[yasr_overall_rating]
“Broad City” follows two women throughout their daily lives in New York City, making the smallest and mundane events hysterical and disturbing to watch all at the same time.
I have to confess, before I watched “Broad City: Season 4,” I had never watched an episode of the show. Not one. Not even half of one. I’ve promoted the show here on Irish Film Critic many times whenever a new season was about to start but I just never took the time to watch it. After viewing Season 4, I had to go back and watch the previous three seasons and quite honestly, even though it’s not the kind of show that you need to watch from beginning to end in order to make sense of it all, it is one that will keep you highly amused all the way through.
Ilana Wexler (Ilana Glazer) and Abbi Abrams (Abbi Jacobson) are two best friends who live together in New York City. To say there’s any sort of structure to the show would be an understatement, every episode is different from the one before and the next one to come and while there are some recurring characters, like Ilana’s boyfriend Lincoln (Hannibal Buress), and their gay friend Jaime (Arturo Castro), we are introduced to new characters with every new episode and every episode veers off in a wildly different direction. For most TV shows this would be confusing and unfunny as hell but try to think of it as a glimpse into these two women’s lives, the moments that you never see on regular TV. We see the girls in awkward situations such as Ilana being propositioned by a good-looking couple and having to wear a strap-on dildo to penetrate the guy, or Ilana trying to act cool as hell around Lincoln having not seeing him in a while and then literally shitting her pants in front of him, or Abbi trying to take her mother out for a nice evening on the town, only to wind up smoking weed with her and opening up to her about how many men she’s slept with.
Both Ms. Glazer and Ms. Jacobson are not only the stars of the show, they are also the creators. As we head into Season 5 this year, the show is becoming more relaxed, and by that I mean the two ladies are becoming more comfortable with their onscreen personas and the wild and crazy scenarios we find them in each week. They are the sort of sketches you would typically find two male friends stumbling upon but Ms. Glazer and Ms. Jacobson infuse enough of their own crazy yet likable personalities that it actually works. And sometimes the language from Ms. Glazer is strong enough to make a sailor blush. Having never seen the show before, I honestly didn’t know what to expect and there were some moments that caused me to laugh out loud and that doesn’t happen very often. I always seem to discover good TV shows on Netflix or Blu-ray after their run has ended but I’m delighted I found “Broad City” while it is still airing, and I hope there are many more seasons to come.
Available on DVD February 13th from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment
