Fran Drescher And Susie Essman Played Sisters On ‘Broad City’

Sister sister Image by Forward Collage (Getty)

By Jenny Singer November 9, 2017

“Don’t raise your voice to me, missy! I’m the person who taught you to insert a diaphragm, so lets just show a little respect!” Susie Essman screamed at Fran Drescher Noevember 8th on ‘Broad City.’

Things are looking up in 2017.

The seventh episode of the politically fraught fourth season of “Broad City” offers a glimpse of the world to come: Boca Raton’s largely Jewish retirement communities. Illana and Abbi fly south with Illana’s mom Bobbi (Essman) and brother Eliot (Glazer’s real-life brother) to clean out Bobbi’s deceased mother’s apartment.

There’s just one thing standing in their way.

It’s her! Image by Comedy Central Screen Grab

Fran Drescher plays Beverly Baumgarten, Illana’s unmarried aunt who put off leaving Manhattan for the trip to Florida for a year because she might get “Hamilton” tickets. “Cheryl’s niece is dating an usher who could slip us through the garbage shoot, but we had to be ready at any moment! At ANY moment!”

Bev lost her virginity to Neil Friedman in a bungalow in the Catskills on family vacation. She wears earrings made of four (four!) curtain tassels. She’s not worried that the weed she’s smoking may have been stored in a family member’s orifice for the duration of a domestic flight. She’s perfect.

Glazer directed the episode, which was shot in her own recently deceased grandmother’s retirement community in Florida. Check out the wall hangings behind Drescher’s head:

Image by Comedy Central Screengrab

BRUCHIM HABAIM!

Image by Comedy Central Screengrab

That’s right, a hanging synthetic tapestry embroidered with pomegranates that says, “A Home Blessing: Let this be a place where peace abides.”

Florida, the broads discover, is not where peace abides. The increasingly heart-rendering season interrogates racism, even (don’t panic) Jewish racism.

Bruchim habaim to one and all.

Jenny Singer is a writer for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.