Broad City: Flowery With Female Positivity
by Editor Julie Tippey
For those of you on the hunt for a new comedy to help fill up your social schedule now that everyone on campus has taken to hibernating until Spring Break, you might consider for a moment the Comedy Central original series Broad City, a modern day, Seinfeld-esque, Bechdel test passing, weed-fueled, girl run comedy.
Broad City depicts the life of two best friends, Abbi Abrams and Illana Wexler, both in their mid-twenties who live in New York, and are just trying to navigate through their lives where nothing every seems to go quite right. But here’s the best part: They have each other.
Wait what? A comedy centered around TwO gIrLs who are FrIeNdS?? Who like SuPpOrT Each Other?
Yes, grammatically inept stranger, yes it is. And here’s why that’s totally fucking cool.
Because this has never been done before. Because true, girl friendship, based solely around the love for each other, that’s full of caring and tenderness and sisterhood is not something we see every day and especially not on the testosterone fueled Comedy Central channel. Abbi and Illana are BEST FRIENDS, numero unos, main squeezes, soul-mates; whatever label you throw their way, they’ll earn.
Abbi just took a dump, can’t flush the toilet and her hot neighbor just walked in? Here comes best friend Illana to the rescue, with no second thoughts, no excuses and not a single word of teasing, she is only there to care and protect her best friend. See your best friend talking to a guy at the bar? Attack him and ask when he was last tested while she’s not looking. Illana has an allergic reaction to shellfish in a restaurant where the pair are re-enacting a Beyonce and Jay-Z date? Abbi (after a quick and mistaken adrenaline shot) picks her up and carries her fire-person style to the ambulance.
Not only is this series flowery with girl-love, but it is relatively devoid of the usual, predictable and extremely overdone hetero relationship will-they-or-won’t-they bullshit that other comedies have. Instead, each of our characters are sexually liberated individuals, and while their sex and romantic lives are discussed, they few times provide the meat of the episode and instead are merely used to provide the backdrop for our protagonist pair’s adventures.
Of course, there is one major drawback, Broad City is only just beginning its’ second season, meaning that there are barely three hours of total watch time (trust me, I counted). But those of you with a time machine can look forward (and also the rest of us, but with, you know, more time passing) can look forward to the rest of the second season, which began this January and the third season coming to Comedy Central in 2016. For new watchers, the first full season is available on both Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime and new episodes play every Wednesday at 9:30 on Comedy Central.
