We love a lot of couples on TV right now. We can’t think of any of them off the top of our heads—aside from Offred and Nick, but we feel weird about calling the illicit lovers from The Handmaid’s Tale “cute”—but we know there are tons and anyway, you get our point. Still, no romantic partnering captures our hearts quite like that of Broad City‘s Lincoln and Ilana. Their understated (but clearly deep) feelings for each other are so evident that the “breakup” scene at the end of Season 3 absolutely destroyed us. We cried! We were so affected by the split. In fact, we’d even go out on a limb to say that this one was more devastating than that of more mainstream couples, like Ross and Rachel. (Sacrilege, we know, but that’s how we feel!) There’s just something authentic-feeling about the pairing of whacked-out Ilana and mild-mannered Lincoln that has us hard-core rooting for their reunion. Season four of Broad City premieres in August, but the trailer offers no clues as to if we’ll get what we’re wishing for on this front, because Lincoln is barely featured. We’ll be keeping our fingers crossed it all works out, but in the meantime, here are six of our favorite Lincoln-and-Ilana moments from seasons one through three.
Ilana & Lincoln Forever
So, our favorite dentistry-related episode of Broad City is obviously the one in which Abbi gets her wisdom teeth removed, hallucinates and ends up at Whole Foods. But in the same realm, one of our favorite Lincoln-and-Ilana moments also involves dental work. When Ilana busts her veneer on a Jawbreaker hard candy, Lincoln offers to fix it for free. She thanks him by sticking her tongue down his throat (and, of course, trying to involve Abbi in the process). What's really cute about this episode, though, is that Lincoln tries to get Ilana to agree to take their relationship to the next level while she's high on nitrous gas. Why can't we all find a guy like who would likewise try to trick us into committing?
Ilana is a bit of a selfish jerk when it comes to anyone in her life outside of Abbi, and we love that this has absolutely no effect on the amount that Lincoln likes her. We're all jerks in some way, and we all deserve to be loved in spite of it.
After the uncomfortable (but not implausible!) moment where Ilana calls Abbi while getting busy with Lincoln, said manfriend asks Ilana to clarify the status of their relationship. When she tells him that she's using him for physical reasons, he responds with, "Why does this always happen to me?" in his signature deadpan style, and all we can do is swoon.
Ilana may have almost forgotten to show up for this, but all that matters is that she didn't. Lincoln's face when he sees his girl in the stands is everything.
After Ilana hooks up with Blake Griffin, Abbi asks her if Lincoln was upset by news of the encounter. The camera then cuts to a shot of Lincoln happily using one of Blake Griffin's shoes as a murse. Perfection.
Everything from the way Lincoln opens the conversation by returning a bag full of things Ilana has left behind at his apartment (most notably, of course, a sex toy), to the way that she misunderstands him to be asking her to go steady once again instead of breaking up with her, to the super authentically Ilana way in which she takes the news once it finally registers (by running) is perfect in its depiction of a flawed millennial relationship. As a result, this is, in our opinion, one of the most romantic breakups in television history.
