All The Hassle Of A Terrible Roommate, And None Of The Help With The Rent

I realize it must happen all over the world: you enter into a roommate situation with someone -- maybe someone who wasn't a friend to begin with -- and then that roommate starts dating someone, and then that roommate's boy- or girlfriend starts sleeping over a lot, and then at some point you realize that you're actually living with two roommates, except one of them isn't kicking in any rent. And yet, even though I know it must happen all over the world, it feels like a particularly New Yorky problem, which is why it has happened to Broad City's Abbi. And while there have probably been times during the series run when you've watched his antics and hissed "Fucking Bevers" (just me? Surely not), the latest episode brings Bevers to a whole new category of heedless assholism, and god, it's amazing to watch.

After a cold open in which we learn that one of Abbi's sexual fantasies is Jeremy having a sex dream about her ("My neighbour Abbi is so sexy, and now I have this great big humungous boner"), a hurricane is bearing down on New York. As we all know, a sub-catastrophic weather event can be kind of fun as long as you don't get...you know, caught in it; everyone's hunkered down, no one expects you to do any work, and emergency-food calories can't find you if the lights go out. With Ilana bringing over Lincoln, Jaime (Ilana's often-absent roommate), and a whole pan of bodega potato salad, this would have been a pretty fun hurricane party if not for two things:

1. Bevers
2. Bevers's sister Marla

I like to think that Abbi is tolerant enough not to have held Bevers against Marla, or at least to pretend to keep an open mind, and Marla immediately proves that she's awful on her own (non-)merits, irrespective of her relationship to her brother. She refers to potato salad as "p. sal"; she's already told Abbi before we arrive in the scene that she has an eleventh toe, "and she said it's not where you would expect it to be." Also, Marla's there because she wanted to see where Bevers lives, even though, as Abbi is quick to remind everyone, he technically doesn't live there; Abbi's actual roommate, Bevers's girlfriend, is at her parents' house in New Jersey, but Bevers didn't feel like going because her parents like him too much.

So, sure, why wouldn't Bevers stay where no one likes him? He has no idea that no one likes him! (In fact, I won't believe that his ish-in-laws like him too much until we meet them; Bevers's judgment on this issue is obviously very dubious.) And while I feel for Abbi as much as one can for a fictional character, I'm glad Bevers is here, for the sake of the show. Abbi can't stand Bevers because he's a gross, socially awkward, oblivious mooch who's always around. As the hurricane approaches, all those things are true, plus there are essentially two of him, and everyone is trapped.

Had Abbi considered what could happen, chances are she would not have "spite-eaten" the whole pan of potato salad, requiring that she do something she apparently never does normally: take a shit when any other person is present. But needs must, and with Ilana generously offering to create a diversion, Abbi gets relief...only to discover to her complete horror that the power outage from the storm means she can't flush the toilet.

And then Jeremy comes over.

Having empowered Ilana to get rid of her horrible...work product "by any means necessary," Abbi does her best to take advantage of the potentially sexy situation of having Jeremy in her home, flirting and being alluring and distracting everyone's attention from whatever kind of smells like "dookie," because she doesn't know exactly what Ilana's done to get rid of her poo and she doesn't want to know. But before long, the jig seems to be up, as Marla confronts everyone present with an urgent question.

Ilana can't jump in to create a distraction, because she's too busy being a good friend to Abbi by joining Lincoln in defiling Bevers's girlfriend's bedroom every way they can -- touching everything with Lincoln's penis, rubbing her butt all over the bedding, farting in a drawer. And because Abbi is Broad City's Ziggy, she doesn't let the situation get too out of hand before confessing that she took a shit and that Ilana, apparently, put it in Marla's shoe. By now, we know enough about Abbi to buy that she'd crack, and enough about Ilana to buy that, to her, "by any means necessary" might mean "with the least amount of hassle and/or as quickly as possible in order to get back to helping Abbi maneuver herself into blowing Jeremy" (and, I mean, Ilana really did her best: if daring Abbi to do it in the context of a Truth or Dare round doesn't work, what could?!). The hurricane spell is broken. Jeremy leaves.

...and that's when we learn that Bevers is more horrible than we even knew. And we knew a lot. We've seen (or seen evidence of) him eating Abbi's cheese, stopping up her toilet (on a previous occasion), leaving the apartment only when she's not there, failing to pass as Jeremy for the purposes of picking up a parcel, cock-blocking her with Jeremy when the two of them go for a dude dinner, and farting at her. On this night alone, he does an old rap that threatens to end with him exposing his "mushroom cap" (Marla: "You can show me later") and reveals that when he was at camp, he and another kid used to blow themselves ("There's a video of it!"). But that all seems like perfectly reasonable behaviour compared to his taking a shit in his sister's shoe and letting Abbi take the fall for it. Of course Abbi hates him! Who wouldn't?!

The only problem with this episode in terms of the Abbi/Bevers relationship is that there are still three more episodes to go in the season, and I can't imagine how they're going to heighten her loathing past this point. I'd say the only worse thing Bevers could do to Abbi is murder Jeremy, but then, given that Jeremy thinks Abbi let one of her turds spend an evening hanging out in a near-stranger's shoe, it probably doesn't matter anymore. Anyway, Bevers is the worst non-roommate that has ever lived; if anyone could think of new ways to be disgusting, he can. And if he can't, they can always bring back Marla.

What's that? You don't want to see any more of her?