Broad City: Jews on a Plane

April 20, 2016 11:35 PM - Season 3, Episode 10

Abbi gets her period while on an airplane and enlists Ilana's help to find a tampon.
posted by Pendragon (8 comments total)

I found this episode to be a little bit... off. I don't really know how to explain that. Maybe it was just because they were out of their usual habitat.

That said, it sure had its moments. The two flight attendants, who seemed like they had an Abbi/Ilana thing going on themselves, were great. I loved all the many details we learned about their relationship, even though they were basically disposable characters.

The period talk, the Mohel high club, the improvised tampon, the "turbulance." It was all very funny.

On the whole I found this season lacking a bit. I didn't laugh out loud as much as I did the first two seasons. It's still funnier than almost anything else out there though.
posted by bondcliff at 7:09 AM on April 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

For some reason, this felt more of a long Key and Peele sketch than Broad City.
posted by lmfsilva at 10:01 AM on April 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I was kind of "meh", but I liked the flight attendants. And there were isolated things that I like a lot -- or, maybe, I liked the idea of them a lot. But the overall episode left me pretty lukewarm.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:58 PM on April 21, 2016

Like I've been saying, I'm interested to see how this season works on rewatch. No individual episode -- except for Burning Bridges -- really stands out for me. It also felt like it as an attempt to tell a longer, more complete story (while the previous two seasons had plot threads running through them, they were much more episodic and standalone).

This whole episode felt a little undeveloped and almost incomplete. It's not that the jokes didn't land as much as there just wasn't much there. But there was definitely a sweetness about this episode that I loved -- how Abbi and Ilana are always going to be there for each other, and even when they ended up strapped in and handcuffed at the end on the plane, they didn't care because they were together. After a season where I felt like they spent a lot of time apart, it was nice to see them back together, just being Abbi and Ilana.

(Ilana's life goal of making enough money to fly first class was perfect.)

I'm more than happy to let Abbi and Ilana grow up -- or try to -- and I think that's what this season was about. They're in a transitional point in their lives and so I think this was a transitional season. I'm excited to see what seasons 4 and 5 have to offer.
posted by darksong at 6:47 PM on April 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

I love the Key and Peele comparison - Tracy Ellis Ross made me think she should definitely play Key's sister in something.

This is totally my own hang up but this episode kind of stressed me out in terms of the framing story of Abby needing a tampon. I get that it's comedy and exaggerated for effect but it stressed me out for some reason. Like I said, I have issues, but I have been caught in this situation many times and you don't actually need "a tampon" so much as you need "something to put under your ass". And I personally get annoyed by sometimes women commenters on the internet acting like not sticking something up there to control your period is a fate worse than death and there are literally no other options. Their usual brand of "comedy magical realism" works so well because they're so grounded in reality that you trust them, you're willing to go with them wherever they want to take you. But if you don't click with the grounding story then the comedy part isn't taking you anywhere.
posted by bleep at 5:39 PM on April 22, 2016

This episode kind of fell flat for me too, and I wonder if it has anything to do with the possible last-minute changes to the script? The original plan was for the show to film in Israel for the finale, but that had to be cancelled for security concerns, so presumably the episode had to be re-written and (potentially) re-shot to send them back to the US. Maybe getting what we saw here was a rush job?
posted by Itaxpica at 10:27 PM on April 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

That sounds incredibly plausible actually! In light of that I'd give it higher marks.
posted by bleep at 11:20 PM on April 22, 2016

Maybe getting what we saw here was a rush job?

They cancelled the Israel trip back in October, so they had plenty of time to put something together, though Tracee Ellis Ross and Tymberlee Hill might have had availability issues.
posted by Etrigan at 4:08 AM on April 23, 2016