Broad City Season 1, Episode 7 Recap: The Poop Shoe

Broad City

Hurricane Wanda

Season 1 Episode 7

Editor’s Rating 4 stars ****

If someone poops in a shoe during a hurricane, does it make a sound?

Aside from an Inception-style dream sequence at the beginning (Jeremy dreaming of Abbi dreaming of Ilana dreaming it all, at work, at 5 p.m.), this is our bottle episode, taking place entirely in Abbi’s apartment during a Category 4 hurricane. The whole gang is there, and while the central conflict is, in fact, a double-arc about feces, there’s a world of relationship struggles happening in the tiny space.

Now that Bevers has invited his sister, Marla, into the space, Ilana finally asks the question we’ve all been wondering from the beginning: Where is his girlfriend? It goes directly against my feminist principles to champion invisible women, but I do love a good invisible character gag (Maris Crane on Frasier and Agent Cooper’s secretary Diane on Twin Peaks chief among them), yet the absence of Bevers’s girlfriend makes no sense — he is literally useless, a barnacle on the ship of life. That he is able to live in New York City, where one month’s rent costs more than having all of your teeth replaced with rubies (think of the terrifying sparkle!), is infuriating, and that’s probably why Lincoln and Ilana sneak into his room and rub their genitals on everything he owns. Bevers, by existing, is basically rubbing his dick all over the myth of meritocracy, so tit for tat, man.

Abbi is pissed off that Bevers didn’t go to New Jersey with his girlfriend and, on top of it, brought his speed-chugging anger-bomb of a sister to stay with him. She mostly takes out her anger in the form of slamming wine and spite-eating an entire tray of potato salad, which leads to her greatest problem: She can’t poop around other people, and she really has to go. Ilana is happy to step in and distract everyone, but things escalate when, after the deed is done, Abbi realizes that due to the power outage there’s no water and she can’t flush. 

This wouldn’t be a problem for me. Everyone shits, even Benedict Cumberbatch; no one is asking you to live in that knowledge full-time, but knowing that should be enough to help you go whenever and wherever you have to. Second of all, if I shit in my own toilet in my own apartment and it won’t flush? That’s your problem, because I live here. Welcome to my home, take off your shoes, get comfortable, and if you judge me within the parameters of my own dwelling, I will revenge-shit on your entire life; that’s just how it is. 

But that’s not how it is for Abbi, who, after chanting “this is an a-ha moment” to her Oprah tattoo in the mirror, begs Ilana to help her out. Ilana is the exact friend you want and need in a moment of crisis; she’ll get the job done, but she might also create a few more problems in the process. She’s up for the challenge, calling herself a “doo-doo ninja” and, after dreamboat neighbor Jeremy shows up unexpectedly with candles, referring to the poop problem as a sexy situation. It’s not a sexy situation for Abbi, who, on top of figuring out what Ilana is going to do with her shit, now has the perpetual nervousness of her crush on Jeremy to contend with. She flubs words and pretends to care about things she really doesn’t just to keep talking to him, and when the party evolves into aggressive, camp-style group activities, you wonder why she doesn’t just take a candle and suggest the two of them go to his place, away from the leg-wrestling speed freaks and uncomfortable personal revelations.

Marla interrogates everyone when she finds shit in her Shapelies, including Jeremy, who definitely wants to leave. There’s a lot to love about this scene, but my favorite part is Jaime’s almost imperceptible confession that he only goes twice a day due to his low-fiber diet. He’s been on an apology tour since he walked in the door, convinced that he has to rid himself of his burdens before this hurricane kills them, escalating from a swapped computer power cord to the fact that he used to call his pet turtle the N word, so if he had actually defecated in a shoe he would have been the first to pipe up.

Abbi, infuriated that Ilana put her shit in a shoe and humiliated by a game of Truth or Dare that had Ilana shouting out, “I dare you to suck Jeremy’s dick,” decides to confess after Marla shoves her wayward 11th toe in her face. Jeremy leaves, Abbi feels deflated, and then, like the demon in human form he actually is, Bevers thanks her for taking the heat since he was the one who shit in Marla’s shoe. This was never going to end well, but now that Abbi’s chance with Jeremy has been sufficiently squashed, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next episode opens with Bevers’s funeral.

If Bevers is the one who shit in a shoe, what did Ilana do with Abbi’s poop? She handled it like a tactical expert — first, she wrapped Abbi’s shit in a shower cap, duct-taped it into a compact log, strapped it to her body, and, employing the moves of a learned gymnast, cartwheeled it to the garbage shoot in the hallway. It’s nice that Abbi can still count on Ilana when push comes to shove, but it’s not like anyone came out of this night a winner.

Favorite Lines and Moments



• When Jeremy loses a leg-wrestling match to Marla, she casually says, “Don’t feel bad, I’m on speed.”
• “We’ve got your provisions — batteries, Starburst, Nutter Butters.”
• Bevers’s never-ending parade of disturbing sexual revelations, like his camp song about masturbation and the revelation that there’s a video of him and a friend sucking their own dicks.
• 
“Should I put my Lincoln log on one of these cans?”
• “I once ate a corn on the cob, including the cob. I do it every time.”
• Abbi pretending to have a dog instead of confessing that it’s her poop in that shoe.
• “Never have I ever read a newspaper.”

  “Really? Even homeless people read newspapers.”
• “I got a boot in my cooch and I do not care!”