Columns

I'd love to visit New York City. I feel like I know exactly what it would be like. Part of the reason I'm so certain is that there are a bunch of shows I love which largely take place around Brooklyn and Manhattan, which definitely feel like they're happening in the same place. With any luck, that place, that New York, is the real one. The shows I'm thinking of — Louie; Girls; High Maintenance — take place in a city at once bustling and relaxing, grey and colourful, uncaring and highly communal. It's a city where the rent is exorbitant, so everyone's low-key poor, but it's full of places to get great, cheap food, so everyone eats out. It's a city where the unexpected is dependable, and where young adults can find their people, no matter how specific their interests.

Broad City is another show that takes places in that same New York. Like those other shows, Broad City is a very loose affair, following the shaggy, slightly surreal adventures of two young women bumbling around in New York. Abbi, an aspiring illustrator but day-time gym cleaner, is the more serious of the two, half-heartedly attempting to control her life, but largely indulging her laziness and desires to buy everything at Bed, Bath and Beyond, while Ilana does exactly what she wants, and is miraculously still employed even though she regularly sleeps in the bathroom stall for most of the day, and leaves whenever she feels like it.

If you've seen Peep Show, you can think of them as rough distaff counterparts to Mark and Jez. Unlike the bipolar relationship shared by the El Dude brothers on that show, though, Abbi and Ilana's relationship is remarkable for its strength. Although Ilana's reckless and unpredictable, rather than being a source of conflict, there's a definite sense that's exactly what Abbi values about her. Similarly, Ilana thinks Abbi's the shit, and would do anything for her, including definitely sleeping with her if she was into that. That strong female friendship is important, because as much as the yellow cabs and bodegas, sexual weirdness from gross men is part of the background noise of the New York these girls live in, from the diapered guy who hires them off Craigslist to clean his house for cash, to the greasy, pelvic-thrusting locksmith who shows up when Ilana loses her keys. These guys are so caught up in their sleazy little worlds that they end up implicating anyone they come in contact with, and the girls' response is generally to get to a safe distance, then point and laugh.

Looking past the central duo, the rest of the show is filled with hilarious, distinct, secondary characters, in particular Ilana's dentist/sometimes sexual partner Lincoln, played by the inimitable Hannibal Buress. Anyone familiar with Buress knows how particular his brand of comedy is, but it fits in easily here. Even the one-off characters leave an impression, from yoghurt-eating courier depot attendant Garol, to Amy Poehler's martially-challenged chef in the finale, to every one of the girls' previously-unmentioned and probably never-to-be-mentioned-again friends in the episode where they desperately try to get to a wedding.

All in all, Broad City is a very accepting show, aware of its protagonists' flaws, but celebratory of the small pleasures they find in each other and the city around them. It doesn't matter if you're terrible at your job, or if the super hot guy you slept with turns out to be terrible at comedy, or if after a day of trying you failed to buy your own weed, like a “real adult;” as long as you have good friends, and live near some of the world's best pizza places, you'll have a good time and things will be fine.