2 Broke Girls ‘And The Drug Money’: Nasty Side Effects

Back in November, I stopped watching 2 Broke Girls after viewing  ‘And The Hoarder Culture.’ I had grown sick of the racism, sexism, and lack of any substance past fart jokes and  self-deprecating attitudes. But with nothing else to watch Monday night, it was a good time to check back in and see how the show was heading into its final stretch of episodes in its first season.

The first thing I noticed is the plot structure: I don’t know if this is common practice now, but ‘And The Drug Money’ was completely void of any secondary plot. The writers are still clearly doing a poor job writing scenes and interactions between anybody but the two leads, and at times, it feels like Max and Caroline are living in a bubble – which is completely inaccurate portrayal of New York. Instead of using the show’s backdrop of edgy eccentricities (both in culture and characters) to provide humor, 2 Broke Girls stumbles through joke after joke after joke about the same narrow set of borderline-offensive topics by shoving everything they’ve got into the two main characters.

At least the show is attempting to make one of its characters a bit more compassionate: Caroline’s made some noticeable strides towards human intelligence, although this really just means the show is starting to pull away from the dumb rich blonde girl jokes. She’s know a little more witty and self-aware in her interactions with Max and others, which was sorely needed. I did find the whole emotional deposition thing both quite unbelievable for her character, however. She didn’t have any knowledge of what her father was doing, so why did she enter the deposition with such a lack of confidence? Caroline is supposed to be the optimistic half of these two, and her attitude would be more enthusiastic to try and help her father. Instead, she shrivels into a weak little female who can’t even handle a deposition by herself. One thing this show can’t do is emotion: Caroline’s awkward speech and crying session about what her father used to do with her was super-awkward and poorly executed, feeling more like a forced moment of trying to build some kind of relationship between her and a man the audience hasn’t even seen.

Also, no lawyer in the world gives a shit if your convict father is ‘nice’, and I could’ve done without the sappy speech at the end, which the show tried to lighten by integrating the major plot from the first half: Max and Caroline enter a drug trial to pay for the lawyer Caroline “has to have” for the deposition, even though he’s charging her $1100. Of course, there are wildly varying side effects – of which Max is apparently an expert of these drug trials, usually going in the hopes of catching a nice buzz on something (how charming). At the deposition, Caroline’s side effects kick in, and Max has to feed her answers to the lawyers, mixing physical comedy with an attempt at an “AWWWWW, they have the best friendship ever!” moment right in there.

What really still bugs me most about 2 Broke Girls is the format: every episode I’ve seen of the show feels like it was written out of a Mad Libs book. It’s a display of the writer’s barely competent abilities to be able to follow the traditional format of three jokes a minute, repeated in three different scenes, but not be able to build out anything around it. There’s no deviation from the structure whatsoever, and it leaves each script feeling mindless and repetitive. It’s lazy writing, and makes it clear this show is around to do nothing but tell stupid jokes and fill a lot of people’s bank accounts. I’m sorry, but I don’t find anal leakage jokes ‘edgy’ or ‘funny’, and it seems this show is either talking about something like that, or how Max likes to spread her legs for whatever comes along. And the show’s not even confident in the jokes it tells, throwing in desperate laugh tracks every eight seconds to punctuate the end of each unfunny line. It’s really fucking pathetic.

In the four months since I last watched an episode, 2 Broke Girls hasn’t changed much, and now that it’s settled into its identity, its clear this show isn’t ever going to do anything interesting – or attempt to make any humor outside of jokes about sex, Asians, and bodily functions. This show really just isn’t funny, and at its best moments, feel like a first draft from a freshman script-writing course. At least they’ve made Caroline less stupid, right? Can we call that “hope”?

Grade: D

Other thoughts:

– I really hate Max. She’s condescending, boorish, and ultimately, is portrayed as a bitter, uneducated slob who has no filter from brain to mouth – and not in a charming way. Terrible, terrible, terrible character. Plus her Law & Order bit was tiring, and full of jokes we’ve heard a bunch already.

– I also cannot stand the diner scenes. Here’s the formula: Max acts nasty to a customer, the black guy says something wild or acts “cool” (what fucking diner has someone who sits and does nothing), Oleg makes a sex joke, and Han does something Asian. BORING.

– can we get rid of that fucking money count? In four months, THEY’VE MADE 300 BUCKS.

– I’m sorry, but self-mutilation jokes aren’t funny. Neither are jokes about middle school girls getting fucked up on pills. The show is so insensitive, it’s amazing how popular it is.

– Neosporin is fourteen bucks?

– Why was the nurse super gay? Just so they could make the tired joke of a gay guy in the club (and connect it to Oleg)? WEAK SAUCE.

What did you think? Am I way too hard on 2 Broke Girls, or do you think it sucks, Hoover-style? Feel free to leave your thoughts below!