I’ve been thinking about Broad City…
Our 20s are a very intriguing part of our lives. A precarious territory in the midst of the edge of teenagehood and a glimpse of what it feels like to be a grown-up. Navigating a world beyond our grasp. It can be fun, thrilling, and some say when life truly happens. More so, if we have friends to navigate the murky waters of growing up.
Such is Broad City. A sitcom starring Abbi (Abbi Jacobson) and Ilana (Ilana Glazer) navigating their 20s in Astoria New York. I remember crouching in bed, just finished with the day’s work, trying to find something to watch. The first episode meanders into a narrative of trying to find enough money to go to a Lil Wayne concert. Situations such as returning items to an office store, scouring for loose change in some hidden nooks of the house, busking on streets for tips, and finally finding a temporary job in a Craigslist ad.
I’ve been thinking about Broad City…
These mundanities are unified by situational humor. What finally got me going was a specific instance in the train, a few episodes in, where Ilana was holding a closet tube, which oncoming passengers thought was a railing. When the train lurched forward (which from there told me that that scenario doesn’t only happen in PNR), Ilana and the two passengers fell. A schaudenfrede moment. Exactly funny because I think that could happen to me.
The City
Much of what animates Abbi and Ilana is New York. Like perhaps any other city, it has its own merciless characteristics, dirty sidewalks, neglected trains, traffic, smoke, and gentrification. New York in this show feels like it’s been lived in. None of the glamour is often depicted in popular films. Away from the glamour New York truly exists.
The city is filled with grime, rats, urine, trash, and pollution. But there are also warmth and solace like bodega stores, strangers turned friends. That the city can be home despite its ruthless environments.
Friendships
In a media-saturated with edgy, ambitious, rich-upper middle-class characters there’s a comfort in shows like Broad City that attempts to show the lived realities of your early 20s. The barely-scraping by, the dirty city, attempting to fit in, and just regular strolling around the city exploring. Every day, there’s a narrative that circles around mundane things like working at a coop, visiting a museum, finding temp jobs, getting stoned, hooking up, dealing with an unbearable roommate, etc. There are even disgusting moments that show the interiority of this show, meaningless at a glance, but contribute a lot to the dynamics of the character.
There are a couple of times when Ilana had a bedbug infestation, Jaime, one of their friends, pop a huge zit on her back, and another where during a pseudo-therapy session (Ilana has a degree in psychology) with Jaime, Ilana made a charcuterie board to treat Jaime’s hoarding problem. As Abbi continues to pick the cheese off the board, she noticed the cheese grater dipped in Barbicide which was the same cheese grater Ilana used to remove callouses off her heel.
There’s a certain delight in sitcoms that are very quotidian such as this. It mirrors and zooms in on the everyday moments which we often overlooked.
