Though Gossip Girl might have long ago been ahead of the curve on wielding Sleep No More as a plot device (in the 2011 episode “The Big Sleep No More”), only Broad City could make its unique brand of absurdism blend so well with a play that takes itself seriously enough to base itself on an “immersive” interpretation of Macbeth. Hence, being one of the great cash cows now aimed at luring tourists after it was the chic thing for a New Yorker (read: Midwestern transplant) to do.
The reason behind Abbi’s sudden decision to shell out the cash for a long unfulfilled ambition on Ilana’s proverbial NYC bucket list? She has to cushion the blow of telling her she’s been accepted into an artist’s residency in Boulder, Colorado. And when considering that Eliot, Ilana’s brother (played by Glazer’s own real life brother, Eliot Glazer), is just one of the many people close to Ilana that seem to be fleeing the city of late, Abbi is having even more difficulty with how to break the news of her intended departure. For, sooner or later, most people have to acknowledge that, if they aren’t living the life they set out to upon first arriving in NY, then it’s time to bounce (something that, mercifully, did not happen to Madonna). And for Abbi, the life she intended did not include an array of less than middling jobs frequently involving the handling of human DNA (that is to say, pubic hair) in between maybe occasionally finding some time to illustrate or finagle some coveted wall space in a sandwich shop to put up a few of said illustrations. This point being made of NYC taking its toll on a person after so many years spent focusing on basic survival as opposed to “goals,” is increasingly the norm in shows about women in New York navigating their lives.
And because every show about women in New York has to be compared to the blueprint, Sex and the City, one is reminded of the episode where Big (Chris Noth) tells Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) in season four that he’s moving away, prompting her to say, at the age of thirty-six, “I’m always surprised when anyone leaves New York. I mean where do they go? The real world?” The irony of that statement is, of course, that everyone outside of New York assumes that there is nothing realer–grittier–than the place that spawned essentially every rapper and Donald Trump. In truth, the bubble it exists within frequently becomes forgotten by those who stay there too long–as made evident by Ilana saying to Abbi upon finding out they’re going to Sleep No More, “God, I love living in New York City, ya just, ya can’t beat it. You get to be physically near the cutting edge of art and culture, and then–just a mere decade later–actually afford to experience it.” Because yes, pain and insanity become a baseline after about four years of living in New York. After five, a total loss of what reality is becomes complete. It’s essentially like Fight Club in that regard: first rule of New York City is don’t talk about how fucking terrible New York City actually is so we can keep attracting new recruits year after year.
Unless, like Abbi, one comes to the hard-won revelation, “I feel stuck in my life right now. I need a change.” Confessing to Ilana her plans to leave in the thick of the Sleep No More “performance,” she explains, “For the past eight years I have cleaned hundreds of people’s pubes out of toilet bowls. So many strangers–so many–have thrown up on me. Dude, I am thirty years old. I’m done with New York.” This “shocking” admission is in direct contrast to what we were conditioned to believe by Sex and the City, which taught us that things are fabulous (and perfectly affordable) within the parameters of this decade. Sure, it’s more challenging–if not impossible–to find a heterosexual man to take an interest in you, but you’re not going to feel destitute, irrelevant and wondering why you bothered to come to the city at all to live such an embarrassing financial existence for the sake being among a “community” of other “artists” (but lo and behold, shitty open mic nights abound everywhere). Abbi says the one thing we’re all thinking but never supposed to say as those who leave and those who stay are ultimately qualified by their age group or success level. Because the only reason to stay in New York in your thirties is, in fact, if you’ve managed to become rich, or what is technically “middle class” by the living standards of the city. Yet for Carrie Bradshaw, the prototype of what constituted the allure of moving to NYC in the first place, it would be unfathomable to ever leave. There’s no place else in the world that could be of interest to her, which is easy to understand when she eventually ends up living in an apartment the size of a small house, with a closet that takes up an entire room. So yeah, sure it seems reasonable to stay in such conditions. But for most, New York, when you’re in the majority class status (poor), feels like a spinning wheel that you have to take yourself out of in order to actually keep going with what you first set out to do.
As Abbi puts it, “I know that everybody is leaving. I’m sorry, I know this is like the worst timing. I just, dude, I…I need to like change my life. I could do this with you in New York forever.” Ilana gets briefly excited by that prospect before Abbi adds, “I don’t want to. Not because of you, not because I don’t wanna do this with you, it’s just I’m gonna be illustrating all day everyday–like all the time I’m gonna be immersed in it.” That is to say, actually being able to “do art” in New York is not feasible as we all have been brainwashed to believe it is by the lore of the 1980s and Bradshaw’s “writing career” affording her a sizable apartment on the Upper East Side (which hasn’t been the epicenter of tastemaking since, again, the aforementioned Gossip Girl). That SATC has been alluded to several times throughout the series is not to be ignored. Particularly in season three (with Cynthia Nixon herself even making a cameo in the episode “2016”), with the premiere choosing to open with Lincoln (Hannibal Buress) choosing to attend the same trapeze school as Carrie does in “The Catch” precisely because he recently watched the episode. But while Carrie’s scene features slow motion shots and Michelle Branch music (namely “Breathe”), Lincoln’s is him just hanging with no specific motivational or empowering song choice. When he’s done, he, Ilana and Abbi grudgingly decide which characters from the show they would be. Ilana, of course, jokingly chimes in regarding her Samantha parallel, “Who am I? ‘Honey, I have a cyst on my uterus and I need to get fucked until it pops.’ Sometimes I’m happy about it and then other times I’m like, it’s gross.”
The intent behind all these tongue-in-cheek allusions to Broad City‘s forebear is that it knows how ridiculous that depiction of New York is now, while also respecting it for what it was in its time and place. What’s more, to the point of not living forever in New York as the SATC foursome does (even Samantha, after her attempt at L.A.), the characters on that show barring Carrie are not artists (and even calling Carrie that is something of a stretch based on sentences like “I couldn’t help but wonder: can you make a mistake and miss your fate?” The answer being: absofuckinlutely, if you stay too long in New York). Sure, Charlotte curates art, but that’s about as close as it gets. Miranda and Samantha, conversely, are in about the most capitalistic, non-creative industries there are: law and PR, respectively.
Even the odious Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham) the low-budget millennial supposed neo-version of Bradshaw ends up leaving the city at the end of the series in favor of upstate. Because everyone of an artistic bent is forced to reconcile at some point that if your only pursuit isn’t making money, ergo allowing the complete crushing of your soul, you have to leave town while there’s still any trace of youth left. Alas, the alarm bell to get out never really goes off at its highest pitch until one’s twenties are fucking finito. And this is what Broad City unapologetically reminds us as its fifth and final season comes to a close.
