Broad City & the Power of Women in Friendship
“Oh thank goodness, it’s Wednesday!” Not something a working person usually says to herself, it being the middle of the week and all. During the past four Broad City seasons, however, Wednesday nights have contained a bright oasis of woman-centered hilarity in the otherwise mostly male-driven, representation-lazy desert that is the rest of a typical week of television. Whenever I hear the count down into Broad City’s opening theme, I feel a wave of relaxation wash over me. I relax not only because the song is fun piece of music that adds a splash of edginess to what is already one of the hippest shows on tv, but also because I know I’m in for a half-hour of some of the most frustration-free entertainment currently on offer. That’s not to say the show is never frustrating, but I (in my white/cisgendered/able-bodied womanhood) find that I can usually let my guard down a little bit when I watch the show rather than having to put up barriers to protect myself from the flood of gender-based (and other) slights that seems to flow more freely from so much of the entertainment available these days.
The primary reason I know I can trust it enough to be able to think more about the comedy I can look forward to than the jokes I have to watch out for is its portrayal of the deep friendship between Abbi and Ilana. In so much of the media from the past and present, friendships between and among women have been rife with cattiness, backstabbing, jealousy, and lies to the point that many view this as the de-facto state of women’s relationships. Over the past few years, however, Broad City has emerged — as Ilana might say — like a tidal wave sent by a mighty sea goddess to smash up the misguided mindsets and remind us of the empowering nature of our friendships and the benefits we can garner from embracing their possibilities.
The creators of Broad City have continued over their decade-long tenure to recognize that real friendships between and among women are characterized less by pettiness and drama than by mutual support and shared laughter. As such, when the Broad City crew leaves the airwaves after its upcoming fifth season, it will do so knowing that it has left the doors open ever wider for others to continue and improve upon what is perhaps its greatest accomplishment: the representation of more types of women in more styles of friendship that are characterized more by the things they like and the individuals they are than by the men in their lives, allowing viewers the all-too-rare chance to see their own real-life friendships displayed and lifted up on the screen.
In fact, Broad City represents one of the first (and few) times I have gotten to see BFFs who seem kind of like me and my own best friend portrayed on-screen. Certainly my relatively television-free childhood/teenage years are to blame for some of this lack of visual representation (I missed Daria, for example, until long after graduating college), but the dearth of visual representations of women/girls in friendship out there was also a major factor in why I had to imagine my friendships through male characters, or else through no characters. This shouldn’t come as a shock, of course — the inadequate representation of so many different demographics in the media is unquestionable and the reason why Fandom Forward covers the topic in every full-length toolkit. And it’s not as if I didn’t see movies in the theaters or catch episodes at other people’s homes. I saw enough of what was released during my youth to know what society and the media expected of me. If I ever thought my friendships were unusual or abnormal, it was because of the friendships I saw represented or not represented on the screen and the failure of those making the decisions behind the scenes to choose to represent more diverse styles of friendships.
From the very beginning, the creative minds behind Broad City have marked a departure from that model. They clearly desire to represent women friends as they are in the real world, with their faults and their flaws right alongside their values and virtues. What results is a correspondingly realistic portrayal of women’s friendships: while jealousy or pettiness or drama may rear its ugly head on occasion, real friends deal with these types of problems together by being honest with each other, admitting when they’re wrong, and being willing to hear each other’s perspectives.
Indeed, the show tries to make this clear from the jump, as the very first scene of the entire series opens on a video chat session during which Ilana is moving in a, well, suggestive fashion. In other shows, this would have precipitated a dramatic episode possibly involving a falling-out, but here Abbi responds simply with a matter-of-fact comment about needing to set boundaries. She isn’t angry or teasing or overly embarrassed. She just tells her friend that she is uncomfortable in a way that accepts Ilana’s penchant for flaunting her sexuality, and they move on with a laugh.
Even when one of the two friends is unhappy or stressed out, the other accepts, understands, and celebrates her, lifting the other up in her strongest and weakest moments, knowing that neither is perfect and each deserves love and support. The fourth season premiere “Sliding Doors,” for instance, recalls Ilana swiping a panicking Abby through the turnstile so she can catch her train as the catalyst for their friendship. Shortly after they go their separate ways, Abbi is confronted with the indignity of being hit on by a bubble gun-selling jerk just before having her ponytail chopped off by the dreaded serial ponytail cutter (I know; you’ll just have to watch the episode). Meanwhile, Ilana is elsewhere being kicked in the eye by a subway dancer, getting fired from her job, bombing a presentation she is unprepared for, and finally having her shirt ripped off by a rogue bicyclist. In an amazing end-of-day coincidence, though, Abbi runs into Ilana sitting alone on a bench. They sit together and talk and in the end a laughter-filled walk into the episode credits and the future of their friendship. Alone, they are downtrodden denizens of the unforgiving concrete jungle, but together?
It is in moments like these that Broad City most definitely makes a loud and proud statement about how positive, irreplaceable, and inevitable the bond of friendship between two women can be and offers a model for the nature of women’s friendships that future directors and show creators can aspire to.
Luckily, more and more shows are following suit. Shows like Glow — just one example from the ever-growing number — deal with the complexities of women’s friendships as part of their treatment of the complexities of various women’s lives in general. A quick internet search reveals countless lists of newer television series that feature women friends. Currently, I’m most excited to start digging into Insecure, Big Little Lies, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Brown Girls (web series soon to be on HBO!), and the web series I Love Bekka & Lucy, all of which promise insightful, funny, meaningful portrayals of women and how they relate to their friends. Obviously no show is perfect and every show needs to do better in terms of intersectionality, but more and more shows do seem to be eschewing the various unhealthy friendship tropes in favor of the more meaningful and real-feeling portrayals of women in friendship such as that of Abbi and Ilana on Broad City.
We all deserve the chance to reimagine our own friendships through the fiction we consume in a way that is at least relatively reflective of the realities of our world, both as it is and as it should be. It is important for women to see friendships with other women represented diversely on the screen because it affects how we see our own friendships and validates them, it allows us to see what is possible, and it provides a foundation for helping others understand.
When a set of friends can find a way to be as unabashedly who they are with each other as Abbi and Ilana are on Broad City, they can change the world. They can show, as the Broad City stars do in every episode, that rather than being all about drama or one-upping each other, true friendships are characterized more by laughter and unconditional support. Sure, friends sometimes get into fights, but, as the Broad City protagonists can attest, best friends always work it out, always watch each other’s backs, and always stay on the lookout for ways to make each other happy, because they know that friendship means so, so much more than petty irritations or corrosive misunderstandings. Thanks to their efforts and the efforts of others behind the creation of Broad City and similar shows, the pathway for others to take up the mantle of representing women’s friendships in realistic, diverse, and meaningful ways is clearer than it has ever been before.
Talk It Out
- Do you have a “best” woman friend/group of “best” women friends? What are your favorite activities to do together? What makes your friendship different from friendships with people of other genders? How has the way society treats girls and women who are friends changed your friendships with other girls/women? What about friendships with non-binary people in particular? Is that different?
- What is an example of a time you were a good friend? How did you behave/what did you do?
- What is a time you weren’t as good of a friend, and how could you have behaved differently?
- Have you noticed your perceptions on friendships between/among women being skewed or enriched by media portrayals?
- When you see an example of the powerful bonds of women’s friendship, how does it make you feel/what does it make you think?
- Do you anticipate seeing a time when we can talk about Broad City as being a positive representation of friendship overall rather than as a representation of women’s friendship specifically because there will be so much representation it won’t be an issue warranting specific mention?
Take Action
- Take the time to write a long-hand letter to your best friend(s). Tell them one of your favorite things about them.
- Support/consume media that portrays women in friendships with each other, even if (maybe especially if) they aren’t the same as your own friendships. Similarly, be critical of the media you consume and ask yourself about the positives and negatives of how that media portrays the bonds of friendship between women.
- Write to/tweet at/call the people who make decisions about the shows you love. Tell them why you think representation matters.
- Share your thoughts about representation and friendship with your friends/family and ask them about their experiences
- Make and share art that reflects diverse friendships
- Get involved with organizations already focusing on uplifting women writers/directors/artists, such as Women’s Media Center or Women in Film.
References, Resources, and Further Reading
Broad City via Comedy Central
Broad City Opening Theme Music via YouTube
All Your Favs Are Problematic: Broad City Edition via Zine, Philadelphia Print Works
Showrunners for New TV Season Remain Mostly White via Variety
Broad City is a Fearless, Priceless Ode to Female Friendship via The Concourse
Urban Legends: How Broad City’s Stars Turned Millennial Malaise into Comedy Gold via Marie Claire
Broad City is Ending After Season Five, but This Isn’t the Last You’ve Seen of Abbi and Ilana via Bustle
“We’re Making Women Braver”: Meet Broad City’s Abbi and Ilana via Grazia
Broad City: Ilana’s Lil Wayne Plan via YouTube
Why Do So Many Of Us Love Broad City and Hate-Love Girls? via Los Angeles Times
Comedy Central Exclusive: Behind Broad City “Sliding Doors” via YouTube
How Daria Shaped a Generation of Women (Especially This Black Lady) via Vulture
Five Reasons Why Representation Matters via The Odyssey Online
Fandom Forward via The Harry Potter Alliance
The Women of GLOW are on a Group Text, and It’s Supportive as Hell via The Huffington Post
2018 TV Shows with Women Protagonists via Google Search
The Authentic Black Female Friendship of Insecure via The New Republic
In Its Final Moments, Big Little Lies Transcends Its White Feminism via The Muse
Why The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s Duo is Just So Damn Dynamic via E Online
HBO’s Brown Girls Will Change Television via The Atlantic
I Love Bekka & Lucy: The Show That Says It’s OK to Be Obsessed with Your Best Friend via The Cut
Friendship Tropes via TV Tropes
Abbi Jacobson’s Description of Her Real-Life Friendship with Ilana Glazer Will Just Melt Broad City Fan’s Hearts via Yahoo Sports
The 11 Greatest Female Friendships in TV History via Time
“If She Can’t See It, She Can’t Be It”: Why Media Representation Matters via The Guardian
Resources for Women Filmmakers via Short of the Week
Resources: Publications via Women and Hollywood
The Director List: Women Directors at Work
Current Job Offerings via Film Powered
Ten Women Making the Films and TV Shows of Tomorrow via i-D
Seven Books that Celebrate the Power of Female Friendship via Bookish
With Alexa & Katie, Kid TV’s Female Friendship Tsunami Has Reached Netflix via Paste
Why It’s So Important to Show Black Female Friendship on Television via Vogue
Women’s Friendships Aren’t Dysfunctional — They’re Essential via The Washington Post
Broad City Launches Sex Toy Line, Putting Its Sex-Positive Money Where Its Mouth Is via IndieWire
The Bechdel Test is 30 Years Old. It’s Time to Raise Our Expectations. via The Washington Post
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