TV Review: Broad City S3E10 “Jews On A Plane”
Broad City airs at 10 PM EST on Comedy Central.
Whereas previous Broad City finales have gone expansive and used all of New York as a canvas (See “St. Marks” and even non-stop running/tracking shot Season 2 finale over the Broad City featuring an Amy Poehler cameo.), “Jews On A Plane” stays very tight and contained. The entire plot happens while Abbi and Ilana are on the flight to Israel to be a part of Birthmark (A parody of Birthright.), a free trip to Israel for young Jewish people to learn about their heritage and maybe even make babies. (And it’s not without its controversies, including its treatment of Palestinians and the two state solution as I discussed in my last review.) And unfortunately Abbi gets her period after she and Ilana finally play the world’s biggest game of Tetris and end him sitting one seat away each other with a guy between them, who is asleep, so they treat themselves to his headphones and a free movie. He turns out to be dead. This turn of events is a cliche, but it’s fun to see Abbi and Ilana show off their hustle in high altitude.
“Jews On A Plane” is excellent satire of American society’s stigma about women and their periods, and how privilege plays into this between Abbi’s yelps of pain. For example, while Abbi and Ilana are bemoaning the long line for the bathroom as Ilana McGyvers a makeshift tampon from pita, string, and other sundries, she says that this is how homeless women must feel. Then, there’s a pause and a moment of silence from director John Lee, and you can almost hear Ilana and Abbi catching their privilege especially after Abbi says something about choosing between food and tampons. This is a serious discussion and leads into the declaration that tampons can be free. (They’re not free yet, but some states are starting to remove the absurd “tampon tax” when freakin Viagara is tax exempt.) There is also a momentarily humorous and just plain real moment when Abbi and Ilana are looking for tampons amongst their fellow passengers, and Abbi talking to an older woman not realizing that she’s going through menopause. The actress playing the menopausal woman delivers an amazing line about women with menopause not getting representation in pop culture, and it’s very cutting. Throughout “Jews On A Plane, Glazer and Jacobson aren’t afraid to use Abbi’s period for comedy and to spur on the plot’s main action which is Abbi and Ilana’s epic quest to get a packet of tampons in first class while the flight attendants are on their own mission.
An interesting thing about “Jews on a Plane” is that writers Glazer and Jacobson spend quite a bit of time developing and looking into the characters of two flight attendants played by Tymberlee Hill and Annie Lee. Mona (Hill) is freaking out about not having anything to tell her old high school classmates at their upcoming reunion and is cycling through fictitious ones like being Beyonce’s nanny to stealing some of Annie Lee’s one like getting a bone marrow transplant. Their dialogue isn’t super funny, and they aren’t compassionate towards Abbi’s tampon-less plight, but they definitely share a bond. (Except midway in the episode, Lee says that she is tired of Mona only talking about herself, and that she doesn’t “like” her.) And this bond and desire to be the stars of their own quirky little story (Much like every episode of Broad City.) leads to them thinking Abbi and Ilana are terrorists and tackling them in a fun slow motion sequence featuring Lee checking her Fit-Bit as she goes over 10,000 steps while Abbi sings the Christian hymn “Hark the Herald Angels Sing!”, a shining example of her less than orthodox Judaism. The focus on these two, not particularly noteworthy characters posits the idea that they are the stars in their own version of Broad City, but with hijinks and pitfalls centered around being flight attendants and being a little bit older than Abbi and Ilana. Honestly, we’re all starring in our own version of Broad City right now.
In a season full of great guest stars, Seth Green of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Austin Powers, and Robot Chicken fame is the ginger cherry on top as Jared, the tour guide, who starts as overly earnest, but ends up telling Ilana that he’s only emphasizing the coupling of young Jewish people to get more commission money on the trip. This definitely turns her on with a quick flash of her erect nipples before cutting to a makeout session in the airplane restroom. He enjoys Ilana’s circumcision humor and joins the “Mohel Chai” club with her in an extremely clever joke that has to be explained for Abbi and some members of the audience, including yours truly.
But like many recurring gags this season, Broad City can start overusing a joke, but then there will be a nifty editing trick or line delivery from a supporting character that makes it fresh again. (Like the flight attendant glancing obsessively at her Fit Bit for the fourth or fifth time that episode during the slow mo sequence.) And sometimes the joke is just dead sadly, like the pilot and co-pilot going down on each other causing turbulence. But, for the most part, Broad City has grown more confident in its third season and become slick stylistically, adding serialized elements, and going deeper into the characters of Abbi and Ilana by looking at Abbi’s family life and Ilana’s inability to be employed. I don’t think anything can top Ilana and Abbi “switching places” in the second episode though.
Overall Rating: 8.0
Broad City Season 3
In the final issue of Mark Millar and Rafael Albuquerque’s feel good Americana-meets-Cold War era mad scientists tale Huck, there is plenty of punching and hugging as Huck and his mom fight the cyborg creations of Professor Orlov and try to make it back home. The plot sounds like the plot of a cheesy mid-1980s movie, but Millar makes sure the story doesn’t get too dragged down in spycraft and science fiction as he and Albuquerque focus on how Huck is still a good person even though he was originally created to be a bloodhound for a Soviet Union. Albuquerque’s art shows the larger than life nature of both Huck and his mom’s in a riveting hand to hand fight scene ending in a Superman-worthy feat of strength while he and colorist Dave McCaig set Huck #6 apart from most end of arc superhero stories with a beautiful epilogue showing Huck’s return to doing daily good deeds. It’s safe to say that he has a lot to catch up on after last issue’s backstory explosion.
Feeling the Pulse is a weekly issue by issue look at the follow-up series to Alias featuring Jessica Jones and a team of reporters at the Daily Bugle, who investigate and report on superhero related stories. In this installment of Feeling the Pulse, I will be covering The Pulse #12-13 (2005-2006) written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by Michael Gaydos with colors from Matt Hollingsworth.
Five issues in, and writer Peter Milligan and artist Brett Parson’s New Romancer continues to be a hot mess of a comic. Milligan can’t seem to develop any one of the four or five storylines at any kind of emotionally satisfying level, but he does land a few good moments along the way. There is the relationship between Lexy and her dad as he begins to regret tampering with her brain as Mata Hari holds him half naked to a cactus, and Lexy also gets to geek out about her all-time idol Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer and the daughter of Lord Byron, as she meets in some weird cyber zone. Casanova also continues to be irritatingly entertaining as a villain even though his scenes are stiffed in favor of the one note corporate head of Lexy’s dad’s old company, Incubator, Angel Beaufort. I guess she represents cold logic and profit compared to the art and romance of Lexy, but it isn’t clear if they’re foils or not.
Feeling the Pulse is a weekly issue by issue look at the follow-up series to Alias featuring Jessica Jones and a team of reporters at the Daily Bugle, who investigate and report on superhero related stories. In this installment of Feeling the Pulse, I will be covering The Pulse #10-11 (2005) written by Brian Michael Bendis with issue 10 pencilled by Michael Lark, inked by Stefano Gaudiano, and colored by Pete Pantazis and issue 11 drawn by Michael Gaydos with colors from Matt Hollingsworth.
Violence and tenderness collide once again in Midnighter #11 as Apollo saves his ex-boyfriend and our protagonist from certain death stemming out of last issue’s Deadshot exploding plane trick cliffhanger. The opening three pages showcase Aco’s storytelling abilities as he goes from the slow, very homoerotic burn of a shirtless Apollo tending to a wounded Midnighter to applying his layout skills to Apollo’s Superman-level speed and power set as he catches Midnighter in a moment that will make long time fans of the couple from their Wildstorm days in Stormwatch and The Authority beam with joy. Writer Steve Orlando‘s plot is mostly action-driven with Bendix (the man who experimented on Midnighter) unleashing The Unified and justifying its existence with the brashness of a more articulate War on Terror-era George W. Bush as Midnighter, Apollo, and Helena Bertinelli battle the Suicide Squad while learning from their mistakes. But he also leaves enough time to dig into Apollo and Midnighter’s (kind of) reconciliation showing that they still deeply care for each other and also that they make a great team. And their conversations are the beating heart of the issue.
WicDiv #18 signals the beginning of the comic’s imperial phase with the triumphant return of artist Jamie McKelvie and colorist Matthew Wilson as they and writer Kieron Gillen drop the introspective character studies of the previous arc for some well-earned action sequences and magical musical explosions. It’s like when your favorite band stopped playing small clubs and intimate venues and started playing arena rock. But damn good arena rock, like Queen or Rush in the late 70s and early 80s, the Smashing Pumpkins on their Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness album, or Muse in this millennium. (Before they started putting songs on Twilight soundtracks.)
