Broad City Sea­son 4: ​‘Slid­ing Doors’ and the train of destiny

Since the very (online) begin­nings of Broad City, women the world over have found them­selves con­nect­ing to, or long­ing for, the unique bond shared between the show’s mil­len­ni­al, New York City women Ilana (Glaz­er) and Abbi (Jacob­son). Their rela­tion­ship is the true def­i­n­i­tion of female empow­er­ment – they sup­port each oth­er no mat­ter what, and their abil­i­ty to infuse one anoth­er with the con­fi­dence need­ed to get ahead, or sim­ply face a shit­ty NYC day, comes from a pure­ly altru­is­tic place, and is one that isn’t explored all too often in shows where the main dri­ving force behind the girl­friends dynam­ic tends to be focused on envy, rival­ry and intrigue.

The Broad City gals don’t have the time to enter­tain these pet­ty, gen­der stereo­typ­i­cal notions. They are too busy grow­ing into their own – as indi­vid­u­als, and as the inde­struc­tible dream team they have become since their first meet­ing in a sub­way sta­tion back in 2011. This is the premise of sea­son four’s pre­mière episode, ​‘Slid­ing Doors’.

Inspired by Peter Howitt’s 1998 film, star­ring Gwyneth Pal­trow, the episode offers two alter­nate real­i­ties, both of which ulti­mate­ly have the same out­come: Ilana and Abbi become friends, as they were always des­tined to be. It all starts when Ilana offers Abbi her card to swipe her into the sub­way sta­tion. In the first real­i­ty, they both end up miss­ing their train; in the sec­ond real­i­ty, they both make the train, but as Abbi approach­es Ilana to thank her, the click between them is far from immediate.

In their per­fect real­i­ty, miss­ing the train results in them spend­ing a typ­i­cal Broad City New York day togeth­er. It’s the ide­al first date – the con­ver­sa­tion flows freely, their day pans out effort­less­ly, and with­in no time they fall into a famil­iar pat­tern of get­ting high and chas­ing through the streets of their beloved city on yet anoth­er warped adven­ture. There’s an imme­di­ate sense of mutu­al admi­ra­tion and respect between them that only seems to grow as the episode progresses.

The alter­nate real­i­ty sees them going through their own ver­sions of a hell­ish day sep­a­rate­ly, and the most sur­pris­ing fac­tor here is a whole dif­fer­ent dimen­sion to Ilana’s usu­al­ly extro­vert, naive­ly igno­rant char­ac­ter. In her world pri­or to Abbi, the inse­cu­ri­ties she tends to mask by twerk­ing to the beat of her own drum and rude­ly dis­tanc­ing her­self from her imme­di­ate envi­ron­ment by being gen­uine­ly obnox­ious, become obvious.

While it has always been clear Abbi’s awk­ward attempts to stand up for her­self are large­ly influ­enced by Ilana, Abbi’s effect on Ilana was nev­er quite as appar­ent as it is in ​‘Slid­ing Doors’. Before meet­ing Abbi, Ilana attempt­ed to tone down her ​“true Jew” fea­tures by straight­en­ing her wild curls, but upon Abbi’s encour­age­ment she decides to own – and rock! – her looks from there on out.

They may have had to get through a ridicu­lous­ly crap­py day on their own, before final­ly meet­ing again and estab­lish­ing the bond they share today. Yet ​‘Slid­ing Doors’ just goes to show that not only are Ilana and Abbi at their best when they’re togeth­er, but women in gen­er­al – real or fic­tion­al – are at their strongest when they pull togeth­er, rather than dis­tanc­ing them­selves behind a wall of com­plex, man­made inhi­bi­tions. Espe­cial­ly in the Amer­i­ca of today, where the name-that-shall-be-bleeped for the remain­der of the fourth sea­son is work­ing towards divi­sion rather than togetherness.