‘Broad City’
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The world feels a little bit funnier as the psychedelic bubble letters flood the screen.
That’s right. “Broad City” is back.
The season two premiere of the Comedy Central femme-tastic comedy starring Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson and produced by Amy Poehler featured all a fan could ask for: Seth Rogen, trip sequences, kittens and more reasons to hate homebody Matt Bevers, who is played by John Gemberling.
The show was pretty typical to the style seen in its previous beloved debut season.
The central problem was a quest to secure an air conditioning unit to help Abbi combat the sweltering New York City summer heat.
Though this sounds like a pretty mundane premise, the writing elevates it to a place of absurd hilarity.
A great example is Abbi’s love and loyalty to the local Bed, Bath and Beyond in the manifested profound friendships and intricately choreographed secret handshakes with the staff.
The resident assistant side of me is also elated to see Ilana and Abbi get drunk on their power — well, high on their power — when they impersonate authoritarian residence hall staff to confiscate Abbi’s old AC unit from her college room.
This gives further evidence that the show is willing to go to wonderful and unpredictable places.
Also true to form is the show’s integration of cringe-value moments for the viewer to derive masochistic comedic pleasure.
It isn’t until Abbi is at the birthday dinner of her boyfriend, Lincoln, played by Hannibal Buress, that she realizes it’s his birthday.
There is also Abbi’s call home to Bevers, who is lying nearly nude on Abbi’s bed carelessly eating an ice pop and getting gobs of ice cream on her sheets.
When he gets up, a sweat stain the size of his body is left behind. Be sure to turn your head to the side so you don’t vomit onto your computer or phone.
The cringe content continues beyond there, but it is a shift from the usual “Broad City” beat.
This episode left me and likely many others grappling with the way the show handled Abbi’s accidental rape of Rogen’s character, who passes out from heat exhaustion mere seconds before Abbi’s climax.
Many viewers felt perturbed as Ilana justified and even glorified Abbi for “raping rape culture.”
A fight-fire-with-fire strategy is far from popular in the war on sexual violence.
There is also the concern that the show — especially through Ilana — treats the matter with undue flippancy.
Abbi, on the other hand, is concerned and remorseful about her accidental actions. Irreverence is nothing new to this show, regardless of subject matter.
So if viewers aren’t comfortable with that, they may want to take their eyes and ears elsewhere.
For me, what can constructively be understood from Abbi’s experience is a non-didactic exploration of how easily and unexpectedly sexual misconduct can rear its head, even when virtually no malicious intent is present.
Though I think a more intentional conclusion of this topic in the episode would have lessened the distressed feedback from viewers, I will most certainly welcome a season in which the themes are a little more mature in a time when TV comedy is at the epicenter of many tough conversations.
But even this site of conflict and ambiguity speaks to the unbridled confidence with which this show presents itself. Abbi and Ilana perpetually shift between being the normal ones in the middle of a strange, urban world or the erupting volcanoes spewing hot gobs of absurdity.
The only truly tough part has been making peace with the fact that this will probably be the only episode featuring RA humor in the series.
Griffin Leeds
