Sheng-ji Yang posted:

Part of what makes Comedy Central’s Broad City such a pleasure to watch week after week is the extent to which Ilana’s and Abbi’s characters are developed. It wouldn’t take more than a few episodes to glean that Ilana is the outspoken, slovenly, crude one while Abbi is a well-intentioned, anxious magnet for bad luck, but Broad City stays funny by diving deeper into their intricacies with each episode. At the same time, these characters are totally relatable and off-putting exaggerations of themselves. Broad City accentuates Ilana’s and Abbi’s idiosyncrasies so that we feel included in their special friendship, while the rest of New York moves too quickly to pick up on their brilliant chemistry. Broad City makes a strong case for the “you had to be there” friendship — the relationship you can’t easily explain to someone who’s not a part of it. Wednesday night’s episode “2016,” however, contained a glaring inconsistency in Ilana’s character: her unwavering support of Hillary Clinton doesn’t make sense.

Wednesday night’s “2016” finds Abbi and Ilana on separate missions as Abbi must renew her license at the DMV and Ilana searches for her new calling after she was fired from an Internet startup. While Abbi’s beleaguered experience at the DMV is relatable and congruent with her character’s frequent run-ins with misfortune, the job that Ilana eventually finds is an egregious contradiction to her character. Fate leads her to volunteer at Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters, although Ilana would definitely be a Bernie person.

The socially outspoken aspect of Ilana’s character often parodies privileged white people who are up in arms about everything and strictly PC for the sake of appearing righteous. As we’ve seen in previous episodes, Ilana can turn harmless conversations with Abbi into political diatribes or opportunities to unpack controversial issues, although the conversation may not have been headed in that direction. Ilana is the Bushwick hipster who harps on constricting binaries, the rigidity of gender roles, women’s rights, and other progressive topics often without taking any hands on action. She does deeply care about these issues but unwittingly betrays her own perspective, like when she makes her own “showtime” on the subway in “2016” and tells her audience to help her out because she’s an NYU grad who’s been fired from an Internet startup. While Bernie Sanders has his fair share of informed supporters, he also covers the voting constituency that Ilana Wexler would realistically be a apart of: young fluctuating progressives.

Maybe this episode of Broad City was filmed before it seemed at all likely that Bernie Sanders could garner substantial support, but Ilana’s vehement advocacy for Hillary in “2016” is simply incorrect. If Ilana Wexler were real, you know she would be your friend who goes on and on about feeling the Bern. She’s the friend who floods your Facebook and Twitter with inflamed Bernie rhetoric, urging people to consider Bernie’s down to earth, outrightly progressive policies over Hillary’s that stray closer to the middle. I could see Abbi as a potential Hillary supporter since she’s less outspoken about the world’s injustices, but Ilana’s enthusiastic support of Hillary is a wrong stitch in the fabric of her progressive character.

logikv9 posted:

hemophilia posted:

Broad City was a very funny cool show until that poo poo went down and now i'm done with those ladies and their tainted show.

Al! posted:

I know what you mean, I'm so scared of the bad lady that I don't even drink alcohol anymore since I saw that video of her doing shots, because I'm afraid of looking down into the glass and seeing her reflection

C-SPAN Caller posted:

Isn't MIGF the most ignored user on the entire forums that isn't permabanned?

My Imaginary GF posted:

Isn't MIGF the user most loving familiar with internal D party workings because he is an elected, ane the vast majority of other posters are too goddamn cowardly to loving declare a party loyalty?

Some would say yes.

hemophilia posted:

Make a compelling argument for party loyalty. I mean, as a voter. Obviously having people loyal to the party is good for elected officials and their appointed cronies. What benefit does a voter actually have by declaring loyalty to the party over ideals?

hemophilia posted:

I'm glad that I have a person who is a fun-house mirror of my own feelings.

Trumps Baby Hands posted:

I am legit mad that PFT and Jen Kirkman have been compromised by dark money*










*which happens to be pro-israel, and I want to go on the record as saying that there's nothing wrong with that, it's not evidence of some global zionist conspiracy, just one man who deeply loves and cares about his home state and wants to influence US politics in its favor. a totally reasonable thing to do, but videos like that are a goddamn shameful way to do it

hemophilia posted:

Broad City was a very funny cool show until that poo poo went down and now i'm done with those ladies and their tainted show.

Darkman Fanpage posted:

return to your ghetto bernout

Goetta posted:

I like this thread good job op

Wheeee posted:

seriously though all the pro-Hillary comedy I've seen carries the same tone-deafness that defines right-wing comedy, what's with that

Darkman Fanpage posted:

return to your ghetto bernout

Flubby posted:

Forget the politics of it, I don't care if they make fun of whatever candidate. But has Collegehumor ever been funny? I'd occasionally follow a link to it years ago and it was never funny then, and trying out some of their newer stuff and it's not gotten any better. It's like some middle school class show written by the PTA and it's so bad and trying so hard I cringe.

Goetta posted:

I like this thread good job op

Toadvine posted:

Agreed the op was informative

Darkman Fanpage posted:

yasssas queen

Toadvine posted:

Trumps Baby Hands posted:

Lord of Pie posted:

Thankfully nobody watches Colbert's new show so there won't be a massive cancer outbreak from the "comedy routine" he did with Hillary one of those times she was on

Uncle Wemus posted:

Its a shame cbs neutered him

Trumps Baby Hands posted:

Seems less insidious to me than the others tbh. I guess Amy Poehler is as much a rich celebrity as anyone, but there's more of a direct linkage between the agenda and the person pushing it in Broad City than there is in the collegehumor vid.

Toadvine posted:

I didn't mean to imply it's insidious, but it is propaganda most cloy.

Uncle Wemus posted:

Its a shame cbs neutered him

Fullhouse posted:

Half the old daily show people are smeared out over a bunch of weird Comedy Central timeslots (yes, Larry Wilmore has a boring news show too) but the rest are spread out all over the place and pretty successful so I don't think you could say that they're failures because they haven't consolidated into a media hivemind or whatever, like that was never really the purpose

Fullhouse posted:

Half the old daily show people are smeared out over a bunch of weird Comedy Central timeslots (yes, Larry Wilmore has a boring news show too) but the rest are spread out all over the place and pretty successful so I don't think you could say that they're failures because they haven't consolidated into a media hivemind or whatever, like that was never really the purpose