Caution: This article contains spoilers-- if you're not caught up on Broad City, do not read.
Also, if you're not caught up, you need to go to Comedy Central’s website immediately and watch all of the Broad City you can.
I'll be jealous you still have fresh, realistic amazingness ready to stream from your computer screen. But not that jealous, because I could watch each and every episode of Broad City again and again, without ever getting bored.
Each time I re-watch Broad City, I pick up on new jokes I missed last time. That’s right. Broad City’s hilarity is layered. Does everyone love Broad City because it’s so realistic? Perhaps.
Broad City’s magic is definitely sewn to its ability to reflect our real lives, tinted in humor, right back at us. At least in New York City.
So here’s why Broad City is the realest NYC show you'll ever watch (albeit, slightly funnier).
FOMO
Something very realistic happened in the Broad City episode “FOMO.”
Abby and Ilana, while in the midst of their search for the best party in NYC, tell some lies to get out of a lame party. Specifically, Abby tells her boss she had a butt tapeworm, then jetted off to a more fun party.
At that point, she committed her fatal flaw: posting pictures of the better party on Instagram. When Abby's boss called her on it, Abby said the post was just a #ThrowBackThursday that she’d posted from the hospital. Social media makes lying to get out of things so much more difficult, right? Don’t we all know that struggle? This episode perfectly illustrated the perils of living in the Age of Technology!
Being broke-ass b*tches
In the first ever episode of Broad City, Abby and Ilana sink to low depths to procure funds for a Lil' Wayne Concert.
Ilana, always resourceful, posted an add on Craigslist that Abby and Ilana would clean a man’s apartment in their underwear for $200.
While my friends and I have never done quite that, I definitely relate to the moment at the end of the episode when Abby and Ilana are drinking a bottle of cheap liquor on the street lamenting their status as broke-ass bitches.
If there’s something more realistic to life in NYC than that, I don't know what it is.
“The matrix”
When Abby and Ilana run into some sexy shirtless men in Central Park on a day they left their cell phones at home, they're bewildered. They have no idea how to attract these men without Tinder. So, they both yell, “Wanna fooook!” Super slick.
Needless to say, they don't acquire any phone numbers (or dates) that day. I feel them. How do you get a date without Tinder in this city? Every time I meet someone in a bar they just want to hook up and every time I meet someone on Tinder, they want to go on dates.
Is it possible to get a date without Tinder? I’ll have to watch Broad City on Wednesday and find out.
They subvert cultural norms
Everyone’s talking about “Knockoffs,” the episode where Abby pegged Jeremy.
If you don’t know what pegging is yet, watch the episode. It’s too perfect to miss. Have you watched it yet? K, good. Pegging is when Abby straps on Jeremy’s “Shinjo” (Jeremy’s custom built dildo, engineered specifically for Jeremy’s body) on Jeremy’s butthole.
Ilana, the anti-racist, the living embodiment of feminism, is so completely stoked about Abby’s conquest. Ilana claims that in college she slept wearing a strap-on every night just in case someone came into her dorm room, woke her up, and asked her to peg him. I’m banking on this episode to change the landscape of sexual interaction. I’ve never had a guy ask me to peg him, but I'm sure I will soon. As we hurtle closer and closer to gender equality, one must ask: Why are women's buttholes fair game and men's are not?
Dates are boring
Did anyone see Abby’s date with Boring Ben?
My roommate and I watched this together and were snorting with laughter while Ben took three minutes to figure out how recently he’d been to the bar they were in. The best part about this episode is that Abby still has sex with him.
Sometimes, you just have to get it in, no matter how boring dates can get. Why were my roommate and I laughing so hard? Because it was all too true. My roommate even commented, “This is exactly why I don't date.” I’ve had to resist the urge to yell “WHO CARES!” several times during my escapades into the NYC dating scene.
In the same episode, Ilana finds a gorgeous, ripped guy at a bar and brings him home. Things are excellent for a while, this guy is great at oral sex. Then, Ilana goes to his Improv Comedy Show and realizes he’s completely lame. So lame, in fact, that Ilana can’t even accept the amazing oral sex we talked about earlier.
How many of us in NYC have had amazing sex ruined by someone’s terrible personality? The answer is too many times, far, far too many times.
,Crushes are debilitating
Before Abby pegged Jeremy, there was a running trope that Abby would see Jeremy in the hallway and everything would go topsy-turvy.
In a stunning display of cinematic realism, the world would fade out behind Jeremy’s silhouette, and the camera would zoom in on Abby’s attempt to slur something coherent. Have I been there? Certainly.
I used to have this giant crush on this girl Maia, who happens to be the person who told me to watch Broad City in the first place. I was so into Maia I could hardly talk when she was around, let alone think of something suave to say.
My perception was so distorted by her presence I had absolutely no perspective on the situation to figure out whether she actually liked me back or not. I’ve come to the conclusion that she didn’t, but whatever.
Anyway. The point is I liked Maia in exactly the way Abby liked Jeremy-- with absolutely no basis in reality.
Mothers and daughters
Ilana’s relationship with her mother is displayed in true-to-life perfection in the episode “Knock-Offs.” She and her mother are arrested for buying counterfeited purses, and they’re both in the back of the police car screaming at the cops who arrested them.
The difference (or lack there of) between our generation and our parents’ generation, is perfectly embodied this scene.
While Ilana screams, “Reverse Robin Hoods who take from the poor and give to their rich friends!” Her mother screams, “I guess I’m going to use my call to call Zabar’s, cause if you don’t pick your order up you get on their sh*t list!” While Ilana screams, “Little boy prostitutes!” Her mother screams, “You can bet your ass I’m gonna sue the NYPD!”
The point is that they’re both yelling. Their actions are the same-- their words are just different. The same is true for my mother and I, who are almost startling in our similarity. Nothing resonated more for me than Ilana’s mother saying “You are my world,” and Ilana responding, “You are my everything, I think about you all day, every day.”
That’s exactly how my mom and I feel about each other, too.
Ilana’s not-so-secret crush
Ilana’s world is shattered when she finds out, in the episode "Destination: Wedding" that Abby made out with a girl who wasn’t her.
It’s unclear whether Ilana’s crush on Abby is a full-fledged romantic infatuation or just a running joke attraction, but I’ve definitely been upset when one of my friends hooked up with a lesbian who wasn’t me.
It’s not that I had a crush on this friend, per say, I just always thought if she were to venture into same-sex experimentation it’d be with me. So when it wasn’t, I was as devastated as Ilana was.
F**k buddies
Ilana and Lincoln are not boyfriend and girlfriend. At least... not yet?
There have been certain off-the-radar inklings in Season Two that Ilana may be willing to make Lincoln into her boyfriend after all, but in the first ever episode, they are definitely nowhere near dating.
Abby and Ilana are Skyping while Lincoln is inside Ilana when the episode opens, and this scene concludes with Lincoln asking Ilana, “Hey Ilana what are we doing? Are we dating? Are we hooking up?” To which Ilana responds, “This is purely physical.” Lincoln says, “Why does this always happen to me?”
This moment is hilarious, and all too true. How many of us in NYC have lamented our status as purely physical fu*k buddies? Probably every single sexually-active New Yorker, if I had to guess.
If you enjoyed this article, check out 9 Hilarious Times “SNL” Perfectly Spoofed Real Life Situations in NYC!