How 'Broad City' Redefined Female Comedy Tropes

[TMC]

https://collider.com/broad-city-come...-why-its-good/

Launching in 2014 on Comedy Central, Broad City was one of the first shows of its kind. Writers and stars Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer created a series that stands apart from other female led comedies of the early/mid 2000s. Historically in comedies, females take on the role of the “precarious girl”, as has been demonstrated in series’ such as Girls created by Lena Dunham. “Precarious girl comedies hinge on immobility as a mode of being. Claiming difference, alienation, isolation, and specialness is part of how characters shore up their identity” writes professor and researcher, Rebecca Wanzo. The Broad City girls defy this trope by disrupting the expectations that the “precarious girl” comedies entail. Abbi and Ilana share common traits with the “precarious girl”, but it is their attitudes, viewpoints, and responses to these traits that differentiates them and puts them in a more favorable, optimistic position than the precarious girl for viewers.