Insecure: Season 1/ Episode 8 "Broken as Fuck" [Season Finale] – Overview/ Review (with Spoilers)
Overview The season ends with one of Issa’s relationships saved! Can you guess which one? Review (with Spoilers) Topic 1: Trying to Reconcile with Molly (Molly, Tiffany, Kelli, and Issa) With Molly learning it isn’t just Issa who sees her as someone who can’t keep a man, and with Kelli and Tiffany making a joke…
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Overview
The season ends with one of Issa’s relationships saved! Can you guess which one?
Review (with Spoilers)
Topic 1: Trying to Reconcile with Molly (Molly, Tiffany, Kelli, and Issa)
With Molly learning it isn’t just Issa who sees her as someone who can’t keep a man, and with Kelli and Tiffany making a joke out of it, it seems Molly learns to appreciate Issa. Especially since she turns the tables on Kelli and Tiffany and reminds them they aren’t so damn perfect themselves.
Commentary
See, that is friendship right there. When it comes to critiquing, for a lack of a better term, Molly’s ways, Issa did so in private. She did it knowing she was possibly stepping on a landmine but didn’t make a joke out of Molly’s ways. That is, as opposed to Tiffany and Kelli who made her life and actions a joke. Which, considering they both knew she was fighting with Issa and there was something going on, you’d think they would have been tip toeing around things.
With that said, I love how Issa shut them both down and reminded them they are throwing stones while living in a glass house. Kelli has arrested development, and is low-key ratchet, making her becoming a regular next season exciting. As for Tiffany, with all her airs and graces, Issa reminding her she can’t fart without her man’s say so was hilarious. Making you wonder, especially after her fight with Molly in the last episode, how venomous is Issa’s tongue if she genuinely doesn’t like you and doesn’t want you in her space?
Topic 2: The Lawrence Situation (Lawrence & Issa)
It has been 3 days and Lawrence hasn’t returned Issa’s calls so she shows up at his jobs. This is unwelcomed and with his buddy Chad, he decides to proceed in moving on. He begins at a strip club but with being reminded he is a nice guy, and the prices for sex, he just ends up at Tasha’s house wearing her out. Meanwhile, Issa rushes home from Kelli’s birthday weekend celebration thinking she’ll find Lawrence there. All she finds though is an empty closet and his stuff gone.
Thankfully, though, she and Molly have healed their relationship so she has someone to comfort her.
Commentary
I would have been so mad at Lawrence if he just got back with Issa. As he noted, she pushed him to be a better man and despite his come up she still cheated on him. But there are multiple lessons in this situation. 1. Don’t change for someone else cause it doesn’t guarantee they will remain loyal if you meet their wishes, requirements, or whatever they call them. 2. There is always someone waiting for you to slip up. Tasha, in a way like Daniel, was on the sidelines waiting for her turn, her chance to prove she is better than what was currently being committed to. Now, was she heartbroken when Lawrence told her, originally, nothing was going to happen? Yeah, but I think with her, and Daniel maybe too, you can see that desire for friendship as much as things which go beyond what friends do.
But the question becomes, where will things go from here? Insecure, thus far, hasn’t fallen into a sad and predictable nature. Will the writers make Issa and Lawrence endgame and just have Tasha be a rebound? I can’t picture that, if only because Lawrence, to me anyway, seems like the relationship type. So I can’t imagine him trying to make Tasha just friends with benefits. Especially since she, so it seems, possesses all the qualities Lawrence wanted but Issa didn’t give him.
That aside, what is next for Issa’s personal life? Her dating seems likely, especially so Molly can say something like, “You were talking all that bleep but you see it isn’t that easy out here is it?” But will she maybe have a ho phase? Can Issa just be free to be freaky or is she, like Lawrence, the relationship type? As of now, especially with Kelli becoming a regular, I foresee lots of awkward dating, Kelli talking about how hard it is to be big and dating, Molly arguing how hard it is to be dark and skinny, and Issa bringing in her own two cents for girls like her who are shy, introverted perhaps, and awkward – while being Black. Thus bringing arguments and perspectives definitely needed.
Not 100% sure that this review does justice to the characters we’ve journeyed with for 8 episodes. You seem to be giving Lawrence a free pass. He has been unemployed for how long!?
Issa essentially supported him and all his lazy black ass did was sit on the couch moaning and not fully appreciating the support he was being given – if anything he took it for granted. Who wants to sit around waiting for someone to fix up for 5 years!!?
He finally pulls it together because he can see that, yes he’s disappointed with their situation but so is she. Yes Issa fucked up and shouldn’t have hooked up with Daniel, but equally Lawrence was still faffing.
The finale really got me. They both fucked up and it seems too far gone for them to have a romantic relationship. All their friends know that Issa cheated – you can’t come back from that. Hopefully they can come to be friends, but I guess even that might be pushing it.
I agree, Issa was a very supporting girlfriend. However, I wouldn’t say he took it for granted. He had an app he believed in, and an education he thought would have given him the credentials he needed to get that app launched and be profitable. She invested her time in him and unfortunately when he hit a rut he got depressed and stagnant because of it. Also, financially, with his former job he seemed to be supporting the household and his unemployment checks still made it so he was contributing. Probably not as much as Issa, but contributing. On top of that, when those checks were running out he swallowed his pride and got a retail job. Which isn’t me forgiving him for not cleaning between applying for places and going on interviews, nor forgetting Issa’s birthday, but it is a difficult thing to feel like you are drowning in your own sorrow and to be what others want you to be. Especially if that person they want you to be is this ideal partner.
Which is why I think we differ in opinion when it comes to Lawrence. To me, I feel for Lawrence and perhaps give him a pass since Issa’s rock bottom was sleeping with Daniel vs. Lawrence’s rock bottom being multifaceted. He quits his job to focus on an app which fails to create traction. He can’t find a job worthy of his education and experience so he is forced to work retail (For most, unemployment only lasts 6 months to a year so that is probably how long he was out of a job). Then, when he gets a job worthy of him, they are behind where his app was when it comes to tech and goals. His vision is beyond theirs! Making it so he has another moment where he thinks he should become a boss than answering to one who only gives him a fraction of the profit he made possible. Then, after he pretty much becomes the ideal boyfriend Issa wanted again, he learns she cheated on him.
Excuse me if the review made it seem I gave him a free pass but after all he went through this season, I think he needs one. Hence why he ended up with Tasha. For he didn’t ever really fuck up. He may not have lived you your or Issa’s expectations for sometime, but once he swallowed his pride so began his come up. Plus, if I recall right, he did appreciate Issa. That is why, after the breakup warning, he started turning things around. It is like the often quoted saying goes “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” Until Issa was vocal about her displeasure with him and their relationship, he was focused on just trying to bounce back from a setback.
I really appreciate your response, but am still not feeling your free pass for Lawrence . For someone so ‘educated’ he essentially had a responsibility to himself and the relationship to not allow himself to stagnate to the extent that he did.
This show covers many of the trials and tribulations that women in their late twenties/ early thirties face; however it is still rooted in the black experience. To say that Lawrence was going through some shit, but was trying his best and started to turn things around – in my opinion far too late, is pretty weak. The signs were there that Issa was unhappy, but he was quite content to cash his unemployment cheques and let her take on most of the load instead of fixing up when the relationship was clearly at breaking point. Are black women supposed to suck it up and stay with a loser no matter what? Should Issa really have had to spell it out? The events of her birthday spring to mind where he flaked out and offered renting a movie instead of going out as previously agreed- really!!?
I’m not completely hating on Lawrence, but I can’t palette that he is some poor done by ‘good guy’. If you flipped the roles and a woman was behaving in the way that he did – both women and men would claim that cheating was justified because she was being a lazy ‘bitch’ in the relationship.
It seems that if you’re a ‘good black man’ and I mean that in the sense that you stick around with your girlfriend you earn some sort of saint hood even when you’re as ‘lazy as fuck’.
Once you mentioned the birthday I’m reminded that I kind of wanted to have her leave him for Daniel.
Which brings on complicated feelings. Recognizing what you’re saying, I still feel that the lack of her communicating is messing with me. Also, with you noting about flipping the roles, it makes me wonder when he was at his past job, was he heavily footing the bills and taking care of the household? There are certain aspects of their relationship we can only assume and with them not speaking on how they handle their finances, be it down the middle, you handle this bill I handle that, through a joint account, or etc, there are factors missing.
Still, thinking about some of my friends who had boyfriends like Lawrence, the “fixer upper,” or the “he’ll be something, someday,” I’m surprised Issa even stayed with him after that birthday incident. You know between Molly, Kelli, and Tiffany, they were probably all dogging him out. Well, not maybe not Molly since she’d look at it as Issa being lucky she had someone, but Kelli definitely I can picture going in.
The more I think about it I see your point. With it being weeks between us meeting him at his worse, and him being at the point where he can seem like a victim, it leads to a selective memory. It really does make me wonder, what was their relationship like before episode one? As you said, this show is rooted in the Black experience, from the late twenties/ early thirties point of view, so is it like what you said? Could it be he had a baby boy type of period where he was occasionally applying for jobs, but just wallowing in self-pity until he realized his unemployment checks would run it? Could it be, I’m just so focused on the cheating aspect that I’m ignoring the reasons why that thought would even seem like a real option to her?
I mean, I don’t wanna say I gave Lawrence a free pass, but I will admit that with us, or rather me, not knowing how Issa felt about him quitting his job, giving up on his app, and then there being less stable income in the household, you can fathom why she likely was frustrated. Yet, being that she lives with Lawrence and they’ve been together so long, plus she sees Molly’s struggles with dating, there was that fear that she could give up just when he bounces back. Making all this time she was down for the struggle a waste.
You definitely gave me something to think about.