http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dear-tv/broad-city-season-two-episode-six-the-matrix

My favorite episodes—“Hurricane Wanda,” “Destination: Wedding,” even the non-underground parts of “Knockoffs”—tend to be rooted in relatively realistic events that become exaggerated through Abbi and Ilana’s involvement. The hurricane party becomes a scatological murder mystery, a missed train ride to Long Island becomes an urban horror odyssey, a Shiva becomes a celebration of non-normative gender roles, a long wait at a Chinese restaurant becomes a closet drama, a lost car in a parking garage becomes a descent into hell, Mary gets her toe stuck in the faucet and we learn a lot about marriage. Broad City, like its situation comedy forebears, works well with baseline ordinary situations that allow our broads the widest possible latitude for zaniness and improvisation. We want so much to spend time with these women that we will return every week despite the lack of a narrative arc. Leaning too hard on the wacky scenario as a building block mis-recognizes what makes this show so great, so watchable and so moving sometimes.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dear-tv/dear-television-broad-city-season-two-episode-five-hashtag-fomo

I wouldn’t have guessed that teasing out the gap between Abbi-with-Ilana and Abbi-without-Ilana would make for compelling television. But it does, because Broad City strikes a balance between the broads’ perspectives, a kind of devil’s bargain we barely notice because its bias is so seductive. It’s this: We consistently get more access to Ilana’s bonkers experience of reality. Conversely, we get significantly more access to Abbi’s inner life. Abbi, as we know her, agonizes over the gaps between what she wants and what she feels she can say. Scenes where she babbles into her phone about stained underwear to avoid Jeremy are some of my favorites. Ilana’s psyche, on the other hand, is a lithe Mobius strip with a single side. Ilana can ask her boss for permission to leave early because she wants to go to a party and will him to say yes because she can’t imagine why he’d say no; Abbi still can’t bring herself to tell Trey she wants to be a trainer because she can imagine all the reasons he might refuse. Ilana’s id is on the surface. Abbi’s spurts out marvelously whenever she’s alone—and her insanity is consequently a lot more intense.
It’s a lovely but very particular dynamic, and it’s particularity became clear in this episode because we’re still—even now—seeing Abbi mostly through Ilana’s eyes. Think about it: Abbi, as we know her in Broad City, almost always appears weaker without Ilana. That makes sense if we’re mostly in Ilana’s POV; who doesn’t want to be needed? But what both Val and the Bed Bath & Beyond dancing suggest is that there’s a different Abbi—an Abbi so confident, joyful and full of hidden talents that Ilana’s concept of her, however loving, doesn’t square. Ilana’s FOMO is real and familiar. Who among us hasn’t been surprised by a version of a close friend that we never knew existed? Or wondered how we never saw that aspect of them before?
This is especially common in cases where friendships harden into Catalyst Friend and Follower Friend. We’ve all had it happen: A friendship develops along a faultline that results in one person becoming the designated cool one. She sets the agenda, her slang becomes the lingua franca of the friendship, and she socially engineers the joint experience. It can be a lovely thing, every bit as dynamic and magical as Ilana makes the world she and Abbi share. But it can also sacrifice the quieter magical undercurrents of the Follower Friend’s secret inner world. Ilana’s love is loud, external. Abbi’s lunacy is quiet, clitoral.
The show is mostly a celebration of the broads’ friendship, and this episode explores what the Catalyst Friend misses and that paradigm’s hidden costs. Abbi isn’t plagued by FOMO, but, as Follower Friend, she obligingly follows Ilana in search of “the Narnia of Party-as.” It doesn’t work out particularly well for her. Abbi wanted to stay at Trey’s to ask him for the trainer job. Ilana makes them leave. Abbi thought Trey didn’t believe her about the tapeworm, Ilana stared at her until she agreed he did. It may have been a magical night for Ilana, but for Abbi, it was kinda bleak: she’s hungover, late, and consigned to cleaning up after exercise balls covered in barf. She didn’t ask Trey to be trainer, and she might have missed her chance (although let’s face it, he probably did believe her about the tapeworm). Sadder still: She, like Narnia’s Susan Pevensie, has absolutely no memory of her glory days.

Val is the antidote to Ilana’s FOMO—and is so present in the present that she speaks in palindromes. “You’ll never know if you never try, and you’ll never try if you never know,” she says at the roof party, as she starts transitioning (her red cup has turned into a giant plastic goblet). “Val about town, town about Val,” she mutters as she’s leading them underground to the speakeasy. Once inside, she’s wisdom itself and a maker of moments: Ilana reaches for phone to text Jaime, but the bartender stops her and tells her she can’t, and, anyway, why would she, when there’s Val to experience? When Ilana says—for the nth time—that her FOMO’s through the roof, Val says, “if you worry about missing out all night, you never bother to actually live.”
“I feel like a different girl,” Abbi says hopefully to the trainer who wants to dish about the lame cleaner who got her nose pierced. “You didn’t recognize me, did you?” Abbi’s so sweetly proud of the different version of herself she’s produced through that piercing. By the end of the episode, she’s right: She is a different girl—a girl who loves diamonds so much that she can’t help but eat them. (How great was that moment?) By morning, though, she’s thrown it all up. The diamond’s gone from her nose (and stomach), the tapeworm’s gone from her anus and Val’s gone underground again. Unlike Evan, though, I suspect she’ll be back. Now that Ilana’s gotten a glimpse of her, maybe Abbi’ll meet her too when she occasionally come up for cigarettes.
This episode is—like all episodes of Broad City—a love story. What Ilana learns this time round is that they can chase parties all night, but there’s no place like Val.