The funniest show we've ever scored isn't a prestige HBO half-hour or a beloved network institution. It's a scrappy Comedy Central two-hander about two broke women turning a New York errand into a citywide disaster.
We ran all 50 episodes of Broad City through our pipeline — five seasons, 3,737 jokes, each graded three times and averaged — and Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer's friendship comedy lands at #1 on the Humor Index with a score of 86.8. That edges out Chappelle's Show (85.6) and 30 Rock (84.4), and makes Broad City the first show in our dataset to clear 86. The web series that started on YouTube in 2009 now sits at the top of the board.
The headline number
Broad City scores 86.8, the highest Humor Index we've published. What's striking is how it gets there. Most shows climb the rankings one of two ways: enormous joke volume (the saturation comedies) or quiet, high-craft restraint (the HBO tier). Broad City does both at once.
Its joke density is 3.52 jokes per minute — the highest of any live-action show we've scored, ahead of Friends (3.13), 30 Rock (2.86), and Seinfeld (2.58). Only the animated shows (Futurama, The Simpsons) pack more in. And it sustains that pace at 7.16 craft and 7.07 impact, both near the top of the board. Volume usually costs you quality. Broad City refuses the trade: it's firing constantly and landing.
It never had an off year — and peaked at the finish
Here's the finding that almost never shows up in the data. Broad City's season scores go 82.5 → 88.5 → 87.5 → 88.6 → 88.9. After a rookie season — the web-series-to-TV adaptation year, the only season under 88 — the show locks into a tight, blistering band and simply stays there.
And then it does the rarest thing a comedy can do: it ends on its best season. Season 5 (88.9) is the highest-scoring season of the run. Shows are supposed to fade — the cast is tired, the premise is exhausted, the finale limps. Broad City went out at its absolute peak. You can watch the whole arc on the Broad City Explorer: drop Season 1 and the average jumps; isolate the final season and it climbs again.
The jokes
Of all 3,737 jokes, the single highest-impact line is also one of the most Broad City things imaginable — Abbi, after a one-night stand, in Season 1's "The Last Supper":
It scored a 9.33 for impact — a five-word summary of the show's entire sensibility. A few more from the highlight reel:
- "We'll take those two molten lava cakes to go." — the series' unofficial motto, weaponized politeness in the face of total chaos.
- "Wait, I thought Little Richard was gay." / "Bisexual alien." — the kind of throwaway exchange ("Knockoffs," 8.67 impact) the show buries three to a scene.
- Ilana's improvised rapper names — Lil' Two-Ply, Lil' Nap Time — from the finale's stretch of pure riffing.
The peak episodes back up the spread: "Along Came Molly" (95.1), "Knockoffs" (94.5, and its 9.1 is the show's best IMDb episode), and "The Last Supper" (94.5).
Funniest isn't the same as most prestigious
One number cuts against the trophy. Broad City's average IMDb rating is 8.08 — solid, but mid-pack on our board, well behind It's Always Sunny (8.35) and Seinfeld (8.26). The audience that hands out lifetime-achievement scores never quite crowned it.
That gap is the whole reason we score jokes instead of counting stars. IMDb measures affection, legacy, and how a show is remembered. The Humor Index measures one thing — how relentlessly and how well a show actually makes the jokes — and on that axis, a five-season Comedy Central buddy comedy beats every prestige darling we've put through the machine.
See the full breakdown — every episode, every season, every joke scored — on the [Broad City show page](/shows/broad-city).