Broad City: Slapstick ain’t just for the boys

by Thea Voutiritsas

The critically acclaimed comedy TV series Broad City will be debuting its fourth season in August 2017. The show follows two Jewish-American twenty-something women, Iliana and Abbi, as they experience the misadventures of “making it” in New York City.

Co-creator Iliana Glazer plays Ilana Wexler, a marijuana enthusiast who often seems to be oblivious to how her outrageous antics affect the people around her. She often drags her best friend Abbi along for the ride. Abbi Abrams is played by co-creator Abbi Jacobson. Abbi plays a struggling artist working in a fitness center as she struggles to be responsible and free-spirited at the same time.

Glazer and Jacobson started the series on YouTube in 2010, gaining momentum as well as the attention of Amy Poehler. Poehler became executive producer of the show once it came to TV. Since its premiere in 2014, Broad City has averaged 1.2 million views per episode, making it Comedy Central’s highest-rated first season among adults 18-34.

The female comedy duo was asked on the red carpet in June whether they were feminists, to which they replied, “well, obviously.”

By Internet Week New York [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Jacobson: I would totally say I’m a feminist. I don’t find it to be negative at all.”

Glazer: I feel like a feminist is gender equality. You know, we’re feminists… the people who work on the show are feminists.

From Charlie Chaplin, to Chris Farley, to Workaholics, male slapstick comedians have been the norm. But Broad City falls in step with some of the other female slapstick comedians, like Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, and Molly Shannon. Breaking the gendered expectation to be coy and graceful allows these women to enter a field of comedy that is usually male-dominated.