"Broad City": This ain't your Daddy's "Seinfeld"

 

I highly recommend Broad City (2014-19), about the adventures of two women in contemporary New York: the effervescent "let's get high and climb the Empire State Building" Ilana and the "I can't -- I have to decide on a color scheme for the bathroom tile" stick-in-the-mud Abbi.  

Link to NSFW version of this review.

Episodes are built around the trivial annoyances of evreyday life: 

Accidentally leaving your cell phone in a hookup's apartment, when you don't want to see him again.

Offering to wait to sign for a package for your neighbor, but it never arrives, and you're stuck.

Spending all day in the ice cream shop because you can't decide which flavor to get.

Telling your sex partner that you want to "switch" positions, but he thinks it means something else.

Washing your boyfriend's favorite dildo in the dishwasher, only to have it melted, then scouring the sex shops to find a replacement.

Wait...um...

This ain't your daddy's Seinfeld.

Instead of a street on the back lot in Studio City, Broad City features beautiful exteriors in Manhattan.  The gang visits everywhere from Grand Central Station to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Instead of sex off camera, the girls and their friends are doing the deed in front of you. Lors of bare chests and butts.

Seinfeld was informed by homophobic anxiety about LGBT people, or attempts to get them to "switch teams" (Kramer successfully converted a lesbian, but Elaine couldn't convert a gay man because she wasn't good enough in bed).  But in Broad City, LGBT characters are fully integrated into the stories without comment. Ilana herself is bisexual, with a crush on Abbi, but they don't let it get in the way of their friendship.  

Instead of guys taking their shirts off three times in ten years, Broad City is overloaded with hunks.

Ilana's gang includes:

1. Lincoln (Hannibal Buress), Ilana's regular sex partner.  In the first episode, she face-times Abbi while having sex with him.

2. Jaime (Arturo Castro), her roommate, who is gay and unapologetically slutty, until he gets a boyfriend.

More hunks after the break

3, Johnny (Guillermo Diaz), the boyfriend.  Sorry if this is the wrong one.  There are a lot of Guillermo Diazes in the world.

4. Eliot (Eliot Glazer), Ilana's hot bear brother.

5. Plus a string of sex partners, friends, and relatives, such as Tyler (Luke Guldan, above), who she thinks of as boyfriend material -- until she sees his horrible improv show.

Abbie's gang includes:

1. Trey (Paul W. Downs), her boss.

2. Matt (John Gemberling), her roommate.

3. Jeremy (Stephen Schneider), her across-the-hall neighbor and potential boyfriend.  He's a heterosexual anal bottom.

4. Plus a string of sex partners and platonic associates, of her own, such as Carl (Evan Joningkeit), her old classmate.

5. And Tommy DiDario as "Hot Lawyer"

Not to mention guest stars including Wanda Sykes, RuPaul, Tony Danza, and Hilary Clinton.

There are a lot of bulges and butts on RG Biceps and Boyfriends (the new name for my NSFW site).