Broad City, Season 2, Episode 8, “Kirk Steele”
Wednesday, March 4, 2015, 10:30 PM (EST), Comedy Central
Broad City has had a lot of hilarious sexual moments, always from a feminist point of view, but nothing really compares to how typical gender representations were done the “right” way in Kirk Steele’s debut episode. It opens up with Ilana getting herself in the mood to masturbate. She doesn’t just lay back and quickly jerk off. No. She only deserves the best. She lights a candle, pulls up a beautiful picture of Abbi, plays sexy music, puts on makeup, sets up her mirror for a better view, and browses some solo porn. To her surprise, she stumbles upon Trey’s decade-old porn which he posted under the name Kirk Steele. What a find! To know Kirk is to make sweet, sweet fun of him.
Ilana wants to tell Abbi as soon as possible, but first she has to pick up the kid she’s babysitting for the day. He’s Oliver, a filthy rich kid Ilana hasn’t seen since he was some sort of “tuber sitting in his own poop” or something. I think that’s just how she describes cute babies. Abbi meets them at a coffeeshop right after her failed job interview for putting wristbands on customers at a shitty bar. Ilana catches Abbi up on the Oliver situation. Mainly, she wants to prevent him from becoming the worst version of his future self – a rich, old, useless white man. Oliver really likes her, so she has a good chance to some influence.
Ilana’s called Abbi there to show her the Trey porn, but first she has to explain how she found it in the first place. She only watches solo porn because everything else is pretty degrading to women. She started out with “average sized penis jerk” which led her to ‘twins squiriting” and then of course to “frosted tip masturbations” which brought up Kick Steele, who is 100% Trey from 10 years ago. Abbi is understandably floored that her boss is a porn star. At first, she’s blind to the possibilities, but Ilana steers her in the right direction. She’s going to use this information to blackmail him into giving her more responsibility at work.
In the middle of the work day, she’s slacking off eating pretzels. Trey gives his usual request for her to clean some horrifically disgusting mess, but Abbi refuses. She drops the name “Kirk” and he immediately asks to speak to her in her office, which is really just the maintenance closet. He offers to do anything to keep her quiet, including going down on her, but all she wants to do is teach the 12:30 kettle bell class. He’s hesitant, but he has no choice. Within 20 seconds of arriving to the class, pontificating about proper kettle bell form, she recklessly throws the kettle bell behind her and shatters the mirror. Trey/Kirk is extremely stressed since she hasn’t been trained to be a trainer so corporate can’t find out. They have to come up with $1400 to replace the mirror overnight.
Trey has a way to get his $700 quickly since he has a webcam, but Abbi has to think a little harder. She hurries home so she can dig all the cookies out of her chexmix, which apparently helps her solve problems. When just eating them isn’t working, she pounds them up in a mortar and pestle and snorts them like cocaine. The scene is shot in that same sort of dreamy/erratic way other drug scenes in the show are, which is a pretty hilarious effect. The chexmix cocaine helps her realize that she can make money from selling her clothes and art.
At the store, she takes her clothes to see if she can make some quick cash. The employee of the store is snobby and rude, only offering to buy for a measly $20 Abbi’s beautiful leather apothecary bag her dead Aunt gave her. On the street, she tries to sell her drawings for $40, but only one woman buys anything, and it’s only for $2. She almost made another sale, but that ended in a shouting match. Dejected, Abbi, Ilana, and Oliver return to his home. He explains to his mother that he spent the day with Ilana and her “girlfriend” Abbi, and that she loves Abbi but she can’t be with her yet. His mother is excited because she’ll be able to put his “gayby-sitter” on his CV for middle school applications. Ilana doesn’t exactly correct her.
Brilliant little Oliver comes up with a plan to get his mother to donate all of her expensive out of season clothes so Abbi can sell it all and get enough money for the mirror. It works! She was just going to give them to horses anyway, so what the hell. Whenever Broad City breaks out the slow motion, it’s always heart-stoppingly hilarious. This time, it’s used to show how powerful and flawless Abbi feels draped in expensive designer clothes. The same girl at the store acts like she doesn’t remember them. In one of the best movie references of the show so far, Abbi recreates the “do you work on commission” scene from “Pretty Woman” and says “Big mistake. Big. HUGE.” The store girl, humbled, now offers her $13000 in store credit or $903 in cash, which Abbi accepts, but has to use $226 of it to buy her Aunt’s bag back. Before she leaves, she says “By the way, I know that shirt’s from Forever 21, you’re not kidding anybody.” Sweet, sweet revenge.
Trey and Abbi then break into Soulstice and replace the mirror. Unfortunately, Trey still has to work off his $700, which presumably requires some webcam action. Abbi gets to lead a class full of elderly folks, and only because Regina, the regular instructor, has been missing for 24 hours, but she’s ecstatic that she’s moving up the ladder a little bit. The closing montage is clips of Kirk Steele porn, which really has to be seen to be believed. He humps a blow-up dolphin. I doubt the show can ever top that moment.
[The Roundup]
- “There’s $300 on the counter. Let Oliver hold it. He needs to learn.” I don’t know what that means. Rich people scare me.
- “The four R’s my friend. Reduce, reuse, recycle, Rihanna.”
- “If I don’t step in now, he might go to Yale, and then Yale law, and then kill a stripper and settle out of court.”
- “If I do nothing, he’ll turn into another useless, rich, old white man.” Ilana is my hero.
- “First of all, everybody’s watching porn in here.”
- Ilana takes Oliver on the subway. “We don’t talk about Uber down here.”
- “honestly, your legs look amazing.” Ilana is such a good babysitter.
- “Having a gayby-sitter will be wonderful for Oliver’s CV to get into middle school.”
- “Ilana, do the homeless like Prada?”
- Oliver chanting “yes queen” repeatedly while backing away from Ilana made her cry really hard. What a beautiful moment.
- “Are you ready to explore the infinite abyss?”
- “When I grown up, I either wanna be a stunt choreographer or I wanna work with kids with MS.”
Broad City has had a lot of hilarious sexual moments, always from a feminist point of view, but nothing really compares to how typical gender representations were done the “right” way in Kirk Steele’s debut episode.
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Masterful
