Broad City Season 5 Episode 5 Review: Artsy Fartsy

The following Broad City review contains spoilers.

Broad City Season 5 Episode 5

Broad City knows it’s coming to an end and is using its remaining time to tie up some loose ends or at least remind us of the seeds it has planted along the way. Lots of old things resurface in this week’s episode, and — Hold the phones, has Abbi made it? You might have forgotten that Abbi’s aspirations include being an artist and, sure, the show doesn’t spend all that much time on it but I attribute that to a serious case of writer’s block…uh, well, illustrator’s block?

Also, it’s super hard to produce art when you’re busting the pavement working trying to make rent, but post- being fired from Anthropologie, the creative juices are flowing once more. This week’s episode of Broad City starts off with Abbi and Ilana in a fancy pants bookshop where Abbi’s celebrity food greeting cards — of which I’d buy all of them— are being sold. 

Abbi runs into an old college friend who invites her to an uppity MoMA party where she’ll be going stag because Ilana has her “one-year anniversary/renegotiation/check in,” with Lincoln. Abbi needs to juggle her catering job when the boss mistakes her for working the party instead of attending while also trying to fit in with the “artsy fartsy” crowd, while Ilana has to juggle all the plot points of her future with Lincoln. He’s ready for Maryland and children and she’s ready to make out with “five-tee people.” In the end, Abbi can’t juggle her minimum-wage world and the art world quite so well and it lands her in the hospital, and Ilana realizes that she and Lincoln don’t want the same things and they call it quits. 

further reading: The Best TV Comedies on Netflix

But it’s not a sad ending at all. I’m going to be a little real for a second, Broad City is moments away from their final curtain call and they’re taking the time to not just make episodes that hit all the comedic markers but that are also kind of unapologetically inspiring and relatable to women. This week Abbi and Ilana both make huge strides forward. Ilana realizes that she’s more a “polyamorous queen” and is not quite ready for the picket fence and 2.5 children, while Abbi decides to put herself out there and ask a hot doctor, who happens to be female, for her number. 

For a long time shows geared at young women dictated who they had to be and the status quo. But Broad City, as usual, flipped the script for the new generation of empowered women. Our dynamic duo is growing older and the show has adapted to address issues that we might have, without sacrificing any of the humor or the feminism. This episode might not have been the funniest or the quirkiest of the lot, but I think it might be my favorite. 

But I know you’re waiting for your lesson of the week. Listen, we’ve been doing this whole things for a while now, but this week Abbi and Ilana taught us the most valuable lesson of all, how to have it all. 

So here it is:

Do you. 

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