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Managing editor & film and television critic with a Bachelor's of Arts in English Literature with a Writing Minor from the University of Guam. Currently in graduate school completing a Master's in English Literature.
Insecure has successfully survived the pandemic and gives us much to ruminate on. The tenth and final episode of the show’s fourth season is titled “Lowkey Lost;” it is written and directed by series showrunner Prentice Penny.
Some spoilers ahead for those who have not yet watched this episode or seen the series. If you haven’t done either, you should get to that now, then return to this article!
The showrunner provides viewers and fans with a lot of events happen in just one episode. The finale focuses on several storylines: Issa Dee (Issa Rae) commits to her rekindled relationship with her ex-boyfriend of five years — Lawrence Walker (Jay Ellis) — and seemingly chooses him over her current fling Nathan Campbell (Kendrick Sampson); Molly Carter (Yvonne Orji) has a falling out with her boyfriend Andrew (Alexander Hodge); Issa and Molly help their friends Kelli Prenny (Natasha Rothwell) and Derek DuBois (Wade Allain-Marcus) find their other friend — also Derek’s wife — Tiffany DuBois (Amanda Seales); and finally, Lawrence tells Issa a revelation that changes the course of their relationship forever.
As always, the music and cinematography are to die for, this time with songs by artists such as Thundercat, Saba, and Tyler, the Creator bringing some levity, landscapes of California demonstrating the beauty of the protagonist’s home, and street artwork paying homage to the late basketball players Kobe and Gianna Bryant and rapper Nipsey Hussle. As part of the Black Lives Matter movement, it’s important to remember the heroes that made things work. (Although, it can be argued — as Dave Chappelle mentions in his 8:46 stand-up special — that the real heroes are the survivors.) Framing is also an important element for this episode, which will be explained in a bit.
The plot surrounding Issa, Molly, Kelli, and the DuBois focuses on post-partum depression and the death anxieties that the Black community experiences. Tiffany DuBois has left her husband and has been gone for a while, urging the group on an intense search for her. With a newborn child in the picture, this causes stress between Tiffany and Derek, with the former shutting out her husband from the relationship. Issa takes a page from her mother’s advice in the season’s sixth episode and tells him, “None of us are perfect. We are all just trying to figure it out.” Molly’s memory of partying and Issa’s knowledge of the Lyft services help find Tiffany. Along with the topic of Black women in hospitals and clinics not being taken seriously being brought up in a previous Season 4 episode, Tiffany develops further when she realizes her family’s life was not meant to turn out this way for another two years and that this was unplanned.
Kelli and the group make their way to Tiffany, where the police are called on them. The group ask if this situation is in any way race-related, and the police resolve the issue by letting both parties — the group and their accusers — go. This scene is extremely relevant to current events concerning BLM and might just be the best scene of the finale. If any of the characters in the group were to be killed, the series would veer critically into a different direction; allowing them to live is the right and crucial decision to make, and this experience just adds to their character development. None of the individuals on this show are exempt from physical harm.
Derek says he tried to fix things when his wife wasn’t happy, teaching Molly and Issa that they must continue to make their own relationship work out, and they wound up meeting at the Ethiopian restaurant from the series pilot, which also made its return earlier in this current season.
Molly and Andrew discuss the time they spent together — the longest they’ve each been in any relationship so far. Andrew argues that despite the temporal lengths they’ve gone, making it work shouldn’t be difficult. This scene between the two ends with Molly at a bottom corner of the camera frame. The space around her shows that there is a lot happening where she is not the focal point. (This is just one example of writer/director Penny’s framing in this episode.) Andrew asks Molly if their struggles regarding time is what she desires in their relationship, and it ends there, at least for now.
Happy to take all questions re: the finale of @insecurehbo #InsecureHBO I directed and wrote the finale. A lot of the episode is about how things are framed. So I played with framing a lot
— Prentice Penny (@The_A_Prentice) June 15, 2020
Additionally, Molly claims that she lets things go “all the time,” which she tries to do by then declining a call from Kelli. As a counter-argument, Andrew points out that she did not want to let go of a conflict that she had with his brother during vacation.
Unlike the Dubois as well as Molly and Andrew, Issa and Lawrence’s relationship is returning to new heights. The latter is given a new career in San Francisco with a likely move, and Issa agrees with him that distance should not be a dealbreaker. Another agreement is made between the two when she says:
I’m at a point in my life where I just want to cut out the bullshit and surround myself with things that make me happy, like you, so if we want this [relationship] to work, it’ll work … so we’ll figure it out.
However, in the final scenes of the episode, Lawrence reveals to Issa that his recently former fling Condola (Christina Elmore) is pregnant and that she wants to keep his child. Like his friend Derek, Lawrence is not ready to be a father and did not plan for this to happen. On the other end of the spectrum, Condola is the only character who is prepared for what the future brings. Her previous marriage — before having met Lawrence — ends up in a divorce, and now she is ready to have a child.
“Lowkey Lost” demonstrates loss of happiness in the characters’ lives although shows some hope for some. Derek and the group find Tiffany, discovering that she is not hurt albeit emotionally unwell. The husband and wife hug it out. Meanwhile, Issa and Molly give their friendship another chance, which ends the season with Tyler, the Creator’s song, “Are We Still Friends?” The finale develops all of its characters with hardship to endure, although some have resolutions. Overall, this season of Insecure has been rocky from start to finish, which comes to show that we are all human beings feeling discomfort or dissatisfaction in one way or another.
10/10
What do you think? Have you seen this series? If not, do you plan to binge it sometime in the near future? Let us know! For more Insecure and HBO-related news and reviews follow The Cinema Spot on Twitter (@TheCinemaSpot) and Instagram (@thecinemaspot_).
Managing editor & film and television critic with a Bachelor's of Arts in English Literature with a Writing Minor from the University of Guam. Currently in graduate school completing a Master's in English Literature.
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