A Broad City Wedding Road Trip Doesn't Go As Planned, In None Of The Ways You'd Expect

Of all the things Broad City does uncommonly well -- a long list -- the one that may delight me the most is the way it subverts our expectations of pop culture's oldest and hoariest tropes. Abbi meets a dreamy guy who turns out to be really boring...but she fights through her disappointment and sleeps with him anyway. Ilana and Abbi kick off a shopping montage to get Abbi a new dress for a fancy party...and then just end up buying the first one she tries on. Abbi's sexy fantasy about Jeremy coming over to put up some shelves turns out to be Jeremy's fantasy about his sexy neighbour, which turns out to be Abbi's fantasy of Jeremy having a sexy dream about her...which turns out to be Ilana's fantasy of having sex with Abbi. But this week's episode gives the show a chance to take on a bunch of romcom clichés and turn them inside out.

We begin in medias res, with Abbi, Ilana, and Lincoln in formalwear, racing down the street to meet a deadline. Quick yet agile exposition informs us that two of the other people with them we've never met before are former co-workers from Ilana and Abby's old catering job, and that they're on their way to Connecticut to attend while another of their former colleagues gets married (which doesn't explain why Morgan, who has a giant "boner" for Abbi, is wearing a strapless off-white dress that sure looks a lot like a wedding gown). We also learn that Abbi has impetuously invited the third new person, Will, to be her date for the wedding even though this will only be their second time going out together.

So already, there's a lot about this situation that's typical of a romcom wedding trip. Like: Abbi is worried that this is pushing their relationship too far too fast, though Will seems fine with it; Will thinks that doing this for Abbi will incline her to sleep with him when it's over; the non-detail-oriented Ilana has brought them to the wrong place to catch their train to Bridgeport, and now they're going to have to scramble, comedically, to the right place and hope against hope that they make it, oh noes!

Here's what's not typical: when Will hears that the train they'll need to catch is leaving not from Grand Central Station, where they are, but from Penn Station, he's out. Like, forever.

Will: It's been a whirlwind, right?
Abbi: I know!
Will: We've both been having fun.
Abbi: Yeah.
Will: Talked about getting that dog.
Abbi: Uh huh.
Will: But um, Penn Station. I can't. It's disgusting. It's kind of a dealbreaker for me.
Abbi: Okay, I'm confused--
Will: But you know, maybe this is one of those really romantic New York stories, where you meet someone amazing...
Abbi: [beams with relief]
Will: ...and then [explosion noise]! Tragedy happens, and they're gone, and you never see them again, and you wonder what they did with their whole life. [He kisses her.] Good luck, kid.

The episode is full of moments like this. Like: Morgan keeps talking up her brother in front of Abbi, which we assume is because she has a girl crush on Abbi and wants to keep Abbi in her life by hooking her up with Morgan's brother -- and I mean talking him all the way up, including bragging on the prodigious size of his penis before trying to take it back ("Delete! Delete, delete, delete, delete!"). But when the day ends and Abbi and Ilana need to get rid of her, Abbi sends her off with a dismissive "Go fuck your brother, dude."

Morgan is not trying to hear this from what she terms a couple of "druggie lesbian Jews," so she storms off in the way of all tight-ass WASP romcom antagonists. Where she departs from the usual script, however, is that she does fuck her brother -- or at least lets him go down on her while the two enjoy a bath together.

Or: there's this moment, where what's required is a plan so crazy it just might work...except that such a plan is kind of hard to conceive and flesh out in a limited period of time except on a sitcom.

This show is so nimble that it even finds a way to reverse its reversal. After Will has taken off and Abbi has joined the rest of her crew in a Penn Station-bound cab, Will makes the classic romcom move of chasing after his beloved at the last, most romantic, most dramatic moment to tell her how wrong he was.

"Abbi!" he cries. "Wait, wait!" But as soon as the car is out of frame, Will does what no romcom hero ever does: he just straight gives up.

He's right, anyway, I mean HAVE YOU SEEN JEREMY.