Broad City is one of the few shows on TV that accurately portrays women in their 20’s. According to Amy Poehler (aka Broad City’s executive producer), “Women always have to be the eye rollers, as the men make a mess. We didn’t want that. Young women can be lost, too”. We could not be more thankful for a show that provides an honest look into the lives of young millennial women who don’t always have it together. It’s a refreshing break from the glitz and glamour of shows like Friends and Gossip Girl, which portray young people who have everything they could ever want in New York City without lifting a finger.

So let’s further appreciate one of the most realistic TV shows of all time, one that finally manages to accurately portray women in their 20’s.

ROOMMATE HORROR STORIES

Your 20’s are all about finding yourself, yet sometimes it can be difficult to do this when your roommate is hogging up all your personal space. Funnily enough, Bevers isn’t even Abbi’s roommate, he’s Abbi’s roommates’ boyfriend who spends all his time prancing around her apartment in his underwear and claiming ownership over all of Abbi’s stuff. He’s constantly eating all of Abbi’s food, invading her personal space, and throwing away all her Bed Bath and Beyond coupons that she has been saving up for a lifetime. In our 20’s, we all will experience the “Bevers”-style roommate at least once in our lives.

 THE IMPORTANCE OF NAPPING

Many of us end up working odd jobs that we aren’t necessarily passionate about in order to make ends meet, especially in our 20’s. After late nights of partying and marathoning our shows, some of us will look for creative ways to do the absolute bare minimum to get through our day or shift. In Ilana’s case, this includes taking much-needed naps as often as possible, including a daily snooze in the bathroom stall. Hey, it takes a lot of energy to be a full-grown adult, there’s no shame in sleeping in until 5 pm every once in a while… right?

HAVING A SERIOUS CASE OF #FOMO

FOMO, otherwise known as “Fear Of Missing Out”,  is a condition that is sweeping the nation, especially for 20-something women. We will jump from party to party until we find the right club that will change our lives as we know it. Unfortunately, having a bad case of FOMO will sometimes stand in the way of being able to be fully present. Sometimes the pressure we put on ourselves to have the most epic night of our lives will put a damper on the whole experience. This is certainly the case for Abbi and Ilana in the season 2 episode “Hashtag FOMO” where Abbi fakes having a tapeworm in her butt so she can leave a party with Ilana in order to search for the next best thing.

Speaking of Val…

ALTERNATE PERSONALITIES WHEN DRUNK

When Abbi gets blackout drunk, she becomes a completely different person named “Val”, a beloved jazz singer at an underground bar. Everyone praises Val as she waltzes around the place, greeting everyone by name. The funniest part is, she doesn’t remember any of this the next day, despite the fact that she has been drunkenly becoming this Val character for at least three years in the making. Everyone gets a bit wild when they go out for a drink with their pals, but some of us become completely different people who are pretty much the opposite of our everyday personas.

INSANELY AWKWARD DATES, COURTESY OF BUMBLE/TINDER

We’ve all powered through impossibly awkward Bumble/Tinder/Ok Cupid dates, yet perhaps nothing is as excruciating as watching Abbi and her old high school professor attempt to have relations. As Ilana and Lincoln experience relationship milestones, Abbi and Mr. Miller engage in a cringe-worthy roleplay fantasy that ends up to be a total disaster. Luckily, Jaime and Ilana are there to save the day from the impossible awkwardness because that’s what friends are for, right?

FEELING OLD AF EVEN THOUGH WE’RE BASICALLY CHILDREN

In “Witches”, Abbi gets her first gray hair and begins to feel old and shriveled up. It triggers her anxiety about losing her youth. While Abbi sees it as a nightmare, Ilana sees it as a blessing. According to Ilana, Abbi is finally transforming into a witch, which is basically the best thing that could ever happen to a woman. As the episode progresses, Abbi starts to strongly identify (to her horror) with an elderly lady played by Jane Curtin. Sometimes in our 20’s, we mistakenly think we’re getting super old when, in reality, we are still fetuses in the world. Broad City brilliantly embraces the beauty of getting older and encourages viewers to cherish aging rather than frown upon it.

FINDING ODD WAYS TO MAKE MONEY

Broad City is filled with hilarious scenes where Abbi and Ilana suffer in order to make the cash necessary to pay rent and save up for concert tickets. You know, equivalent priorities for 20-something women. In the season 2 episode “Kirk Steele”, Abbi is determined to figure out how to make a thousand bucks in a short period of time so she resorts to snorting Chex Mix in an attempt to further her ideas (but only the rye chips, of course).

In the pilot, Ilana and Abbi clean a man’s house while in their underwear to score Lil’ Wayne tickets, but what they don’t know is that this man (played hilariously by Fred Armison) has a fetish where he likes to pretend to be a baby. He offers to pay them in blocks because he’s “Just a little baby”. This is just one of the many examples of the two trying to score money, including dog walking several K-9’s at a time, playing the role of “the queen of mean” waitress at a sushi restaurant run by Ru Paul, and cleaning the toilets at a gym where your boss is utterly obsessed with the movie “Garden State”. But hey, we all gotta make a living somehow, right?

FREAKING OUT WHEN PEOPLE ASSUME WE’RE MOMS

Some women in their 20’s make excellent mothers, while others aren’t even thinking about kids. In fact, some women in their 20’s still consider themselves to be kids. This is clearly the case for Abbi, who freaks out when a woman assumes she is a mother. The concept of having that much responsibility makes Abbi go nuts and even causes her to kick a cardboard cutout man in the face, as she screams that she’s “NOT A MOM!!!”

We know Abbi… We know.

 DREAMING SMALL

When we’re little kids, we want to be mermaids. When we’re a bit older and more realistic, we want to be famous pop stars. When we’re in our late teens, we want to be artists. When we’re in our twenties, we’d be just fine working as a waitress as long as it will give us some extra cash. In the episode “St Mark’s”, Ilana turns 23 and she and Abbi discuss what they hope to accomplish in the next year of their lives. In our 20’s, we learn to take pride in ourselves for the simpler things, including finishing a book, (reading one, not writing one), doing one legit pull-up (for real this time), and keeping a plant alive for more than two weeks.

If we can accomplish these small goals, then honestly what CAN’T we do?

ACTING LIKE A FOOL IN FRONT OF OUR CRUSH

One might think the awkwardness of being around a person you’re smitten for would subside after middle school, but this is far from the truth. Abbi’s interactions with the men she is attracted to are pure proof that you can take the girl out of her awkward middle school stage yet you can’t take the awkward middle school stage out of the girl. That stuff stays. Abbi will do literally anything (and we mean anything cough cough pegging) to get the attention of her crush Jeremy. She literally breaks the shelf in her room just so Jeremy could come over and fix it in a hilarious fantasy sequence. She even sends him a 23-minute long voicemail filled with Drew Barrymore impersonations when she gets her wisdom teeth taken out.

This all just goes to show that getting by as a woman in your 20’s is a hilariously awkward, uncomfortable, but beautiful thing.