Broad City S3 Episodes 8 & 9 - The SSL Review
SSL Review Intro
I'm continuing to move through season 3 of Broad City, SSL Reviewing the shit out of it when eligible scenes arise. Eligible scenes being those that include depictions and/or discussions of female orgasm and/or masturbation. That's the only thing I comment on in these reviews. I'm looking for physical realism (if a lady is masturbating to orgasm by rubbing weed against her face, I will call bullshit on scientific and basic anatomical ground), and I'm also looking for what part the scene plays in our cultural conversation about female orgasm and sexuality. So, thems the basics. If you want more TV SSL Reviews head HERE. Want some movie SSL reviews? Go HERE.
Season 3 Episode 8
The Shower Scene
Abbi is showering with a dude. It begins while she's shampooing her hair as the dude is eating her out. Well, actually, I don't know that. I assume heavily that is what's happening. She's standing, and he's knelt down in front of her facing her, but he's completely out of frame. He could honestly be doing anything down there, and there are no verbal clues about what specifically is happening body part to body part. Maybe he's getting in real close to give it a good look and diddling that clit with his palm. I mean who knows the writers' and actors' intentions behind this scene. However, I feel like most viewers would definitely assume oral sex is happening, so that's what I'm going to assume was happening.
Okay, again I don't know the specifics, but I can say these 2 things about what's happening.
Abbi verbalizes and moves in a way that would seem that whatever he's doing to her feels real good.
She's standing upright and steady while he's doing whatever he's doing down there. She's not moving like she's getting fingers rammed in and out of her puss or like she's maneuvering to spread her legs in any way. So, that would make me assume he's messing with the upper parts of the vulva area - which is absolutely the area that needs to be stimulated for lady-gasms.
My aside about trade-off oral
Oh - did I mention that they kept trading off. He goes down, then her, then him... - getting each other aroused and switching before anyone pops off. Did I also mention that I'm a big fan of the trade-off oral? 'Cause I surely am. I love getting oral- that's 100% true. I also like giving some oral as much as the next girl, but can we all agree that giving head is 300% better if you are horny while doing it? And can we further agree that you are a hell of a lot less horny after your come? We need to take that into consideration more when we're planning the oral turns. Like, when one person gets serviced before starting in on the other, then one of you has to go down on the other even though their recent orgasm just immediately popped them back into an un-horny reality where everything is just a little more gross. It's more fun to sorta travel that horny, senseless, gross road to orgasm together, or at least closer together, like Abbi and this dude did.
Okay -back to the shower scene
Anyway, during this back and forth, he asks her to go to dinner with him and she eventually says yes. He pops up, and she begins to take her turn going down, and the following conversation happens:
Dude: Oh - you don't have to. Um, I uh...I actually finished when you said yes.
Abbi: Ahhh :) - I definitely didn't though*
Then she kinda pushes his head down and leans her head back like she's enjoying it before the scene cuts.
*Just so you know, I added the smiley face emoticon in there to give you a sense of her tone. I believe emoticons should become standard tone punctuation, but we don't need to discuss that here.
What does it all mean?
So, let's review:
This was a situation in which a woman and man are having a sexual situation that does not involve intercourse.
They are enjoying it and both orgasm (or at least they both expect to)
There is no sense from the characters or the tone of the show that their style of sexual interaction is weird
The physical things that were assumed to be happening to the woman are things that could actually cause a woman to orgasm
A woman unabashedly expects orgasm in a sexual act that could actually cause her to orgasm and her partner and the tone of the scene treat that as completely normal
Put all that together, and that's some progressive, orgasm equality style television. You'd think that this kind of sexual interactions in TV and Movies wouldn't be so rare, but it is. Most sexual interaction is intercourse, women are often shown to orgasm from only p-in-v stimulation (which in reality is rare at best), and women are often made to seem weird or too aggressive if they actively pursue orgasm in any other way besides P-in-V.
Season 3 Episode 9
This is a simple one that really just barely qualifies for an SSL Review, but I like it, so I'm reviewing it.
Abbi and Ilana are going on a trip, and the morning they leave, they are talking on the phone. They're asking each other if they packed certain things, ya know, to help each other not forget things. One of the things Abbi asks Ilana is if she packed her vibrator - which she did.
The reason this simple dialogue is important is that it normalized:
the owning of a vibrator,
the fact that a woman would take a vibrator on a trip,
and the fact that a friend would know about the vibrator and understand that it should be packed.
The scene and the characters treated this all as par for the course, and so all those things were normalized, which means that other things get normalized by association, like:
women masturbating,
women admitting to friend that they masturbate,
women's use of vibrators in partnered sex,
and women's need for the kind of clitoral/vulva stimulation that vibrators provide.
Those are the kinds of things that need to be normalized in order for women to gain orgasm equality in the bedroom. So simple, but so progressive.
The Vulva Rating
Broad City consistently knocks it out of the park with orgasm equality style revolution. They slide it in with humor, and hoards of people get to ingest the realistic, clit-centric, lady-bation loving, equal-opportunity-orgasm sex having shenanigans.
This is another 5 out of 5 vulva rating. (!)(!)(!)(!)(!)