'Broad City' is back with smart, self-deprecating comedy

Pearl-clutchers and Phyllis Schlafly devotees, beware: "Broad City" (2014-present) does not give a lick about your antiquated notions of feminine propriety. If anything, it wants to make you squirm. It revels in your discomfort. The show, which just premiered its third season on Feb. 17, makes previously bold forerunners like "Sex and the City" (1998-2004) and "Girls" (2012-present) look prudish, even downright Victorian, by comparison — even though "Broad City" is to some extent indebted to these shows for blazing the trail. But the whole approach of "Broad City" is much more combative than its HBO counterparts. The show does not just push back against taboos; it lays a dynamite stick of lewdness under them, lights it and then dances among the detritus. And that is what makes "Broad City" so damn fun: just when you think there is no farther for it to go, it reveals yet another layer of absurdity to detonate.

Think this is an exaggeration? Well the first scene of this season’s premiere will dispel any lingering doubts. The episode opens with a split-screen of Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, co-creators and stars of "Broad City," living out various moments of their lives — in the bathroom. To an upbeat tune reminiscent of Cyndi Lauper, the two relieve themselves while reading a biography of Hillary Clinton (a sly nod to the cameo she’s slated for later this season), pose and preen for the mirror, belt songs into their hairbrushes, prepare for costume parties and plunge their toilets. They also shave their pubes, give and receive oral sex, make out with strangers, react to pregnancy tests and rip bongs. This is not just irreverence for its own sake; it is a major feminist statement. It wrests control away from all the politicians, religious figures and business leaders who presume they can regulate women’s private lives. Fixing them with an icy gaze, the subtext of this scene says to them, "We decide when to draw the curtain and when to open it up for public view, not you."

Not that Jacobson and Glazer draw that figurative curtain all that often — or leave much to the imagination for that matter. Their appeal is predicated on a kind of sexual frankness that is still in short supply in the entertainment landscape. At the end of the season premiere, for example, they have to wrestle Ilana out of a chain belt she has lost the key to, which leaves her breasts raw from the chafing and her nipples bleeding. The gruesome sight, contrasted with Ilana’s clear indifference to her injuries, makes for a great gag. But the even more striking juxtaposition here is the blurred-out breasts (the show airs on Comedy Central) alongside the clear picture of the blood, highlighting the perverse, even absurd logic of American censorship — showing breasts is a no-no, but blood is apparently A-okay. It is this kind of double-standard B.S. that "Broad City" continually points an accusatory finger at, and it is what has allowed the show to succeed not only as a comedy but also as a trenchant piece of social satire.

Otherwise, "Broad City" is back to doing what it does best , namely, lampooning the excesses of millennial culture in New York City. The quirky settings featured in the premiere are all familiar: the brunch spot, the art gallery and the organic co-op, all places that all reek of a nasty brand of privilege — a privilege that masquerades as enlightenment, or, in the parlance of the show, “#wokeness.” Jacobson and Glazer are highly attuned to that disconnect: the scene at the brunch spot depicts them decrying the religious subjugation of women around the world one moment and bemoaning the absence of bottomless mimosas on the brunch menu the next, as if to suggest a kind of parity between the two problems. The joke is characteristically smart and self-deprecating, but it also inadvertently calls attention to the show’s reluctance to broach these more serious political topics as well as the fact that we are still watching two white women galavant around New York City with hardly a care in the world, other than where to take their next piss. This is not to suggest that "Broad City" should take a turn for the didactic. One of its chief strengths as a show is that it manages to steer clear of sanctimony. But as shows like "Inside Amy Schumer" (2013 - present) have shown, you can still tackle important feminist issues without sacrificing your satiric edge. Hopefully, now that Jacobson and Glazer have developed a strong comedic platform, they can start to do more of that.