Four and three and two and one

The broads are back at it

“Broad City,” Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer’s love letter to female friendship, returned for its third season this past February. Like many viewers across the country, I was rock hard with anticipation. 

The show’s premise is simple and not especially novel—two broke but scrappy best friends navigate their mid-twenties and the “surreal, but so real” landscape of New York City while contending with love, sex, and money problems. The formula invites comparisons to other shows about women in The City, most obviously Lena Dunham’s “Girls.” But what sets “Broad City” apart is its big, soft, cushy heart—Abbi and Ilana’s love for each other. 

Though they make pretty egregious mistakes and haphazardly stumble through life, Abbi and Ilana are just so damn likable as they are, it’s hard to root for them to mature. The audience, then, is placed in a precarious position—torn between wanting to see its beloved protagonists grow and wanting them to stay stagnant and unchanging because, hey, why mess with a good thing? 

So my anticipation came with a healthy dose of anxiety, unassuaged by the season’s impressive roster of guest stars like Whoopie Goldberg, Blake Griffin, the perennially adorable Tony Danza, and—holy shit—Hillary Clinton. 

Unsurprisingly, the latter cameo caused major waves, and more than a little backlash against the show. Recently, Facebook media headquarters hosted a Q&A with the show’s music director, but many of the questions came in the form of vitriol from fans who were angry and confused by Hillary Clinton’s cameo on the show. 

Her inclusion is indeed a little off-putting—this kind of stumping through a cameo often comes across as out of touch and, frankly, a little icky. But I didn’t find Ilana’s blind hero worship of Clinton to be out of step with the character, and by the time she started making cold calls as Ilana “Rodham” Wexler, I was fully on board with the premise.  And, really, having Clinton show up just to turn on one of those wacky, waving-armed inflatable tube men to boost office morale is a fairly brilliant, less-is-more employment of her talents. 

(Ultimately, more off-putting than the assumed calculation of Clinton’s appearance were the hordes of angry Bernie Sanders supporters who came out of the woodwork to demand answers about why their candidate hadn’t been given a guest spot on the show, as if Sanders was entitled to an appearance as well.)

The writing this season has struggled with character stagnation; several episodes saw our heroes returning to familiar narratives and rehashing old adventures to diminishing returns. But episode eight, “Burning Bridges,” brought with it the promise of a turning point for the girls. The normally rational, down-to-earth Abbi engages in some Mrs. Doubtfire-level hijinks to avoid telling Ilana about her burgeoning affair with her sweet but obnoxious co-worker Trey (Paul Downs), while the aggressively self-confident, irreverent ball-scratcher Ilana finds herself reduced to tears at the end of a family meal because her long-time lover Lincoln (Hannibal Buress) has dumped her. 

This isn’t necessarily an instance of the characters themselves changing, per se, but it does allow the viewer’s perception of them to deepen. Abbi can have a carefree fling, we see; Ilana can develop deep feelings for someone for whom she claimed to only have physical affection. 

The end of the episode finds the two of them sitting in a bathtub, smoking weed and riffing about what secrets they’ve kept from each other. Despite all their emotional upheaval, they’re still waiting for each other at the end of the day, as if to reassure us that, no matter what sort of changes the future holds for them, the show can always come back to its emotional core. 

For more from Claire, read her article on Ben Steinbauer's "The Superlative Light," which had its world premiere at Tulsa Overground.