Insecure recap: When it all goes down—awkwardly

SEASON TWO, EPISODE SEVEN | “HELLA DISRESPECTFUL” | SEPTEMBER 3

Issa, what are you doing, girl?

I mean, I get it. Life is hard. Very. Car is messed up. Auto shop is charging you an arm and a leg. Fly dresses must be purchased to front in front of ex-boyfriends — only to be returned the next day.

But you’re tearing up your apartment — a rent increase is soon coming to your slow-to-gentrify neighborhood — and you’re not really seeming to care about getting your security deposit back. That’s doing way too much. So Tiffany (Amanda Seales) hosts a dinner party for her husband, Derek (Wade Allain-Marcus), and invited Issa’s ex-boyfriend Lawrence, who brought an unexpected plus-one to the intimate affair.

Awkward.

And Tiffany also invited Dro and his wife — are we really convinced they’re in an open relationship? Or do we believe he’s lying because he wanted to take Molly (Yvonne Orji) to bed? Those in the know were hella uncomfortable and hella insecure.

Yet, perhaps an even bigger storyline than Molly’s almost unbelievable romantic relationship with a childhood friend who says he’s in an open marriage is seeing her try to boldly break through the corporate glass ceiling, demanding a meeting with The Boys’ Club to discuss all of her career victories well in advance of a yearly review in an effort to get a salary on par with her white male colleague’s.

But it is the central romantic relationship that has grabbed at us most of this summer. When the inaugural season came to its finale last year, we all wondered whether this entire season would be spent on Lawrence and Issa getting back to one another. We now know better. What we’ve seen are two characters battling their way through major millennial insecurities, trying to figure it out and trying to get it as right as they can in the moment they’re living.

Much of this culminates in this episode in a drag-down verbal altercation between Lawrence (Jay Ellis) and Issa (Issa Rae) outside of a restaurant. They hurl profanities and insults and barbs at one another, both clearly still harboring deep feelings of love, trust gone awry and regret.

All of this is a setup to next week’s 45-minute finale, where it appears the two characters meet up again and perhaps give us some sort of movement in either direction: stay forever apart or make moves toward reconciliation.

Bring it on.