Abbi shows off her aggressive side, and Ilana pushes her boss too far on "Broad City."
The women of Broad City aren’t always wandering around New York and smoking weed. They have jobs, too.
Abbi (Abbi Jacobson) has finally moved up from cleaner to trainer at Soulstice, but it isn’t necessarily as glamorous as she thought it would be. She has to deal with things like an old man named “Squids” repeatedly fake drowning while she’s teaching a water aerobics class just to get her to kiss him. Her employees aren’t so great either, as they often get a little too comfortable while changing in the locker room. As usual, Abbi tries to make the best of her situation, which usually consists of off-the-wall weirdness.
Abbi’s new position also requires her to participate in the Soulstice Games, a yearly camp-like tournament against the other trainers. As seen in previous episodes, Abbi is extremely competitive. Ilana (Ilana Glazer) has been aware of her friend’s alter ego “All-Caps Abbi” since 2002 after what they call the “red rover incident,” in which Abbi bit a kid during a friendly game of red rover and tried to make a run for it at summer camp. Even during a friendly competition among co-workers, Abbi is not good at hiding her need to win. She makes extremely aggressive remarks to her opponents and causes a woman to bleed during a jousting duel. Not even Ilana whispering in her ear about the Yankee Candle store can calm her down. At least she tried, and that’s what a good friend is for.
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Ilana’s job isn’t exactly a walk in the park either. She is known around the office for coming to work (when she actually does show up) in inappropriate work attire, such as a hoodie made for a medium sized dog, and rarely making any sales. When an investor, Elizabeth Carlton (Vanessa Williams), comes in to help the company improve itself, Ilana’s boss is wary about her making a bad impression. It turns out that Ilana’s weird ramblings about obscure Internet clickbait impressed Carlton enough to put her in charge of the company’s Twitter account. However, knowing Ilana, the new promotion sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Ilana begins tweeting random things she sees, such as a woman riding a hoverboard in the park and a picture of Abbi’s neck before she got it waxed. However, she takes it a step too far when she tweets out a graphic bestiality video of a man having sex with a horse. As expected, she gets fired. She says her heartfelt goodbyes to her co-workers, such as white guy No. 7 and her beloved desk-mate Nicole (Nicole Drespel). She even leaves the office an inflatable AirDancer often seen at car dealerships. The entire scene is oddly emotional and shows how oblivious Ilana can be sometimes, although her intentions are always good.
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Her coworkers have the opposite feeling about Ilana getting fired, especially Nicole. She has a daydream that everyone in the office started to lip sync and dance to “Joyful, Joyful” from Sister Act 2. Even Whoopi Goldberg makes an appearance in the number dressed as a nun. It is undoubtedly the best scene from the episode and surprisingly didn’t even include one of the stars of the show.
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This week, Abbi and Ilana showed they have flaws just like everyone else. In stereotypical millennial fashion, however, they’d much rather think of them as “flukes” and forget about their mistakes. So what that Ilana’s company tweeted out that she has a mental illness? In her words, “who doesn’t?” And who cares that Abbi got a little too aggressive? Her co-workers thought she was doing steroids to try to look cool anyway, and it totally worked. Shrugging off your imperfections is nothing new, but the Broad City BFFs typically take things into more extreme and entertaining lengths.
Broad City airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. EST on Comedy Central.
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