2 Broke Girls (stylized as 2 BROKE GIRL$) is an American television sitcom that aired on CBS from September 19, 2011, to April 17, 2017. The series was produced for Warner Bros. Television and created by Michael Patrick King and Whitney Cummings. Set in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City, the show's plot follows the lives of best friends Max Black (Kat Dennings) and Caroline Channing (Beth Behrs). Whereas Caroline was raised as the daughter of a billionaire, Max grew up in a poor and dysfunctional family, resulting in them having different perspectives on life, although together they work in a local diner (Williamsburg Diner) while attempting to raise funds to start a cupcake business.
The series has received a polarized response from critics and audiences alike. The on-screen chemistry between the show's six leads, especially that of Behrs and Dennings, has been praised, while others have criticized the show's reliance on sexualized, drug-related, and racial humor. The series was nominated for 12 Emmy Awards in various categories over its run, winning an Emmy in 2012 for art direction.
The series ran on CBS for six seasons and 138 episodes.
Synopsis
The series chronicles the lives of two waitresses in their mid-20s (at the start of the series): Max Black (Kat Dennings), the daughter of a poor underclass mother and an unknown father, and Caroline Channing (Beth Behrs), who was born rich but is now disgraced and penniless because her father, Martin Channing, got caught operating a Bernie Madoff-esque Ponzi scheme. The two work together at a Brooklyn diner (Williamsburg Diner), soon becoming roommates and best friends while working towards their goal of opening a cupcake shop. Among those working with them at the restaurant are their Korean boss Han Lee (Matthew Moy); Oleg (Jonathan Kite), an upbeat but perverted and harassing Ukrainian cook; and Earl (Garrett Morris), a 75-year-old cashier. Also featured starting late in the first season is their neighbor and part-time boss Sophie (Jennifer Coolidge), a Polish immigrant who runs the house-cleaning company Sophie's Choice.
For most of the first season, Max also works a part-time nanny for the twin babies of Peach Landis (Brooke Lyons), who during the season adopts Caroline's horse Chestnut. At the end of each episode, a tally shows how much they have made toward their goal of $250,000. Early in the second season, Sophie lends the women $20,000, which is enough for them to start their business. However, the business fails, and in the 18th episode, they are forced to give up the lease of their cupcake shop with just enough money to pay off Sophie's loan, resetting the end of episode tally to $1. The shop opposite to theirs belongs to Andrew (Ryan Hansen) who had his own candy shop called Candy Andy. He and Caroline become romantically involved, but they eventually break up because her focus is on her cupcake business.
During the third season, Caroline and Max reopen the business in the back room of the diner where they work, using a window as a walk-up window for sales. Max also enrolls in, and Caroline goes to work for, a pastry school called the Manhattan School of Pastry, where Max finds a friend, and later love interest, named Deke. This is Max's first relationship since the second episode when she broke up with her cheating boyfriend, Robbie. Caroline unknowingly has an affair with the married French instructor named Nicholas, who works at the pastry school. This eventually leads to Nicholas closing down the school and moving back to France with his wife. Max, Caroline, and Deke also attempt to get Deke's parents to invest in the school, planning to run it themselves, but they do not succeed.
During season four, the women finally start their cupcake business, which succeeds briefly before going into the red. Both Max and Caroline end up working in an elite-class pastry shop called "The High" to make more money to return the loan they took for their business. Max also had a brief fling with a new handsome waiter, Nashit. She later discovers he is under 18 when his mother arrives from Ireland to bring him back home. At the end of season four, Oleg and Sophie get married.
In season five, Caroline sells her life story to a film producer for $250,000. She uses most of the money to expand their old cupcake space into the adjacent pizza shop, converting it into a dessert bar. The remaining $30,000 is used to purchase part ownership of the diner to help Han pay off his debts from gambling on women's tennis. While in Hollywood with Caroline consulting on her life story script, Max meets a "lawyer to the stars" named Randy. Meanwhile, despite her advancing age, Sophie becomes pregnant with Oleg's child.
Season six has Sophie and Oleg welcoming their baby daughter Barbara to the world. Randy returns to continue his relationship with Max, but it does not work out. Randy wants Max to move to Los Angeles, but Max, publicly acknowledging her strong friendship with Caroline for the first time, says she cannot do so because she has important people in her life now. Meanwhile, Caroline meets Bobby, a contractor who rebuilds the dessert bar after a storm, and the two start a relationship. By the end of the season, the movie about Caroline's life has been made (albeit with some "creative license" changes), but Caroline destroys a $10,000 on-loan dress at the premiere, which wipes out both her and Max's combined savings and returns them to "broke" status. Randy comes back to New York, this time permanently, and proposes to Max, who accepts. The series ends at this point, as the network unexpectedly canceled 2 Broke Girls without allowing the creative team to resolve its plotlines.
Cast Main Kat Dennings as Maxine "Max" George Black, one of the waitresses at the Williamsburg Diner. She is a poor underclass girl who had a rough childhood in Hope, Rhode Island, and an equally rough adult life, driven by both poverty and being raised by a mother who was usually absent and dangerously incompetent when she was around (it is strongly implied that her mother is a longtime drug addict). Han initially allows her to sell homemade cupcakes in the diner, which leads to her going forward with Caroline's idea to go into the cupcake business. Max is street-smart, tends to deliver insults with a smile, and often pokes fun at her own promiscuous behavior, voluptuous breasts, and marijuana indulgence. She always wears knee-high brown leather boots and a name tag while waitressing. She is co-godmothers with Caroline to Barbara Kaczyński-Golishevsky. Beth Behrs as Caroline Wesbox Channing, a waitress at the Williamsburg Diner. She is a slim, blonde, formerly rich high-society girl and University of Pennsylvania Wharton graduate who lost all of her money when her father Martin was arrested and sent to jail for a Ponzi scheme. She is forced to start over and becomes Max's co-worker, roommate, and best friend. She comes up with the idea of starting a cupcake business with Max. Despite being spoiled since birth and then losing her money, Caroline is kind and optimistic, although sometimes high-maintenance. She is sometimes very clueless. She always wears large pearl necklaces with her waitress uniform, as well as high-heeled shoes and a thin gold belt around her waist. Unlike Max, she does not wear a name tag with her waitress uniform. She is co-godmothers with Max to Barbara Kaczyński-Golishevsky. Garrett Morris as Earl Washington, the elderly African-American cashier who has worked at the Williamsburg Diner since 1962, or 1989, and a former jazz musician with a love of marijuana and gambling. Max is very close to him, and frequently says that she wishes he was her father. By season six, Earl is starting to show signs of memory loss, but the show never explored the topic with any seriousness. Jonathan Kite as Vanko Oleg Golishevsky, a Ukrainian cook at the Williamsburg Diner. He sexually harasses Max and Caroline frequently with inappropriate jokes, innuendo, and propositions for sex, but his behavior is benign and easily ignored (or mocked, by Max). He later develops an attraction to Sophie, and has a purely sexual relationship with her. At the end of season two, Oleg cheats on Sophie, leading her to angrily break up with him off-screen before the third-season premiere. In season four, the two reconcile and get engaged and then married. In the sixth-season premiere, they have a baby daughter named Barbara Kaczyński-Golishevsky. Matthew Moy as Han "Bryce" Lee, the owner of the Williamsburg Diner. He is constantly a target for jokes (mainly from Max) involving his lack of height, his effeminate mannerisms in spite of his claims of being heterosexual, and his lack of knowledge of American culture. He is originally from South Korea and he references his parents and his home country often. Jennifer Coolidge as Zofia "Sophie" Kaczyński (seasons 2–6, recurring season 1), a loud, tall, blonde, buxom middle-aged Polish woman who owns a cleaning company called Sophie's Choice. She lives in the apartment above the girls, and often tells them stories about her sex life and growing up in Communist Poland. She prefers Max over Caroline and often calls Caroline "fluffy" owing to her ditzy characteristics. Despite multiple bad interactions with the two girls, Sophie still invests in their cupcake business in season two. She always sits in a booth that she considers her own. She is involved in a relationship with Oleg during seasons two and three, gets engaged to him in season four, marries him in the finale, and during season five becomes pregnant with their first child. In the sixth-season premiere, they have a baby girl whom they name Barbara Kaczyński-Golishevsky.
Recurring Chestnut is Caroline's horse, one of the few possessions she was able to retain from her old life prior to her father's business scandal. During the first season, Chestnut lives full-time in the garden of Max's apartment, until Max convinces Caroline to have Peach adopt and stable him so that he could endure the winter weather. At the end of the season, Max goes back to Peach and gets him back. In season two, the girls enlist the help of two Amish boys to convert the garden into a barn as a permanent home for Chestnut. He appears in all seasons. He is portrayed by a horse named Rocky, who died in 2019, along with his sister Ruby. Brooke Lyons as Peach Landis (season 1), a high-society mother who acts like the most clueless version of that description. She has two babies, Brad and Angelina (a reference to real-life actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie), whom Max babysits. Peach fired Max from that job to appease an awful friend of hers after a cupcake-catering mishap, and after she begged Max to return full-time, Max initially declined, but later decided that she would only return in a part-time capacity. She has not been seen or heard from since, and the show has made it clear Max no longer has any association with her. Nick Zano as Johnny (seasons 1 & 2), Max's on-again-off-again love interest. He tells Max he broke up with Cashandra and that he was about to marry a woman he met just a few months earlier, in the season one finale. He is not seen again until the season 2 episode "And the Big Opening," in which he and Max have sex. They both agree that they only want each other when they are taken by another person. He leaves at the end of that episode, promising her he will see her again someday. Ryan Hansen as "Candy" Andy (seasons 2, 5, and 6), a candy-store owner whose business was across from the cupcake store, and Caroline's love interest in season two. In season five, Andy returns to Williamsburg and invites Caroline and Max to his wedding, where he marries Romy, a hat designer. The season-six episode "And the Rock Me on the Dais" reveals Andy divorced Romy, and is also quite wealthy.