Broad City’s Ilana Steps Out as Glazer in First Ever Stand-Up Special.
“There are a lot of differences between Ilana Wexler and Glazer. Obviously, Ilana Wexler wakes and bakes…Ilana Glazer on the other hand, wakes up, takes her vitamins, and then I get high,” Ilana says to open up her Amazon stand-up special out now. “Ilana Wexler is free to buy her weed wherever, in the street, in a building nook, riding across the Williamsburg bridge…In my real life, I have my husband to buy our weed from a New York delivery service while I hide in the closet, scrolling Instagram.” she jokes, “New York weed delivery people make up 80 percent of my demo, and the other 20 percent is here tonight.”
It is an opener that is sure to satisfy Broad City fans. Although Abbi does not appear during the 1-hour special, Glazer’s signature physical comedy that Broad City fans know and love occurs throughout, and, in many ways, serves as a logical extension of the 5-season critically-acclaimed show.
For her first special, Glazer focused on those who continue to enable inequality. “Men’s razor is superior to women’s razors,” she says, “It’s almost as if it was designed that way. No, they wouldn’t do that…and someone decided 6 or 7 years ago to line the permitter of women’s razors with soap and rubber. Houston, let me ask you, someone, be real with me, do I look too dumb to lather my own leg? Let me ask you another thing after one shower doesn’t the soap became the texture of cum?” Glazer continues by telling us about her ultimate fantasy in which she gets her legs shaved by the most progressive Brooklyn barber before she delves into the process of using her diva cup in the same graphic detail you’d expect from Weller.
Glazer takes on Nazis first by calling out homophobes, “when someone is homophobic, they are just admitting they are thinking about gay shit all the time,” she jokes, “homophobia is like when somebody farts and immediately blames someone else. But we all know he who smelt it is curious about hooking up with another dude, and that is fine. It is healthy.”
“They are back in a big way,” Glazer says after joking that she “LARP’d the Holocaust” as a kid in Hebrew school, the Nazis in our country are such a mess. Their branding is very loose. They don’t even have a look, you know. They have that red hat, but they really just look like a bunch of golfers who sat in the sun for too long. And their march from Party City? Like I could have picked up a dozen tiki-torches, I’m not impressed by you. But Hitler’s Nazi’s if we are comparing Nazi’s were on point. They had so much art direction. Like brand concept meeting after brand concept meeting. Did you know the Nazi costume was designed by Hugo Boss of Macy’s fame? They were so enthusiastic about it.” Weller pauses and then delivered, “The Nazi’s acted like they hated us, but I’m like ‘y’all were obsessed with us,’ The Nazi’s were totally gay for the jews starting with over the knee patent leather boots.”
Glazer noted there had been progress, but there is a lot that still needs to change. “I grew up thinking there were progressive spaces and conservative spaces,” Glazer says, “but it’s all a fucking mess. Like New York is so liberal. No. It’s fucking racists, misogynistic, and terrifying at times. Hollywood is so progressive. Okay, if Hollywood is so progressive why is Mel Gibson still here?” Glazer brings up Gibson’s past racist, anti-semitic and misogynistic rhetoric. “I’m grateful to be a woman in 2019. It’s the best it’s been, yet,” she jokes, “Bummer.”
Glazer ends her set by calling out Hollywood’s, and all of our, romanticizing on what a woman should be. “So I watched Rear Window, recently,” she started. “It was fine. It was interesting. But there was one thing I could not get past. And that was Grace Kelly’s tiny little voice. I was like, ‘what, bitch? Speak up! I can’t hear you.’ No, this voice was designed. This was a voice perfectly received by the male eardrum. Never too high; she is not a shrill bitch. Not to low…and, the woman at this time sounded this way. You know, Like Audrey Hepburn, and I love Audrey Hepburn too but whatever…They always sounded like everything is wonderful. This world that men designed for us.” Glazer comes up with a theory, which you have to watch the special to hear.
Both Ilana Wexler and Ilana Glazer are funny, use physical comedy as their secret weapon, and see the world as something that needs to keep progressing. Their approach is the same: to call out past injustices and inequalities, just like she was taught to do in Hebrew School.
We still want more Broad City, but this special will hold us over for a little.
