I can see where you're coming from. Yet interestingly, there's an article on Slate where an escapee who was raised in the Children of God cult (which is quite horrible, complete with child sex slavery) reviewed UKS. It's worth a Google. In it, she basically says how much she relates to Kimmy, actually -- as she and many 'escapees' have very relentlessly upbeat/excited reactions once released into the world, to the point of almost a mania and a desire to disassociate from her past. She concedes while much of it is exagerrated and a bit cartoony, that Kimmy's core journey rings true to her, and that she connected with Kimmy's assertion that "the worst thing that can happen to me has already happened to me".Not all escapees would react this way, I'm sure. But apparently it speaks to a certain percentage. I also don't doubt there's a little of seeing your ideal-self in Kimmy, as in "this is how I want to imagine I'd react/be this Unbreakable" in her appeal. That and Erin's charm.
I do think there's a pretty dark edge to Kimmy and the humor at times. The part where she wants to "take it to the next level" and thus immediately headlocks and begins to assault her partner before realizing that's not normal comes from a pretty f'ed up place if you think about it's implications.
Another part that stood out as too dark for network (and makes Kimmy more layered and beyond a 'sunshine brite' character) was when she becomes the spin guru's favorite acolyte, and when confronted by Jaqueline turns it on her and immediately begins to control and ritually humiliate Jaqueline (by forcing her to drink the sweat rung from her hair). Again, the implications of where she learned/observed that as an interaction goes pretty dark.
I do think they went to buffoonish with the Reverend, which takes away some of that. It was good he was 'charismatic' (as Hamm can do). I think they could have afforded to put a LITTLE more Don Draper menace into the charm, and play the trial a little more as dark comedy than they did.
