![]() ![]() Its charismatic characters progress, inch by inch, in pursuit of grand romantic love and career clout while taking for granted what’s already aspirational about their lives: to be entrenched with people who you know so well. In Season 5, “Insecure” leans into its legacy for awkward small talk in place of punch lines and tensions that roil between the lines of every text message. “If you knew the end was coming, how would you make the most of your time left?” Kelli asks in the premiere episode, winkingly. The finite dynamics of the same half-dozen characters falling in and out with each other deepens storylines even as it limits them. There’s a gratifying rhythm to its recurring shot-list: beautiful food, vibrant murals, Issa in the mirror. “Insecure” has always fit the mold of a sitcom rather than subverted it. It never thrills like a series racing toward crescendo, but that’s OK. New faces are scarce, though a beefed up role for Issa’s intern-turned-employee Quoia, played by Courtney Taylor, is a hilariously welcome exception. The four episodes of Season 5 that screened for critics made for discontinuous viewing there are jumps in time and geography and perspective that belie how far some of the characters have drifted. How high the stakes feel depends on which dyads you’re rooting for most: Tiff and Kelli, Issa and Molly Issa and Nathan, or Lawrence and Issa. Occasionally, the show’s conflict escalates past the point of sitcom to soap opera, like Condola’s unexpected pregnancy, but mostly what’s hard about life is the accretion of small disappointments. And how things are going for Molly on the dating apps can affect her patience for Issa. In the Season 1 pilot as in the Season 5 premiere, career frustration elliptically compels a reckoning in Issa’s love life. ![]() But the series has long excelled at braiding together what other shows merely stack. The conflict on “Insecure” isn’t novel - impostor syndrome, friendships strained by jealousy and neglect, the bruising search for love. It’s a mode of reconciliation as cheap as it is honest, but this is how long friendships sometimes persist: not by working through every issue, but by mutually avoiding the tripwires. Season 4 was factious, especially between Molly and Issa, but here they roam the palm tree dotted Palo Alto campus and let reminiscing wash it all away. Which is why Issa, Kelli, Tiffany, and Molly’s 10-year Stanford reunion makes a rich setting for Sunday’s premiere. “Insecure” is at its most indelible when walking the emotional warren of its female friendships. “You talking about the world or you talking about us?” Issa responds, though the answer is obvious. “Are we going to be OK?” Issa’s best friend, Molly (Yvonne Orji), asks her early on in the series’ final season. Regular life is not knowing what to say next and regretting what you said last. Regular life is an argument with your friend that stems from a slight so specific you’d be embarrassed to explain it to a stranger. The problems of Issa Dee, played by Rae, are as boring as they are visceral. ![]() Race is far from incidental (“Insecure” conspicuously highlights LA’s historically Black neighborhoods, for example), but it’s never been the show’s deep well of conflict. (Well, the only show created by and starring the same Black woman - Ava DuVernay’s “Queen Sugar” premiered a month earlier with Rutina Wesley and Dawn-Lyen Gardner, among its all-Black cast.) Based on her award-winning web series, Rae devised a chummy, sharp comedy about “ regular Black people living life” in the California sunshine. When “Insecure” premiered on HBO in 2016, it was the only show on TV created by and starring a Black woman. Sam Levinson and Lily Rose-Depp Defend ‘The Idol’ Against ‘False’ Reports of On-Set Chaos ![]()
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