Nah, Queen

#NotUSYou

So, Broad City's latest season is utterly brilliant and everyone should be watching it if they love comedy.  However, this past week's Hillary cameo was like a campaign ad preempting a funny show and rubbed me all sorts of wrong.  As a Bernie backer, this is probably not surprising but even Sanders did a walk on along the same script it would have felt just as icky (chances are when they were shooting this nobody thought Bernie would still be in the race).  At heart, Broad City is a stoner comedy and it should be crucial that Hillary Clinton is against full legalization of marijuana, meaning the Draconian marijuana laws on the books in New York (though revised from their worst aspects over the course of the past ten years) would still apply to Abbi, Ilana, and the rest of the Broad City universe.  Essentially, Hillary is in favor of criminalizing the cast of the show she's looking to boost her millennial fuel. As well as, you know, your friends and loved ones who may also occasionally smoke weed.

There's also the issue of how an anti-authoritarian misfit like Ilana would come to grovel in awe of someone so transparently centrist, safe, and...well, normcore, as HRC. HRC may occasionally come around to progressive stances, but I'd take Ilana's oft-misguided but passionate outbursts to Clinton's careful focus-grouped motions any day of the week.  It may also be noted that one of the main characters of the show, Jaime, is both gay and a drug dealer and up until a few years ago HRC would have criminalized Jaime's ability to marry too.

These may be an ideological rather than a narrative issue, but the narrative also seemed to immediately lose focus as soon as it needed to be made clear how ABSOLUTELY SERIOUS everyone in her campaign office was, marking a clear delineation between this WORLD WHERE SERIOUS PEOPLE GET THINGS DONE THAT BENEFIT THE REST OF US vs. that sleazy, lazy world that the rest of those plebes and slobs live in.  And isn't it sad how hard it is to imagine another feminist figure of import that they could have substituted for HRC had the cameo fallen through? Maybe Beyonce turned them down? But after that who else would be recognizable enough for such a showstopping role?

Those jokes about the campaigning phone-banking and getting asked if Hillary is a witch "every day" were pretty funny though. Also, nearly missed the part where Abbi introduces herself by saying "I pegged".


Here's the scene to beat on TV in 2016