Screen: Broad City
Though she may lack the radical optimism (or utter heedlessness) of her best friend Ilana, Abbi must still, on some level, have a bedrock belief that her life is trending upward. If not, she surely couldn't force herself to keep going back to Soulstice to pick back up with the worst, most unappreciated drudgery most of us are lucky never to know. Proof of her optimism is on display early on in this week's Broad City, as a new element has been introduced to break up her Sisyphean labours: enter Maria, a new Soulstice cleaner with whom Abbi is eager to share the breadth of her experience. Would Maria ever know that she's expected to root through bags of real garbage in search of incorrectly disposed towels if not for Abbi? And has all of Abbi's torture and toilet-snaking really been in vain if she now finds herself in the role of Maria's mentor?
Naturally, reality intrudes, and Abbi's grandiosity can't last. First, her self-appointed status as Maria's manager is undermined when Trey rolls up to tell her
Given its anti-timeliness, Trey's Apprentice reference doesn't quite land, and Abbi momentarily believes she is fired for real. But no: he's just stopped by to tell her that her day is about to get worse: "Somebody barfed on an exercise ball, and then it bounced down two flights of stairs."
Friends, we all know there are some shows that would be content to let this puked-on exercise ball remain an offscreen event. We might have even thought Broad City was such a show when the scene went on through Abbi's exchange with another trainer. We got juuuuust enough time enough to forget about it. But it didn't forget about us.
We should have known that exercise ball was Broad City's answer to Chekhov's gun.