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Watch: Hillary Clinton’s surreal cameo on Broad City

Naturally, it involves an air dancer like you’d see at a car dealership.

Caroline Framke
Caroline Framke wrote about culture, which usually means television. Also seen @ The A.V. Club, The Atlantic, Complex, Flavorwire, NPR, the fridge to get more seltzer.

In her continuing efforts to reach out to America’s #youth, Hillary Clinton stopped by Comedy Central’s Broad City on Wednesday to bask in some serious female empowerment.

In “2016,” Ilana (series co-creator Ilana Glazer) — newly unemployed after being fired from her job at a Groupon-style deals website — briefly becomes a cold call volunteer for Clinton’s presidential campaign. As she’s showing her best friend Abbi (series co-creator Abbi Jacobson) around the campaign’s New York City office (which apparently “smells decisive”), none other than Clinton herself comes strolling around the corner, smiling widely.

Not knowing what else to do, Abbi and Ilana let loose a string of manic screams, possibly in an attempt to wake themselves up from the dream they’re sure they must be having.

Clinton thanks Ilana for her commitment to the campaign, and then the scene ends with Clinton turning on a car dealership air dancer because she thinks it will boost office morale. “Isn’t she great?” Clinton asks as the nylon tube jerks and sways at a dance party of one. You can watch the full clip above.

The episode also features appearances from Cynthia Nixon as a Clinton campaign coordinator, Alan Alda as Abbi’s friendly neighborhood chiropractor, and Rachel Dratch (who also appeared on Broad City way back in its second episode) as the head of a quickly unraveling temp agency.

Broad City had been teasing Clinton’s appearance as far back as December, when the show tweeted out a picture of the monitors filming her cameo:

Clinton responded in kind, with a behind-the-scenes picture of herself, Glazer, Jacobson, and Broad City executive producer Amy Poehler:

Still, Jacobson and Glazer insist that having Clinton on Broad City isn’t the show trying to make a political statement. On March 12, Jacobson said at the South by Southwest media festival that incorporating the Clinton campaign into the show was in line with “something Ilana’s character would do. And Hillary, regardless of where we stand — and we love Hillary — Hillary is such an iconic figure.”

Glazer agreed: “We’re trying to make really good TV. ... I think you’ll agree that it’s a really good episode of TV because Hillary Clinton is in it.”

And “2016” is good, living up to Broad City’s typically surrealist standards and then some. It would have been enough to see Abbi delve into the nightmarish world of the DMV line and Ilana experience an orgasmic reaction after joining the Clinton campaign. But with the appearance of the presidential candidate herself — winking at the Broad City ladies in slo-mo — “2016” becomes one of the show’s most bizarre chapters to date.


Watch: Broad City’s weird and wonderful world of jokes


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