Dmitry Kurkin
The closer the season of film series awards, the more discussed are those who can make a splash at the Golden Globes and Oscars. One such potential newcomer is Insecure, whose second season only solidified its reputation as a fresh and original sitcom about everyday people's problems. It's time to remind you why the show, dubbed “the black version of Sex and the City,” was so loved by viewers and critics.
Ise Di hardly needs a life goal checklist to realize that her life is stalled. It looks good: by the time she is less than thirty, she has a project manager position at a charity educational organization that cooperates with the schools of Inglewood (a town in the Los Angeles County), her adoring boyfriend Lawrence and her best friend Molly.
Isa's puzzled expression, however, suggests otherwise. Colleagues point-blank do not understand the specifics of working with children of African descent, and she herself, a representative of the middle class, despite her racial kinship, finds it difficult to find the keys to them - especially when students ask her head-on: “Why are you still not married? " Domestic partnerships don't work out either: Lawrence has been out of work for a long time, which makes it moping, and it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain a relationship alone. Finally, the relationship with a friend, with whom Isa has not spilled water since the time of joint studies at the university, is by no means so simple. Friends-antipodes now and then conflict and clearly envy each other: Molly, changing partners like gloves - Isa's stable relationship; Isa, increasingly reminiscing about her former lover Daniel, is Molly's romantic adventures.
The result of this difficult relationship is a trip to the club, where Isa tries himself in amateur rap and accidentally composes the local hit “Broken Pussy”. In another, alternative world - he sometimes sees the heroine, for example, in the form of rapper Tai Dollar Sain, holding out a glass of champagne to her - this would be the beginning of the tale of turning Cinderella into a princess (Isa, however, is skeptical about such prospects, although he loves imagine yourself to be a cool rapper). In reality, you have to bashfully avert your eyes from the children who are watching her performance on YouTube, and ask for forgiveness from Molly, whose personal life Isa inadvertently blabbed to the entire Internet.
Isa is on the verge of big decisions, but she doubts. She is not sure, and she has yet to find out the cost of choosing between a titmouse and a crane. It is not for nothing that they say that destiny leads those who wish, and drags those who do not.
“Insecure” has already been dubbed “the black version of“Sex and the City”” (all the funnier because the name of the series was translated into Russian as “White Crow” - a rare example of such an unsuccessful localization). But, as usual, the simplification was hasty: where Candice Bushnell imagined New York as a Disneyland for middle-class adults, the creators of "Insecure" give Inglewood - cute, but much more down-to-earth, everyday and realistic. The same applies to the racial agenda: the "black version" in advance imagines a set of stereotypes about the African American ghetto, a kind of endless Compton. “Insecure,” however, correcting for the scene (best friends refer to each other as “bitch”, best friends juggle “n-words”, both of them vividly reflect on the topic of their own racial identity - a good example of this is an African American director who turns out to be racist), sets exactly opposite goals.
The leading actress Isa Rae (the series Isa is largely copied from her, of course) says that she grew up "among things that are usually not considered 'black'", and since then set out to expand the boundaries of self-identification. For this, the network series "The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl" was invented with an atypical nerd heroine - a call center worker in a pharmaceutical company. The idea took off almost immediately, and soon HBO asked Ray to rework the sitcom into a new series, which eventually became Insecure.
In recent years, the TV industry has succeeded in both cementing the image of a strong independent woman and portraying broken and wounded heroines, whose motivations are often more complex than the usual script equations. There was a lack of a plausible middle - an unheroic woman, relatively successful, but daily torn apart by thousands of petty doubts about everything related to work, personal life and age. The fact that Isa Rae (who received a Golden Globe nomination last winter) and Larry Wilmore (creator of the sitcom Black-ish) add a racial dimension to this set does not make the story less universal, but only enriches the dialogue. How does the African American middle class live? Yes, in general, just like any other.
"Insecure" is primarily a show of Isa and Molly - two women, each of whom has to unravel their own tangle of contradictions: they tease each other and scandal, but readily substitute a comradely shoulder at a critical moment; want sex and relationships, but not at the cost of respect; want independence, but not at the cost of loneliness.
From everyday humor, everyday awkwardness and discreet, but accurate everyday sketches - which is only one scene in the shower, where the heroes are trying to have morning sex - a fascinating dramedy is formed about people in whom it is easy to recognize themselves or their friends and acquaintances (regardless of whether whether they grew up in Inglewood or haven't seen him in the eye). "Insecure" takes a long time to harness and does not always indulge in crystal clear motivations with a clear Tinder alternative - to swipe left or right. Doubts here, like a kind of social disease, affect almost every hero, highlighting their imperfections and inability to admit their own mistakes - at least publicly. At decisive moments, they behave the way most people would behave in their place: they hesitate, laugh off silly, start talking and do not finish.
The main engine of the story in the series is not over-dramatic circumstances ("a single mother who grew up in a religious cult and is suspected of a triple murder, learns about the fatal diagnosis"), but the very uncertainty declared in the title - more precisely, a chronic unwillingness to take responsibility for her choice or at least for myself to formulate what the heroines, in fact, want something. But how many of us can always answer this question?