Most Realistic Crappy New York Apartment Renters

Kimmy Schmidt (Ellie Kemper) may be unbreakable, but the same can’t be said for the shoddy basement apartment she shares with her lovably over-the-top roommate, Titus Andromedon (Tituss Burgess). In a refreshing corrective to TV’s “Friends problem” — where underemployed New Yorkers miraculously reside in huge, gorgeous homes — Kimmy’s pad has a shower in the kitchen, she sleeps in a glorified closet, and their gentrification-resistant upstairs landlord, Lillian (Carol Kane), insists the floor is just painted dirt. Titus and Kimmy’s rent situation may strain credulity — when Kimmy first meets Titus, he tells her he owes $950 for two months of back rent, which would be a great deal anywhere in the country, let alone Greenpoint. But in a series where “outlandish” is a through-line, let’s just be glad that a former abductee escaped her underground bunker to live in a refreshingly normal space, rather than some miraculously swank Chelsea loft. 

Netflix