Broad City season 5, episode 3 recap: Bitcoin & the Missing Girl

Last week, Abbi bit off more than she could chew by raising complaints with her landlord.

The final season of Broad City continues this week with Ilana cashing out her Bitcoin share and Abbi once again making a big mistake.

This episode of Broad City opens with Ilana’s mom taking Abbi and Ilana bra shopping for “a bra that fits.” It’s clearly one of her underground shopping experiences, a la purse shopping back in season 2’s “Knockoffs.”

Both of them are super uncomfortable when two women, clearly friends with Ilana’s mom, don’t believe Abbi and Ilana know their correct bra sizes and start measuring them. The two, very customized, bras cost over $500. Which, apparently, is worth it.

More from Show Snob

• The Santa Clauses season 2, episode 6 recap “Wanga Banga Langa!”
• Lawmen: Bass Reeves season 1, episode 7 preview: Non-spoiler thoughts for Part VII
• Goosebumps season 1, episode 6 recap: “Night of the Living Dummy”
• Beacon 23 season 1, episode 3 recap: “Why Can’t We Go on as Three?”
• Upload season 3, episode 2 recap: “Strawberry”

Later, Lincoln is having breakfast with Ilana in her apartment. As Ilana goes to replace a lightbulb, she finds a fruit by the foot rapper. It’s the code for a third of a bitcoin that she got from Brad, a guy she used to hook up with.

Over at Abbi’s apartment, Abbi is going to do laundry in the most disgusting, dungeon-esque place on Earth. (Seriously.) Ilana calls and tells Abbi about the plan to cash out the bitcoin and asks Abbi to come along. Ilana is going to use the money to start up her own business, Phone Wigs. (Yes, wigs for the top of your phone.)

Abbi says she can’t go because she needs to do laundry. Ilana tells her that it’s ridiculous to do laundry in that sorry excuse for a laundry room. She tells Abbi to just drop off her laundry, which Abbi thinks is too extravagant.

After finally agreeing, Abbi drops offer her laundry at a nearby laundromat. Feeling really good about the decision, she decides to include the sweatshirt she’s wearing. After all, it’ll only take an hour to get the laundry done. She seems super proud of this progress in her life.

Elsewhere, Ilana is pulling out her safety deposit box at the bank. She needs to get into it because it’s where she keeps multiple old phones with all the dick pics she’s received from over the years—this is a crucial step to finding Brad so she can get her bitcoin cashed.

Abbi gets back to her apartment, sets a timer for an hour, and settles down for a little creative/artistic time (since she doesn’t have to do laundry herself!). But she spends so much time prepping her space, her alarm goes off before she can do anything. It’s time to go back to get her laundry.

When she gets back to the laundromat, she notices her sweatshirt is gone.

According to the owner (and multiple signs around the laundromat), the policy is to toss everyone’s laundry in together and then sort everything back out by memory after the clothes were washed. If something goes missing, it’s got forever. Plus, thanks to the owner’s patient/client privilege, he can’t tell Abbi who else got their laundry that day.

Ever the delusional one, Abbi thinks she can steal the laundromat’s log book. She grabs the log and books it for the door—which she promptly runs directly into and knocks herself to the ground.

Abbi finally leaves the laundromat and starts accosting every person she sees trying to find her sweatshirt.

Ilana, confident now that she has a bunch of money, goes shopping for the right outfit for the future job she sees for herself: A bitcoin queen.

Meanwhile, Abbi has taken to handing out flyers to people asking if they’ve seen her missing sweatshirt. She also starts taping the flyers to trees and light poles around the neighborhood.

Ilana, dressed as if she stepped right out of the Matrix’s 2019 nightmare, takes to the streets. She’s walking the sidewalk like she owns the city (including randomly doing a backflip and the classic Matrix gravity-defying backbend). She eventually walks into an office building…and immediately looks super out of place.

After awkwardly shuffling past the normal office workers in their suits, she walks into Brad’s office.

Abbi goes into a bodega to put up her sweatshirt sign and hears a newscast announcing the unfortunate disappearance of “another white woman.” Abbi’s flyer is on the news. She immediately calls the news station to try to explain. But just then, the news says that she’s the 5th Solstice employee to go missing—all the old cases are being reopened because of this “new” disappearance.

Trey and Gemma are interviewed and they’re crying over Abbi disappearance. Gemma saying she and Abbi were best friends and Trey saying he and Abbi dated.

Abbi finally gets someone from the news station on the phone, but the reporter initially thinks Abbi is captured. There’s a little back and forth where the reporter still tries to find a way to make a story out of this before eventually giving up and saying to a co-worker that they need to find a new missing girl story.

The reporter eventually hangs up on Abbi.

Back in the office, Ilana tries to explain to Brad her idea of Phone Wigs, but he’s not quite getting what she’s trying to sell.

Abbi goes around taking down her posters and realizes that, in her desperation to find her sweatshirt, she put up her signs over more important signs—like signs saying “Abolish ICE” and signs trying to help children find missing pets. As she gets back to the laundromat to take down the last flyer, the owner walks out to grab her. Someone found her sweatshirt after seeing it on the news!

Abbi is incredibly grateful and apologizes to the owner for telling people to boycott his laundromat. He promptly bans her from ever coming back.

As she walks away, Abbi—now realizing how silly her actions around an article of clothing were—tries to give her sweatshirt to a homeless man. He rejects it because — A. He went to a different school and B. It’s way too hot for him to be wearing that kind of fabric outside. She takes the sweatshirt back and runs off.

In the office, Brad is finally catching up to Ilana’s strange plan. He transfers just over $8,000 to Ilana for the (partial) bitcoin.

As Ilana walks out of the office building, she walks straight into a protest against bitcoin. She grows more and more uncomfortable as one protester explains all the ways bitcoin is killing the earth (she has quite a few examples—global warming is in there).

Later, Abbi and Ilana decompress in Ilana’s bed. Ilana ponders whether or not she should donate the $8,000. She justifies keeping it by talking about how things in the world (like recycling and the fashion industry) aren’t really as good as they pretend to be.

As the episode ends, Ilana vows to put the money toward her phone wigs business.

Just before the episode cuts out, Broad City reveals that Ilana is still stuck in her patent leather body suit. They’re going to need lubricant to get it off.

What did you think about this episode of Broad City? Do you think this final season will end with Ilana finally achieving her goal of owning her own successful business? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.