MILLENNIAL MADNESS
This season is about knowing better — but did anyone tell Issa?
Few people can take the humdrum details of romantic relationships and amplify them into something as enjoyable as Issa Rae’s Insecure. Into its third season now, the HBO show follows Issa Dee (played by Rae) and her best friend Molly (played by Yvonne Orji), as they struggle to navigate their tricky personal and professional lives in Los Angeles.
Now well into season three, watching a show about a character whose career and love life are in perpetual upheaval, can begin to feel like a slog. Watching Being
Mary Jane ultimately did.
Perhaps, though, Insecure positions Issa as a more relatable character — a good friend you empathise with as much as you lose patience with. This can buy any character more time with viewers.
The theme of season three is “Know better, do better”, and the feeling is that the women really need to grow the f**k up now.
But have they? Firstly, broke Issa has moved into problematic love interest Daniel’s apartment (if you recall, she cheated with him on her then boyfriend and fan favourite, Lawrence) and is shacking up on his couch. He is impertinently sleeping with women in that same apartment — much to Issa’s chagrin. Eventually, she calls him out on it, and he wants to know why she decided to come and stay with him “out of all the places you could have stayed”. Then she does what she does best and lays all her cards on the table: “I know I told you I didn’t care, but I do. I still have feelings for you … I came here because I knew you’d be here for me … you’re f***ing other girls in front of me like we don’t have history.”
We see Daniel still struggling for a breakthrough in the music industry. He is too proud to ask for help, and it is Issa’s affability with people that helps him set up a potentially big career move with successful former school peer, Khalil. It is then that he realises how different she is to most girls he has been with — she is more than someone you go to to ease your sexual frustrations and exert your dominance over, but someone genuinely invested in your dreams because she appreciates the effort you’re putting in. She gets it, because her career also feels like it is in the doldrums.
In one scene Issa tells Daniel she picked up that he played the live instrumentation in his latest composition, and he feels comfortable enough to tell her about wanting to make more “complex instrumentation” for an artist he is trying to produce. Ironically, it is what Tasha afforded Lawrence when he and Issa’s relationship hit the rocks — someone to hear you.
In season one we were introduced to Issa and her handsome-but-that’s-all-that’sgoing-for-him boyfriend Lawrence, who sat on the couch and played video games all day, while she tried to make a living so they could keep the lights on and the fridge stocked. It wasn’t so much that Lawrence was struggling to find his ideal job (besides, he was too lovable to judge early on), but it was his complacency and lack of accountability that made the relationship feel like it had hit a brick wall.
By the time they cheated on each other, the many little moments had collected like bits of Plasticine until they were a big clay elephant in the room. Lawrence was too passive, while in season three it seems Daniel is frustrated that his hard work is going unacknowledged.
But Daniel, as most men can do, has an undiscerning moment in episode three when it is Issa’s turn to bemoan her dreary career and he tells her they cannot compare lives because her life is forever in freefall and he always has to save her — like he did by letting her stay with him. She and the viewer are reminded that even the most desirable man comes with his own unsavoury traits.
But growing up means acknowledging your insecurities, flaws, and dubious behaviour. Rae and co recognise that it is in these little moments in relationships that they are either strengthened or weakened to the point that they crumble. It feels like Issa and Daniel have reached that point. The most encouraging aspect of this is that if they were to eventually get into a relationship they would be doing so with the rose-tinted glasses firmly removed.
One person who finally seems to have shed her idealistic views of relationships and their value (or her suitability to them), is Molly. She has begun to set boundaries for f**k buddy Dro, who is in a polyamorous marriage with Candice, yet wants to call the shots in her life.
“Listen,” she tells him the morning after he’s spent the night, “we need to decide if we’re friends who don’t have sex or acquaintances who just have sex. Anything otherwise is a little muddy.”
If you’ve been watching Insecure, or have been or are in a relationship, you’ll know that knotty situations are always around the corner, and we know that Issa and Molly (and us) are still in for a bumpy ride.
Insecure is on 1Magic (DStv channel 103), Mondays at 9.30pm
YOU’RE F***ING GIRLS IN FRONT OF ME LIKE WE DON’T HAVE HISTORY