We are in the middle of Broad City’s (Fri, 11pm, Comedy Central) fifth and final series. Maybe it’s because the end is in sight and you know there is a finite amount of episodes left to enjoy – a bit like when you start to touch the bottom of the popcorn bag and feel sad – but it’s back on form. As Ilana would say: yas, kween.
For those who have not kept up with its last leg, the new series begins with an episode that is almost entirely Instagram-storied and filmed on a phone. It follows Abbi’s 30th-birthday walk through Manhattan, from the “tippity top to the tippity bottom”, infused with Abbi’s birthday blues (crying in a bathroom, footage of which is put on Instagram anyway “because she’s so real”); Ilana falling down a “womanhole” and having to be rescued; getting a braid (“a touch of cultural appropriation sheds light on the matter”); swearing at the Trump Tower and almost kidnapping a child. You know: your average birthday celebration.
The episode ends when Abbi’s phone gets smashed, leaving them forced to experience a double rainbow IRL without taking a picture of it (“ugh”) and vowing to quit social media, because when you film something it stops being your story “and becomes Stories’ story”. It’s incredible, because Broad City is always at its funniest when it’s just Ilana and Abbi being weird.
Like most long-running series, Broad City has had some incredible episodes: stoned Abbi spending $1,500 in Whole Foods accompanied by a giant version of her childhood cuddly toy Bingo Bronson; series four’s Sliding Doors homage which described how they met; Ilana’s doppelganger lover Adele; and Abbi’s dishwasher accident after pegging Jeremy.
But it’s also had some misses: the too-real episode where Abbi has to sell cards to afford a heater; or when she realised her art exhibition was in the sandwich shop; or the whole Trey-Abbi relationship. When the series dipped, it was because it had split up the real love story of the show (Abbi and Ilana) to pair them off with boyfriends. Then there was Mushrooms: an animated episode about a drug trip, that was either the highlight of series four or a really annoying use of cartoons. Broad City was a show that once seemed original, but when it lost its way it slid into the same joke (they really like smoking weed, guys!) and became as repetitive as Soulstice gym’s bathroom cleaning rota.
And so, with series five, it looks like Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson are giving fans what they want: there’s a LOT of Abbi and Ilana’s friendship/obsession with each other; celeb cameos (actor Rachel Dratch pops up in episode two as a smoker who uses Ilana’s outdoor workspace and WeWork rip-off SheWork to write her screenplay We Lost Grandma at the Waterpark – “It’s actually a drama”); and callbacks to the show’s greatest hits. In just 30 minutes they reference Abbi’s terrible apartment plumbing, Abbi falling down the hole, the boat episode where they get trapped in the booze cupboard and, yes, that seminal pegging scene.
Goodbye, Broad City. But before you go: can we have a Bingo Bronson spin-off series?
