Couples in real life don’t often get a shot at a relationship post-mortem. When they do, the conversation turns out awkward and resentful by design, though if you’re lucky it’s also reflective and full of perspective—it is, after all, a discussion about the end of a love that didn’t work—hence the title of Insecure’s emotional Season 2 finale, “Hella Perspective.”
The episode (sort of) tied up loose ends, with the use of a strong visual format that allowed for better storytelling—we get 30 days Lawrence, Molly and then Issa, during which they each get their own one-step-forward, two-steps-back moments. Lawrence is swimming in baggage and consumed with leftover jealousy from Issa’s cheating, and in doing so sabotages his relationship with his coworker Aparna. On the professional side, Molly fails to convince her law firm that she’s worth promoting and, on the personal side, she rejects the possibility of a relationship with her coworker Quinton in favor of a destructive tryst with Dro amid his (alleged) open relationship.
She does poorly at moving on, but Issa manages to do so both physically (moving out of her apartment) and emotionally, getting the closure she and Lawrence (and we?) need, vis a vis an intense conversation in her kitchen that happens before she has to leave the place for good. It’s the kind of conversation that makes rom-coms so irresistibly sappy (there’s even a fantasy montage of what Issa and Lawrence could have been) by showing the maturity required to simply say how you feel when it hurts the most—we were so good together, weren’t we? But really we weren’t.
So Lawrence tells Issa, “I’m sorry for not being who you expected me to be. Who I expected me to be.” And she tells him she wishes she could’ve been better for him. Season 2 got us a little closer to a group of bad decision-makers and their cyclical mistakes. Aside from the overblown blowjob storyline, it made for funny, conversational television. What we need is more of Issa’s brother Ahmal in Season 3, please, and an explanation of where Molly’s dog is hiding half the time. If you feel like hearing me talk out loud, here’s a Facebook Live conversation between myself and my great colleague Megan Reynolds about Sunday night’s finale.