Monday, August 20, 2018

Series with A Secure Future: Insecure Season 3 Review

One of the greater joys of this years Emmy nominations was Issa Rae receiving a much deserved Best Actress in A Comedy nod for her brilliant work on that rarest of things, an undervalued HBO comedy series. Insecure deals with the life of Issa Dee, a twentyish African-American woman who has been trying to make the right decision in work and life, and keeps failing at both. It sort of came to a climax at the end of last season where, after complaining to her boss about the level of racism at her job, she got demoted, her relationship with on-again, off again slacker Lawrence finally imploded, and she moved in with her former friend Daniel at the end.
If anything, things seem to be getting even worse for Issa this season. She is so desperate to move out of Daniel's house (where she is helpless to hear him noisily screw his girlfriend) that she has taken up a job as an Uber driver, where we learn there are worse things that can happen than a pickup vomiting in the backseat. Her boss refuses to even listen to her suggestions about how to fix things at the educational assistance program "We Got This", which is now getting racist complaints about its logo even from white people. Her credit score is so bad that her financial assistant is saying that she's established  a level of credit below 'bad' just called 'Issa', and suggests performing sexual favors on Daniel, just to keep from paying rent at Daniel's apartment.  Even the self-styled slams she does in her head seem to smack of desperation these days.
Things are only going marginally better for her friends. Molly (Yvonne Orji) has just started a job at new all-black firm, and is the middle of a relationship with a handsome man with an open marriage. "I thought that was something only white people did," Issa says talking it over. And Daniel is having trouble getting his music career going, mainly because his agents keep bringing in women he slept with as talent. His relationship with his new girlfriend is getting more complicated, because of the fact he's cohabiting with Issa, and its not going to get any easier now that they're sharing a bed (but not sleeping together yet)
If there's a complaint to be had with Insecure, its that it often tries to do too many things at once. No doubt some fans of the series are still wondering where the hell Lawrence is, or even if he'll show up again. But Rae remains a force of nature, someone with just as good a rhythm for the black female voice as Donald Glover has for the black male voice. I'm nowhere near the demographic for this series, but you can recognize genius even whatever form it takes. I'm glad Rae got her first nomination this year. I know its the first of many.
My score: 4.25 stars.


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