'Time Traveling Bong': A 'Broad City' Stoner Side-Project

We know Ilana Glazer best as half of the Broad City team with her comedy partner Abbi Jacobson, but on Wednesday night, Glazer splits from Jacobson to team up with another Broad actor, Paul W. Downs, for a three-night “event” miniseries, Time Traveling Bong, which premieres after the season finale of Broad City on Comedy Central.

Bong features Glazer and Downs as cousins Sharee and Jeff, who stumble upon a glass bong that, when in full working use, can transport its inhalers to various, unpredictable moments in time. (The bong even comes with its own instructions: “Smoke once to travel, smoke again to return.”) Thus the duo finds itself, randomly, in Salem, Mass., during the time of the witch trials (Sharee is, of course, immediately seized as a witch); in prehistoric times, where cavemen and cave-women ravish the pair sexually (Sharee loves the attention; Jeff is left exhausted, a certain part of him feeling like “a hamburger-hot dog”), ancient Greece, where they engage in a wild orgy; and 1960s America, where they try to save a very young Michael Jackson from a difficult youth and set him on a path that might lead the singer away, years later, from inviting young children over to his house for sleepovers.

As all this suggests, Bong trafficks in the risky, frisky material that Broad City is famous for, but the humor has, appropriately, a more mellow vibe. It’s interesting to see Glazer playing a character so different from her manic TV-Ilana; here, Sharee is more calm and sensible — or, at least, as calm and sensible as one can be while stoned and being accused of witchcraft.

Downs, who plays Abbi’s work- and sex-buddy Trey on Broad, makes for a nice slapstick partner in the time-traveling adventures. Time Traveling Bong, directed by Lucia Aniello, premieres on April 20 (4/20 — dig it) and is based on a College Humor short the duo made a few years ago.If Time Traveling Bong isn’t as laugh-out-loud funny as Broad City, it has its own, more whimsical and laid-back charms. It’s a nice way to end a few evenings, by sitting back and watching two likable people light up for adventure.

Time Traveling Bong airs Wednesday through Friday at 10:30 p.m. on Comedy Central.