SOULSTICE BROAD CITY CRACKED
What does that show have to offer in 2017? When I cracked open my laptop a few weeks ago to break into the advance episodes provided to critics, it was with no small amount of trepidation. It’s a show that contains the perfect zinger (“Sometimes you’re so anti-racist that you’re actually, like, really racist”) it is also a show that has become synonymous with the semi-appropriative catchphrase “yas, kween.”
(“We’re headed toward an age where everybody’s gonna be like, caramel and queer,” Glazer’s fictional counterpart, Ilana Wexler, memorably predicted in Season 1.) Broad City was a simultaneous parody and embodiment of the well-intentioned white-girl mind-set, a complicated dynamic The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum expertly pinned down in her review of Season 3. Thanks in part to its explicit and enthusiastic association with Hillary Clinton, Broad City suddenly feels like a remnant of a bygone era-a cultural moment carbon-dated to the late Obama years, when coastal 20-somethings were optimistic about the trickle-down effect of representation and radical rhetoric. And then there was the unexpected and devastating electoral loss of Broad City’s most prominent guest star. Jacobson has branched out from performing, releasing a book of illustrations and an art-education podcast in addition to acting in indies like this year’s Person to Person. Glazer has taken a stab at studio-comedy stardom, lending her hyperactive, rubber-faced talents to Rough Night. The show returns this Wednesday, and suffice it to say that a great deal has changed outside the sitcom’s hermetically sealed universe since it last aired new episodes. It was April 2016, and the Comedy Central sitcom, despite an uneven third season, was insistently, unmistakably itself: madcap, comfortable with period jokes, and, even by showbiz standards, extremely Jewish. After an only slightly hyperbolic version of the mad dash to JFK, they’d made their flight, only to find an environment just as chaotic, complete with blow-job-induced turbulence and a depressingly real “find a tampon” situation. The last time we saw Broad City’s Abbi and Ilana, they were on their way to the mass matchmaking session slash intercontinental party bus known as Birthright.
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