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It’s ‘Broad City,’ And We’re All Just Living in it

Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson are having their New York moment

by
Stephanie Butnick
March 13, 2015
Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson at the 'Broad City' Season 2 premiere on January 7, 2015 in New York City. (Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images for Comedy Central)
Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson at the ‘Broad City’ Season 2 premiere on January 7, 2015 in New York City. (Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images for Comedy Central)

It’s been 14 months since I raved about the first episode of Broad City, the web series turned Comedy Central show starring, written, and produced by Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson. In that year, nearly everyone has taken notice of their brilliantly hilarious antics, giddily tuning in on Wednesday nights and watching as their finely-tuned comic machine continues to deliver the goods (all of them) in Season 2.

Now, the pair is officially on fire. They’ve hit Letterman, Fallon, and Kimmel in recent weeks, and are on the cover of this week’s New York magazine (wearing tube socks and sharing a single sweatshirt).

Glazer and Jacobson explain their comedic partnership, and grapple with the side affects of their mounting success (they are recognized several times during the course of the article, often by shrieking young women). Here’s how they describe Broad City the concept, which dictates the lives of the show’s main characters, twenty-something best friends in New York City whose mess-ups and setbacks are only getting in the way of them having fun:

“You know the Yiddish term mishegoss? It kind of means ‘bullshit,’ ” Glazer goes on. (Actually, it’s closer to “craziness,” but the point stands.) “Broad City is mishegoss that you don’t want to be dealing with in this moment. It’s very sweaty,” she reiterates.

Jacobson expands on the truly Millennial concept:

“The amount of times we have sprinted, unnecessarily, to get to things is ridiculous,” says Jacobson, 31. “You can plan and plan to not deal with the mishegoss, but your planning was wrong all along to get you to the thing.”

But here’s the best part of Jada Yuan’s profile (which is great, and which you should definitely read).

I double-check that they’re both Jewish. “I cannot believe you even have to ask us,” says Glazer. “That’s so cool to me.” “That’s like being carded!” says Jacobson.

If you haven’t seen Broad City yet, start here, with a scene from the Season 2 episode in which we meet Ilana’s mother, played a little too perfectly by Susie Essman:

Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.