As though to drive home the point of just how palpable the void is going to be with regard to an accurate depiction of the comically harrowing shenanigans that ensue when one lives in New York in their twenties, Broad City seems to be getting increasingly honest about the unspoken age limit that New York insidiously enforces after thirty (if you’re not rich, which, chances are, you won’t be), taunting those who stay with constant feelings of being an anachronism. With its penultimate episode, “Along Came Molly” (because only the Broad City women would see fit to pay tribute to [yet another] Jennifer Aniston anti-masterpiece, Along Came Polly), Abbi is the one who continues to serve as the example of both what happens when you stay in the city past your twenties and that, like a good little ducky–and for your own mental well-being–you better get out before it’s too late to recognize the vast emotional and physical deterioration you’ve permitted the city to wreak on your mind and body.
To honor her friendship with Ilana (a friendship they both have to admit, while on drugs, has been dangerously codependent), Abbi decides to attempt to remedy the fact that in the first episode, “What A Wonderful World,” they never made it into the Lil’ Wayne concert despite their best efforts to scrounge together two hundred dollars (in fact, many episodes are centered around the “emergency scrounge” as that’s what most of life in NY consists of). Fangirls will remember that, in addition to bucket drumming in Madison Square Park, to earn money to get into a “pop up” show of Lil’ Wayne’s, they decide to respond to a Craigslist ad to clean a man’s apartment in their underwear. David (Fred Armisen) turns out to have a weirder fetish than they thought–including not paying them–so they leave the apartment with nothing to show for it but a hat, coat and a bottle of alcohol for their trouble.
Though it may have been five years since that incident passed, it would be naive to believe that Abbi and Ilana have gotten much wiser (instead, New York just seems to make you more obtuse as you buy into the delusion that “this is just how life is” now). Thus, without realizing that maybe Craigslist isn’t the most relevant of resources any longer (the door girl herself spouting, “Haven’t you heard of StubHub?” when she laughs in their faces for getting scammed after trying to scan their fake tickets), Abbi is faced with, yet again, the awareness of being something of a dinosaur in a city that thrives on constantly absorbing the next new thing (e.g. while Facebook itself is over, Facebook Marketplace has somehow cropped up as a better Craigslist alternative–but this, too, will be irrelevant in NYC when the next batch of twenty-somethings come in to topple it over). To kick Abbi while she’s down, the girl at the door also asks of her and Ilana, “How old are you? ‘Cause I’m lookin’ at the outfits, but the faces don’t match.”
This, too, is another symptom of both being a millennial and living in New York: an unspoken inability to dress your age (unless, again, you’ve gotten rich in the corporate world, which happens only to automatons and people who grew up in Westchester–usually one and the same) in part because it’s more affordable to keep shopping at Forever 21 and Rainbow, but also, beneath it all, admitting to aging via one’s sartorial style would mean prompt ejection from anywhere outside of Midtown (though, in Abbi’s case, Astoria is also quite accepting of the “middle-aged,” this, in New York, meaning thirty and up). Abbi also spares no expense on the essentially defunct “online community” by purchasing some molly from it as well–though Ilana doesn’t become aware of her source until it’s too late and they’ve already ingested the expectedly bad batch. But before the sweating and the vomiting comes, it’s evident that Abbi and Ilana needed to elevate their minds in order to come to grips with how terrified both are of separating from one another (hence the whole codependent revelation, per Ilana’s recent pursuit of psychological studies). More than that, however, it is, as usual, not the arrival, but the journey to particular and unanticipated hijinks that make Abbi realize that though she’ll miss the city, she’s more ready than ever to leave. And for the second time in a span of two episodes, Abbi is once again sure to use an excuse for her over itness and lack of stamina for New York by iterating, “I’m thirty years old.” Ilana returns, “I’m twenty-seven, what’s my excuse?” So maybe, in the end, it’s not just age that factors into one’s ability to withstand New York, but one’s penchant for masochism and/or ability to totally check out of her body. Or simply, again, if one has a burgeoning bank account to mitigate these torturous circumstances compounded by a high concentration of human density.
At the start of the episode, Abbi and Ilana naturally play the parts of tourists to fulfill as much as they can on the former’s “New York City Bucket List”–another fact that proves: only when you’re leaving the city do you finally find the motivation to do all the things you wanted to while actually living there. Included in the tour is a ride on the Staten Island Ferry, where Abbi obligatorily laments, “I’m gonna miss that skyline” before Ilana mentions her twenty-four dollar breakfast with the line, “Only in New York City,” as though to assure Abbi she’s making the right choice. And in keeping with the full-circle nature of the episode, instead of playing drums in Madison Square Park, this time Abbi and Ilana play the piano in Washington Square Park (albeit not even bothering to get any cash out of it this time). The song being, what else, “Heart and Soul.”
With another ride on the back of a dump truck (which also occurs in “Two Chainz” in season three) under their belt–complete with fun factoid conversation about Corn Flakes intended to curb masturbation–and the dramatic irony revelation that Bevers has been obsessed with Abbi all along, “Along Came Molly” is, above all, confirmation that New York, like college or high school, seems to be merely “a phase” in one’s life…lest it become a permanent situation resulting in the fates of either Lucille Ball in Stone Pillow or the Pigeon Lady in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (the latter being both inspiration and cautionary tale).
Though, generally speaking, there is usually some other show about “women navigating NYC” on at the same time as another show about it, at the moment, it would appear that Broad City is leaving an immense vacuum , with no one to adequately represent the soul-sucking nature of New York while also admiring it/giving it its due reverence. Even if it’s hard to respect a place that is so undercutting yet unabashed in its Logan’s Run-level ageism. Real life Abbi and Ilana, at least, will likely remain in the city with their riches cultivated from the backs of their twenty-something selves’ experiences to keep it all somewhat (sur)real.
