Broad City

Last night was the season three premiere of the Comedy Central show Broad City.

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The show focuses on the lives of two best friends Abbi and Ilana, trying to make it work in NYC. Some might argue that the "two friends just trying to make it work in the city" is an overdone cliche for a show. (See Two Broke Girls, Girls, Garfunkel and Oates, etc.) However Broad City is far and above these other shows.  As mentioned earlier, the show Abbi and Ilana is their various madcap adventures throughout NYC. What makes the show to great is that it takes often mundane tasks and aspects of day to day life and heightens them to the extreme often resulting in very surreal situations.

For instance, take this episode where Abbi must retrieve a package she was supposed to get for her neighbor, however she misses the dropoff window and must go pick it up herself.

Many of the show's episodes follow this structure; Abbi and Ilana need to get something or somewhere and must resort to drastic measures to do so. As the link above shows, these tasks often spin wildly out of control. But even in these surreal adventures, there is a realness to the show. It's through these bizarre adventures that the mundaneness and annoyances of everyday life in NYC can be seen.

One personal aspect of the show that I love is how unabashedly queer it is. For instance, in another episode Ilana meets and hooks up with a girl. Instead of having her engaging in a same sex hookup be the punchline, the joke comes from the fact the the pair looks exactly alike. Instead of using its queerness in a masturbatory or self congratulatory manner, the queerness is just part of the show and it celebrates it without making a huge deal about it.

All in all Broad City is smart, witty, and well done show. Be sure to check it out.