dong, because he’s good at it. (“That’s racist,” Titus says.) But before Kimmy can get Dong’s help, she has to see Jacqueline and her awful lawyer (Jason Kravitz). The lawyer reads the pre-nup, which doesn’t give Jacqueline a lot of breathing room. While Jacqueline never broke the rule that she couldn’t cheat on Julian, Julian did. But Jacqueline finds out that Julian had a clause built in that says he can “stick it wherever.”
Jacqueline gets nervous again, but Kimmy pushes her to break free, just like she tried to push the other Mole Women.
Later, Kimmy finds Dong, who is working as a delivery boy for a Chinese restaurant. Kimmy offers to help Dong make some deliveries and Dong will later meet up with Kimmy to tutor her.
Jacqueline (who is really needy in this episode) calls Kimmy back so she can stress eat for her. Jacqueline now says she doesn’t want a divorce because she doesn’t think she can live on the money Julian is going to give her.
Later, Kimmy calls Mimi (Amy Sedaris), who has gotten a divorce. Kimmy hopes that Mimi will convince Jacqueline that a post-divorce life is great, but things go awry. Mimi wanted to seduce Julian, because her life is actually terrible. She never went to Italy with her boyfriend. Instead, she went to Naples, Florida with a dog named “Boyfriend,” who didn’t even survive the trip.
During Mimi’s break-down, Jaqueline reveals that Julian was going to give her $12 million. Kimmy is stunned. How could someone not live on $12 million?
Kimmy is now sad when she meets Dong in Central Park. He insists on cheering her up, because how could anyone ever be sad in Central Park? There are so many great TV/movie landmarks! And even though the Friends title wasn’t actually filmed there, they still dance around the fountain to the theme song (sung in Vietnamese).
Kimmy’s next strategy to convince Jacqueline to go ahead with the divorce is taking her to her apartment. If Kimmy and Titus can live on nothing, Jacqueline can survive with $12 million. But Jacqueline turns this into a Kimmy problem. Since Kimmy is supposed to go on a date with Logan that night, Jacqueline is convinced that Kimmy needs a better life to help tie down Logan.
Dong shows up just as Jacqueline is leaving because he had $200 in pay docked by his boss. Kimmy is so awful at math that she couldn’t even give customers the correct change. Dong blames Kimmy and is really angry because he was hoping to use the money to hire an immigration lawyer. Kimmy blames Dong for not teaching her math.
But Dong did teach Kimmy enough math to help out Jacqueline. She figures out that it Jacqueline takes the lump sum, she can invest it and watch her money grow. However, Jacqueline admits that it wasn’t about the money. She’s scared because she has no family to go home to and no friends, other than the people she pays to tell her how good her anus responds to lasers.
At this point, Kimmy finally admits to Jacqueline that she is one of the Indiana Mole Women. “Women survive,” Kimmy tells Jacqueline. If Kimmy could survive 15 years in a bunker, Jacqueline can figure out how to put her life together after a divorce.
Kimmy later calls the Chinese restaurant and Dong delivers the food. Kimmy apologizes, but Dong isn’t really happy until they realize that she is helping him learn English! The two can help each other out!
Logan does show up that night to take Kimmy to the restaurant in Ghostbusters. Dong sees the two together and he’s disappointed.
Throughout the episode, titus popped up in full Frankenwolf werewolf costume and learned that being dressed as a werewolf is safer than being black. Unfortunately, the glue on the costume doesn’t stick all day and his transformation into Samuel L. Jackson shocks a yuppie couple. Lillian spent the whole episode paranoid that her neighborhood was going through gentrification, but Titus’ transformation back into a black man stopped that.
Also, we learned about the Olsen Quintuplets (or Octuplets?) during this episode.
Check out our previous ‘Kimmy Schmidt’ recap here!
image courtesy of Kristin Callahan/ACE/INFphoto.com