Reflections about black women friendships : A snippet of Molly and Issa’s relationship from ‘Insecure’
Winnie (author) and friends’ analysis of their ups and downs
In between trying to work, attend webinars and also contributing to the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in different ways, I found time to catch up on TV series and movies as well. I haven’t really been able to do much watching before the pandemic, and I was glad to get dragged into the creative world of TV series and movies. If not for entertainment but to help keep the anxiousness and uncertainty of the pandemic at bay. One Sunday afternoon we scheduled a video call with my friends Nana, Vero and Liz to catch up. Part of what came up in the call is the HBO TV series — Insecure. Except me, they had all been watching and following it up. So the rallying call as we end the video chat is I should begin watching it and catch up so that we can discuss Issa and Lawrence’s relationship and Issa and Molly. At the time Season 4 hadn’t started but was coming up in the next few days after the series’ two year hiatus. I took up the challenge and did an omnibus of Insecure. In four days I was all caught up and we could begin talking about the various aspects of this series. Meanwhile I also hit up my other friends Gloria and Ivy to ask them if they have been watching the series and to my not so big surprise — I have been the only one who has not been imbibing in the Issa Rae magic.
My first general thoughts about the series were that it had done a good job in normalizing black bodies, the characters are well thought through and the dynamics of all the relationships — friendships, family, romantic partners are such relatable content.
But I was more intrigued at how the Issa and Molly relationship develops as the series got into season 4. The thing about watching such relatable content, is that I always want to discuss it after watching, to get different perspectives from my friends. As I was pondering the unfolding of season 4 , I came across a Medium article by ZORA (a Medium publication for women of colour) on the same topic and was nothing short of excited that women’s experiences are indeed a global phenomenon — whatever we had in mind was being thought about by other women elsewhere. At the start of the season 4, Issa and Molly’s friendship was seemingly on the rocks and I couldn’t wait to see how this pans out.
How we prioritize romantic relationships
Coincidentally at the beginning of the year, we had a similar conversation with my friend Nana where I had pointed out to her that I think society has made us prioritize putting work in romantic relationships in a way that we don’t for friendships and even family relations, yet all these relationships are equally important. At the point I was giving her an example of how we would go out of our way to find out about what our romantic person likes, even do love language tests but we barely do that for our friends and family, we tend to expect that the friendships and familial relations will somehow fall in place even when there is a misunderstanding. Indeed, in the ZORA article , Lincoln Hill posits that historically society has created a hierarchy for various social connections that puts priority on romantic partnerships and family relations over platonic friendships. Issa and Molly’s case wasn’t any different. Throughout season 4 it is already evident that their friendship is strained and needs an honest sit down to get it back on track , but seemingly life keeps happening and they both don’t prioritize this. But even more is that the historic societal expectation comes to play when Molly chooses to prioritize fixing her relationship with Andrew (Asian bae) over fixing her relationship with Issa. She even goes further to refuse to do Issa a favour by asking her new bae, Andrew, to help in getting an artist for Issa’s block party project. Molly’s words as a defense to not asking Andrew to help Issa out “ this relationship is important to me and I want to protect that”. Elsewhere in that episode Molly tells Andrew that he is her main priority. This statement in particular underscores the common hierarchy of social connections — romantic partners are a priority.
What we thought about the Issa/Molly heated argument— Low Key Movin’ on
In Episode 5 of Season 4, the now delicate friendship really blew up and at this point my friends (Nana, Vero, Lizzie , Ivy) and I decided to dissect what Molly did, starting an argument during the block party after finding out that Issa asked Nathan, who happens to be Andrew’s friend to get her an artist for the party.
Winnie
Molly’s reaction oddly felt familiar to me. At the time of watching I couldn’t place a finger on it but after a while I realized this is her kind of behaviour. Remember when she got very angry at her mother for forgiving her father cheating incident? Yes, that was the familiarity. Molly seems to be projecting a lot of unresolved emotional issues that she has to situations that do not warrant the reactions she gives. Yes, indeed her and Issa were having friction but to the extent of being very angry at Issa for trying to reach out to other people who will support her big project, nay, her next career move? Even worse causing a scene during the very event that means so much to her career move, all because your boyfriend gave your friend the support she needed without your knowledge? She did not act in good faith.
Another thing I read into Molly’s behaviour was that she has always had the element of control in terms of being successful career wise and having a salary that supports a more comfortable life compared to Issa. So low-key , Issa succeeding at this event, even without her support , felt like she was losing some sort of economic control that she normally has within that relationship. Hence her anger. In addition, Molly has perfected the art of passive aggressive communication throughout the series including at her work place. Her lack of emotional intelligence coupled with that awful trait of passive-aggressive communication is why she would choose the block party, a big event that her friend is organizing , to be the scene where she wants to settle their unresolved issues. Honestly, that issue could have waited till after the party. I saw no urgency to resolve it there and then considering Molly herself had indicated that she won’t support her in the way she was asking because her relationship with Andrew meant a lot.
I posit that for Molly, her fairly stable career /professional life gives her a sense of grounding and also covers up for all the other bits of her life that are not going so well. She seemingly defines her stability with her demanding career that supports her comfortable life and now her new romantic interest. While conceptualizing and putting together the block party is professional growth for Issa, within their relationship it is a shift, a shift that unsettles the power balance of having a stable career that Molly had a monopoly of. This could be one of the things she is grappling with as she explodes at Issa during the party and says really mean things. To be fair though, they both threw words at each other!
Nana
Nana said she was still quite shocked at the bit where Molly was willing to watch Issa fail in organizing the Block Party and getting upset at the bae(Andrew) for helping Issa while they were not on talking terms. She quipped in Kiswahili , “hiyo ni roho gani ‘’ — a phrase that means loosely that one has an evil heart.
I guess sometimes our undesirable traits really do show in the most unexpected of circumstances. With Nana’s sentiments, it made me realize just how selfish Molly was in that situation. Nana added that while Molly’s concept of boundaries was good, a sentiment she brought up as a defense for not helping Issa, the implementation of that concept was a failure . Case in point, causing a scene at the block party.
Vero
Vero agreed with me that Molly did not react appropriately. For Vero, this was a pointer to how terrible Molly is at putting issues across and has awful timing for her outbursts. This sentiment made me question Molly’s emotional intelligence, because while she had valid concerns, how she put them across, and the place she decided to air them out was not okay at all. Vero added that she saw the positive side of Molly acknowledging her communication issues in her new romantic relationship with Andrew but has failed to extend the same courtesy to her friendship with Issa. Again, a sentiment that underscores the hierarchy of importance we place on different connections with romantic ones being a priority.
Vero goes on to explain that both Issa and Molly failed to set up the date to talk over their issues sooner before it became worse. At this point I recall the sentiments put across by John Gottman in the book “What makes love last” about a concept known as ‘the sliding door moment’. In this concept , Gottman explains that in committed relationships, partners constantly ask each other in words and actions for understanding and support on various issues — sliding door moments. Such requests can sometimes be misinterpreted ,missed, ignored or are not obvious. In those moments where those requests are missed , ignored or misinterpreted, the door has been shut and eventually leads to a regrettable incident. When the opposite happens a partner has opened the door and creates an opportunity to form deeper connection and understanding. Issa and Molly’s friendship had numerous sliding door moments, missed opportunities to understand each other, and now a regrettable thing has happened.
Vero also added that it was important for Molly to realize that their roles in the relationship have switched up, that Issa was the busier one with work now and her the needy one with relationship issues. In all this it felt like Molly is having a hard time acknowledging Issa’s growth considering her long drawn drama with the several men she has dated in the past as Molly helped her get through the mess. In the same breath , Vero notes that Issa too missed the opportunity to embrace Mollys growth insofar as romantic relationships are concerned. Issa was used to hearing Molly rumble on end about her failing relationships that when she did make an intentional decision to do things differently with Andrew, her new bae, Issa was passive and focused to prioritize her work instead(the block party). Vero emphatically winds up saying that they both let their relationship spiral into very unhealthy territories but it would be interesting to see how /if they salvage it [Hello Episode 6 :-)].
Lizzie
I pictured Lizzie’s husky voice as she put forth sentiments regarding the fight. “Molly made me so mad, it was the most unnecessary thing.” For Lizzie, what irks her the most is that Molly did not come through to support Issa when she needed the help but she also expected that other people should not have come through as well. I think there is a word for that as we earlier noted- selfishness?
On prioritizing romantic partnerships, Lizzie explains that people forget that even as friends you can break someone’s heart and because you don’t put in the work it goes awry, yet one would go over and above for a significant other(SO).
Ivy
Reaching out to Ivy for her thoughts on the Issa/Molly fight was a no brainer for me — she had similar thoughts to mine on how good the series was at normalizing black bodies and the general script. She also has a way with words. For starters, Ivy felt that Molly was low-key rooting for Issa to lose with the block party as she had surprise tones with statements like ‘ this is really good’ — almost like she did not trust that Issa would actually do a good job. Ivy felt that for Molly to start a fight at the party was actually malicious and the actions had the undertones — I can’t stand seeing you doing well without me involved. Do you people see the selfishness jumping out in these thoughts again?- I digress.
In between noting how the timing of the fight was unnecessary , Ivy provides a balanced view of what culminated to this moment. Issa has had a reputation of not following through with plans and that perhaps was the reason why Molly was trying to avoid her and Andrew getting involved in the plans. Because if the block party plans didn’t materialize, their (Molly & Andrew) relationship would be in jeopardy. And that dear readers, would definitely be a problem for Molly!
Ivy goes on to remind me that throughout the previous episodes, Molly and Issa have been coming at each other with lots of instances where they had sarcastic quips about their various life developments. She notes that this is the problem of such relationships, you know someone for that long you tend to think they will stick to their old ways no matter what new ways they try. To corroborate this thought, Lincoln Hill in her ZORA article highlights that , “when the familiarity with our friends disallows us from being surprised by them , we run the risk of placing implicit limitations on our friends based on who we believe them to be or who believe we need them to be”.
Ivy ends her commentary saying that both Molly and Issa are at fault for the damage they caused their relationship thus far without attempting to fix it, but Molly’s reaction at the block party was completely unnecessary.
At this point I feel like we need to have a chance at writing one of the Insecure episodes. It was such a joy discussing this particular episode with my friends — almost like a book club but for a TV series. Heck, ‘Insecure’ really does give you discuss-worthy content!
NB: If you haven’t watched the series ‘Insecure’ sorry about the spoiler.
