Broad City

We’ve all been young.  We’ve all lived pennilessly in big cities.  We’ve all made bad decisions.  But if you’ve stopped doing any of those things (though I’ve only stopped doing one of them – I finished being young in 2010) you can live vicariously through two young, penniless-in-New York, bad decision-making characters in the form of Broad City.  Your experiences might not be as hilarious as theirs are, but it’s worth remembering your life isn’t actually a sitcom penned by two of the funniest people ever to be given a film crew and some development budget (by Amy Poehler.  Sort of).

The first of these people is Ilana Glazer.  If someone’s ever shouted ‘YAS queen’ at you, or written it beneath something impressive you’ve done and then shared on social media for attention and approval (maybe your baby looks cute, or you’ve been having overdue catch-up drinks with this one – shudder), it’s due to this lady.  Ilana plays Ilana (Wexler).  She is the wild one of the two New York broads around whose lives the show revolves.  While both have hopeless careers, Ilana wilfully refuses to adjust her behaviour no matter what the situation.  Her colleagues typically hate her and onlookers gawp in the street, but her priority is affirming her dear friend.  And also being a bit sexually inappropriate towards her.

Cue Abbi Abrams, played by, Abbi Jacobson.  Everything she says sounds cute.  Three years older than Ilana’s twenty-two years (the characters, not the actors), series four explains how the two met and instantly connected.  Occasionally there is a glimmer of hope that Abbi will get her life on track, but Ilana is always there with something that appeals to her impulses.

Doing justice to their relationship is not possible among all my usual snarky remarks.  It just works.  What drives them to each other are the grotesque characters outside of their friendship.  There’s Bevers, Abbi’s roommate’s boyfriend.  However, you never see this roommate and therefore Bevers is the definition of an outstayed welcome.  Particularly if that welcome is shedding bodily hair onto the bits of your bedsheets it hasn’t already sweated or spilled ice cream onto.  As with all gross people, he mistakes the rage he causes for affection, considering Abbi his (ample) bosom buddy.  He showers her with mistimed, miscalculated and misfired acts of friendship, which makes him all the more entertaining in his skin-crawlingly saccharine gestures (while he sweats and sheds hair and spills food that stains).

Abbi fares no better at work.  A would-be illustrator, she languishes at Soulstice (universally representing all gyms that have disappeared so far up their own philosophy that the air is thick with smugness) as a trainee trainer for many episodes.  I will never get tired of watching members throw towels at her face, mistaking her for a laundry hamper.  People in gyms really only do see other people as places to discard of towels.  I know I do.  Soulstice is the habitat of Trey, the embodiment of all personal trainer clichés.  Never seen with sleeves, he patronises Abbi and his clients, making skin crawl in a way that is somehow completely the opposite of Bevers, but just as comedic.

Balancing out Trey and Bevers, there’s also Lincoln.  He has a lot of chill.  He is Ilana’s frequent sexual partner and devoted rescuer, though she responds to his requests for a real relationship with an insistence that things remain casual.  This is often done with graphic language at his place of work: a dental clinic for children.

So, YAS queen, that’s the character highlights, but what actually happens?  Anything and everything, mostly.  There are wild nights that perfectly capture the sort of evening which is followed by waking up and wondering what happened.  Also, where are my shoes LOL?  There are hare-brained schemes to play the system.  There are awkward workplace moments.  It doesn’t really matter, as the girls keep the amusement going and celebrate New York for all of its beautiful unfairness.  Hillary Clinton even shows up.  I might still be penniless in a big city, I might still make bad decisions, but this show makes me want to be young again.