There isn’t another show like Insecure—a show by and for black women. Girlfriends went off the air in 2008, and Being Mary Jane and Scandal’s leading black women are overachieving characters who are too perfect to be relatable. Insecure, though? Insecure is about black girls pre-magic, and it is everything.
Set in Los Angeles, the HBO series stars writer and producer Issa Rae, creator of the YouTube series Awkward Black Girl. Insecure follows best friends Issa (Issa Rae) and Molly (Yvonne Orji), two professional black women in their late twenties, as they struggle to achieve optimum success in their careers and love lives.
Issa, while beautiful, smart, and fashionable, doesn’t quite have her shit together. In the series’ first scene, we see her getting dragged by a classroom full of kids from the hood: “Why do you talk like a white girl?” “Are you single?” “My dad says ain’t nobody checking for bitter-ass black women.” (Spoiler alert: Black women aren’t bitter, we’re just tired of being expected to settle for less!) While she does love her job at a nonprofit, Issa struggles to get her ideas across to her white colleagues, who just don’t get it. Living with (and financially supporting) her longterm stay-in boyfriend, Issa hasn’t made it. It’s easy to see why she’s frustrated at work and at home, but there’s a strong possibility she’s half-assing both.
Molly’s situation is the opposite: She’s killing it as a “legal genius” at work, has herself a gorgeous apartment (and an adorable French bulldog named Flavor Flav), but she’s damn near fed up when it comes to dating. Molly has emotional breakdowns at work, exacerbated by the fact she shares an office with her (non-black) coworker who’s newly engaged to a black man. When Issa questions whether she wants to put herself back on the market, Molly breaks down dating in the modern age, calling Tinder a “fuck app” and dubbing OkCupid as a place to find the lowest of the low. (Disclaimer: Molly is so on point about dating apps that it hurts.)
Throughout the first three episodes, Issa and Molly lean on each other through their questionable decisions and insecurities. Issa has her own coping mechanism: Whether she’s picking a lipstick or giving herself a pep-talk, she decompresses by writing and reciting silly/awesome rhymes in her bathroom mirror. (She even performs a hilarious original song when she takes Molly out to a club—a freestyle rap called “Broken Pussy” that she slays.) That’s hardly the only music in Insecure, which features a great soundtrack by the likes of Kendrick Lamar and Goldlink (Solange Knowles is credited as a music consultant).
But one of the most refreshing things about the show—besides all the Lemonade and Game of Thrones references—is the way its writers subtly flip gender stereotypes. Even the first few episodes find Molly’s two bosses having contrasting, gender-deviating reactions to her coworker’s engagement, while Issa’s relationship sees her more prone to infidelity than her boyfriend. And since it’s on HBO, Molly and Issa speak as candidly and freely as real black women do, like when Issa eloquently describes her relationship woes: “I love him, but… maybe I’m not satisfied? Maybe I want to be dicked down properly. Maybe I want to be face down, ass up, and surrounded by foreign freaks, ya know?”
Girl, we feel you. Might be time to DTMFA, but we’ll just have to wait and see. 