“Why do you like Broad City so much? ” I ask my friend, as I’m getting ready to write this piece. She immediately replies ,”It shows us a picture of what female friendship can look like stripped of pretension. Two normal girls rollerblading through life holding hands and smoking weed. ” Forget about Gossip girl and its portrayal of two best friends who never gets around Manhattan without a limo, wear designer clothes at all time and whose main purpose is to sabotage each other’s life while looking like supermodels. The comedy central series Broad city is a refreshing and hilarious representation of female friendship.
The show started as a webserie and had its first season aired on TV in January 2014. It revolves around protagonists Abbi and llana, play by Abbi Jacobson and llana Glazer, creators and head writers of the show. Abbi and llana are two twenty-something ladies scraping by in New York city and working dead end jobs. They are reckless, goodhearted for the most part and sometimes very clever. They cruise around town and get into hilarious shenanigans. The whole thing is flavored by awesomely disturbing and yet relatable dialogues. llana Glazer describes her character for NPR,”A free spirit, very loyal – she’s a stoner.
She’s a hedonist. She likes to feel good. She likes pleasure. I feel like at this point in her life, the most important thing is her friendship with Abbi . ” In a world sickened by entrenched Patriarchy, llana and Abbi do not revolve their life around men. Their friendship and the love they have for each other is what matters the most. In the first episode all the show Ilana tells Abbi, “Dude, I would follow you into hell, brother! ” Abbi replies immediately “I would take you on my shoulders, like l’d strap you up and I’d be like, ‘let’s go through hell. The amazing Amy Poehler who is the executive producer of Broad City tells to the huffington post,”we really wanted to make sure that everybody knew that at the end of the day, this show was a love story between Abbi and llana. ” The two women are constantly reminding to each others how awesome they are. “She has chocolate-brown eyes and the ass of an angel,” says Ilana to describe Abbi when searching for her at a party. They are always supporting and empowering each other. Their love interests never take over their life. Abbi and llana are more obsessed with each other than they are with men.
They are truly casual and positive about sex. Abbi and llana enjoy their sex lives with with a complete freedom. One of the best example of sex positivity found in Broad city involves a pegging situation. In the episode Knockoffs (season 2 episode 4) the show explores sexual role reversals stepping outside of patriarchy controlled sexuality. While llana goes on a mission to find contrebande hand bags with her mother, Abbi is in a date with her neighbour Jeremy, who she had a crush on forever. The date goes well and Abbi and Jeremy take things to the bedroom. Abbi asks Jeremy if he wants to “switch”.
Jeremy gets super excited assuming that Abbi means switching roles and hands Abbi a strap-on Dildo. However, Abbi who really meant switching position is caught of guard and and isn’t fully certain that she wants to embrace the situation. She runs to the bathroom to call llana and seeks her advice. Ilana is beyond thrilled when Abbi explains her the facts and gets into the most amazingly bizarre and hilarious happy dance ever seen on TV, featuring an upside down celebration twerk. When Abbi say she doesn’t know what to do, llana calls her out on it: “Bitch, you know. You wouldn’t have called me if you didn’t. llana finds the words that will make Abbi realize that she actually wants to “peg” jeremy,”you wanna go to the grave dreaming of Jeremy’s hairy adorable little butthole? Or you wanna die knowing that you brought him pleasure by plowing it like a queen? ” In pop culture, pegging is usually degrading and emasculating for the man (Arliss, Entourage, Weeds….. ) In Broad city there is no humiliation, no hurting, no shaming, just two consenting adults enjoying themselves.
While pegging is often pictured in tv as diminishing for the man, Broad city rethink the act as empowering for the woman. I look up the history of the term “broad” and come across an entry from Jane Mills’ Womanwords: A Dictionary of Words About Women that defines a broad as “a woman who is liberal, tolerant, unconfined, and not limited or narrow in scope. “told llana Glazer to Bust magazine. Broad City is all of those things. It gives us an incredible picture of sex positivity and a great vision of female empowerment. The third season of broad city is coming up in february 2016 and it is full of promises. I you haven’t watch the show yet, don’t waste anymore time and get to it! Just like Abbi and llana remember to treat your BFFs like the queen they are.