Comedy Central does a great job with sketch shows. In the days when a three-minute clip can go viral, it makes sense for the network to invest in shows that double as fodder for internet hits, boosting the viewership of Inside Amy Schumer, Key and Peele or Kroll Show. Then there’s the curious case of Broad City, one of Comedy Central’s biggest hits, which matured from a web series and has become something even more spectacular because of it.
The second season of Broad City kicks off on Wednesday at 10.30pm EST and it has become so much more than the show Amy Poehler dragged off YouTube and into the mainstream. By rights, Broad City could live on with Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer flailing around New York purveying their own brand of stoner humor. Instead, they’re aiming for something like a more authentic and absurd version of Girls that might not cut as deep intellectually but is definitely as well observed and often much funnier. They’re recent graduates with dead-end jobs, hopeless romantic lives, and nothing so great going on besides the unbreakable bond they have with each other. They’re like Laverne and Shirley, if they owned a bong and made penis jokes.
The first episode of the second season could be a sketch show. There’s a bit about the two women riding the subway, a section on Bed, Bath and Beyond (Abbi’s favorite store), and a part about trying to have sex on the hottest day of the year. The gags are as solid as they would need to be to be pulled off out of context, but Broad City is the stronger for choosing to weave them into a wider story about the desperation of modern living in the city and how absolutely absurd it is.
The key to Broad City is that the journeys of Abbi and Ilana, whether they are to find a free air conditioner, recover a lost cellphone, or just get tickets to a Lil Wayne concert, are all about bringing us closer to our heroines, their wants and desires and their shocking lack of self-awareness. What happens is that instead of a great skit playing alone, as it does on something like Inside Amy Schumer, each set piece has a compounding effect, feeding into what we already know and love about these women. You really want them to make it, even though you know they never will and that turns out to be pretty fine too.
The second season has a bit more polish than the first and the jokes and characters have the confidence that comes with experience and success. The aesthetic has always been so DIY (a gift from back in those YouTube days) that it’s actually a bit jarring to see Seth Rogen playing Male Stacy, Abbi’s love interest. Rogen is great (and between this and The Comeback, he’s making the prestige comedy cameo rounds this year), but just the presence of a real live movie star takes a little bit out of the down-to-earth proceedings. Just wait until Kelly Ripa shows up later this season playing herself. That’s going to be truly surreal (and probably quite funny).
Broad City is going to mature as Glazer and Jacobson get savvier at making television, but so far it shows no signs of turning into the maudlin mess that Girls has become. There may be some fancy guest stars, a slightly bigger budget, and actual location shoots outside of their apartments, but that just drags Abbi and Ilana closer to the truth about being young and desperate in New York.
