If you like Broad City, then you’ll love Pen15.

In a similar fashion to a lot of people in 2014 I fell in love with the T.V. show Broad City. At first I wasn’t quite sure what exactly drew me to the show, but like a moth to light I didn’t care, I just knew I needed it. Ilana and Abbi’s chaotically wonderful friendship came to me in a particularly poignant time in my life. I was graduating high school, going to college and I wanted more female friends. I had girlfriends and best friends but I never had that. By that, I mean the hedonistic, coming of age, sloppily bare it all, “chiquitita tell me what’s wrong” relationship with another woman.

By the time I got to college I was deep in the Broad City trenches and I met my own Abbi. We were inseparable, smoking joints like nobody's business, wading our way through the dating pool of San Francisco. Ilana and Abbi were trendsetters in their own sexually liberated stoner way. Similarly to the way in which the duo of Seth Rogen and James Franco grew a cult following after Superbad and Pineapple Express, the same is true for Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson. The jokes are crafted by women for women, and you can immediately tell. Every episode of Broad City feels like you’re giving a finger to the patriarchy. Whether it’s Ilana’s tendency to overshare about her sex life or even simply put, all the pot smoke. The very fact that two of the leads are female stoners is something empowering in itself. When we think of buddy comedies we almost always think of men, man childs, failures to launch, etc. It’s rare that we see this trope played out with women at the forefront, this is exactly what makes Broad City special.

Abbi and Ilana are the millennials your parents warned you about. They’re oblivious to their own hilarity, the writing is on par with Arrested Development in that each of the lines is delivered with such believable naivety that you can’t help but laugh out loud. The friends are not only each other’s most fervent supporters, but they are in it together, this is where Pen15 comes in. Yes that’s right, make way for the Pen15.

Pen15, is Broad City before Ilana and Abbi get to New York City … or even high school. Anna and Maya are the two leads of the television show Pen15. The show follows best friends Maya and Anna, two twelve year olds entering seventh grade together. Yep, that’s right, seventh freaking grade. On a surface level the show might sound like a funny gimmick with little to grab on to, but such is not the case with Pen15.

Maya and Anna are played by two thirty year old actresses of the same names, Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle. Just like Broad City this show banks on the satisfaction of cringe comedy. It’s the kind of humor where you relate so much that it makes you want to turn your head into the pillow. Taking place in the setting of a middle school, the show is riddled with scenarios every woman who’s ever been twelve can relate to. The popular girls, school dances, crushes, and of course mean girls.

Maya and Anna stick by each other no matter what, literally, going so far as to take their first physical steps into seventh grade at the exact same moment. Similarly to Broad City the two girls are quirky and honest, they aren’t trying to be anything but the weirdos they are. The comedy shines through in this show by the very fact that the actors are thirty while their counterparts are indeed middle school aged actors. You would think the age difference would feel awkward or mismatched but the discomfort is the fuel to the fire. Pen15 gets the blue ribbon in honest comedy, the innocence the two girls portray is so accurate it almost hurts. Long phone calls on the family home phone and devil horns on the mean girls in the yearbook all feel like antics Ilana and Abbi would have gotten into in middle school.

The shows parallel each other wonderfully for a multitude of reasons, but I find the strongest link is the theme of female friendship. Ilana and Abbi aren’t haters turned best friends and Anna and Maya aren’t double crossing each other for the mean girls (sorry Cady). Both shows show off strong female friendships in a way that feels authentic and attainable. The relationships in both Broad City and Pen15 are supportive and loving, and most importantly fucking hilarious. Women are funny and these shows only emphasize the point even more. Women can be stoner buddies and girls can have coming of age masturbation moments. These shows remind me of times with my own girlfriends and my sister whom I’ve spent many nights high as a kite with.

So if you like Broad City, then I promise you’ll love Pen15.