If you’ve been in civilization for the past month, you’ve heard about the new sitcom 2 Broke Girls. It’s about two Brooklyn diner waitresses: one, a sassy struggling cupcake maker (Max), the other a prissy trust fund girl (Caroline) whose dad pulled a Madoff, leaving her nothing but a horse and a tarnished reputation, it seems. As a girl who is both broke and who has been a waitress living in Brooklyn, I thought I’d pass on some friendly tips to these ladies. Granted, they’re make-believe characters inhabiting a TV-land version of Brooklyn, but still. The CBS version of a broke girl’s Williamsburg pad looks pretty swank to me. Then again, it’s tough to shoot in dark, musty, cramped, windowless, roach infested spaces, so let’s cut ’em some slack. Sex and the City wouldn’t have been as fun if Carrie — the poor one — was an Italian Neorealist heroine living in a cardboard box searching for her stolen Manolos, right? Let’s begin.
1. Sell Mr. Ed and get a Mr. Coffee instead: Sure, people get attached to their pets and it’s sad to let them go, but seriously, if these girls cry about how broke they are while they’re walking Caroline’s horse one more time, I may scream. It’s animal cruelty to keep the poor thing cooped up in a Brooklyn “backyard” anyways. Sell the horse to a nice farmer and put that money toward your business. And if they’d stop buying $4 coffees from Starbucks and make their own, they’d save a bunch of cash too. Just a tip.
2. Move to Queens: Newsflash, but Williamsburg is kinda the Beverly Hills of Brooklyn nowadays. Queens has some super nice areas that are way cheaper. Unless these girls have some rent control dream happening, it might be a good move to hightail it to Queens or Bushwick.
4. Get real: This one is maybe less of a tip and more of a rant. Caroline made Max’s student loan debt magically disappear by having a party and charging hipsters to ride Caroline’s poor horse. Now, we know this is TV. It’s fantasy. But dealing with the student loan issue by making it go away so easily and whimsically? It’s a little insulting to broke girls and guys all across this land. We want the TV version of broke girls to triumph — but maybe not so unrealistically. You can throw a dash of reality in there — we can take it!
Great article. I recently took this show to task for some of the same issues.
Also, sometimes, cleavage IS enough.