Television Roundup: “Insecure,” “Easy” and the Rise of Behavioral Comedy.
Among my first thoughts watching the new HBO comedy “Insecure,” created by and starring Issa Rae, was “wow, it sure is nice to see a character-driven comedy set in Los Angeles that actually bothers to go South of the 10 Freeway”. It’s a little upsetting that such a vast and diverse region as Los Angeles has collectively been distilled in its television incarnation to the small handful of gentrified neighborhoods that are likely to attract viewers unfamiliar with the city’s geography, but there you are.
For non-Angelinos, allow me to elaborate. Most of these humanistic, low-stakes Angelino comedies, even the good ones, are set in affluent, largely white neighborhoods like Eagle Rock (“Togetherness”) or the recently revamped former barrio that is Echo Park (“Love”). And while “Insecure” is not at all tonally dissimilar from either of the two shows I’ve just mentioned, its change of milieu is just one of the things that makes it refreshing.
“Insecure” is set in the vibrant South L.A. community of Inglewood. It’s a largely working class neighborhood that nevertheless has a thriving arts scene, some world-class stadium venues and some of the best damn soul food you’ll eat in your life (the Serving Spoon on Centinela, look it up). It also used to be a pretty rough neighborhood back in the 90’s, as was the case with many other adjacent neighborhoods in what used to be called Historic South Central. You’ll see none of the outsized gangbanger hijinks of something like Rick Famuyiwa’s “Dope” in “Insecure,” however, which coasts off a genial, good-vibes-only sense of humor and the considerable charisma of its lead actress.
In fact, it’s quite possible that if another actress were to step into this role, “Insecure” itself wouldn’t be all that memorable. I was not familiar with Rae as a creative force until I saw her host a panel at the Austin Film Festival, where she touched on her web series “Awkward Black Girl” (the impetus for “Insecure”) and the obstacles of being a woman of color working in a largely white industry. I attended the discussion more or less on a whim, but I was nevertheless struck by Rae’s sharpness of wit and the clarity with which she expressed herself. She’s probably too unusual to be a “star” by the industry’s whitewashed and restrictive standards, but she makes a damn fine case for stardom with her lead performance in “Insecure”. Rae’s performance in the show is hilarious, laced with a tremendous sense of compassion and is, ultimately, completely winning. She’s the sturdy rock on which the rest of this modest half-hour comedy rests, and I’ll probably keep watching the next few episodes just for the magnetism of her central performance.
Issa Rae plays Issa Dee (see what she did there?), a loosely fictionalized version of her real self, living and working in Inglewood. We first see her in front of a high-school classroom, offering up information about the non-profit organization where she works more or less a thankless job. The students couldn’t be less interested: they proceed to needle Issa with questions about her racial identity, with one student even going so far to ask her “why you talk white?”
The scene is played for awkward laughs, but it gets at an uncomfortable truth that I hope “Insecure” will continue to explore, which is the unfair expectations that marginalized minority demographics are often expected to live up to. Somewhat disappointingly, the racist cliché of the lazy, unsupportive black boyfriend is personified through Issa’s live-in boyfriend Lawrence (Jay Ellis), who doesn’t seem to want much more out of life than eating cereal on the couch all day. Lawrence’s go-nowhere attitude irks Issa to no end, prompting her to embark on a rowdy night out with her no-nonsense gal pal Molly (a hysterical Yvonne Orji), where she gets a chance to flex her skills as a battle rapper and ends up meeting a charming, thoughtful young man who I’m sure we’ll see plenty of in the episodes to come.
It’s hard to say where “Insecure” will really go from here, as the stakes set up by the pilot’s end feel minor at best. And yet Rae herself is so endearing and funny and smart that I feel compelled to keep watching, if for no other reason than to see where this character might end up. I applaud “Insecure’s” decision to not fetishize its inner city locale and to instead tell a sharply observed comic fable about a young woman ping-ponging her way through young adulthood. I can’t exactly call it a brand new perspective, but it feels like an engaging and new twist on one that’s worked before.
And yes, frankly, this perspective has been played out ad nauseum in everything from HBO’s similar, far less interesting “Girls” to Noah Baumbach’s dazzling “Frances Ha” to the underseen Quebecois import “Tu Dors, Nicole”. The fact that Rae has shifted the show’s focus towards being a woman of color is indeed a radical thing. “Insecure,” like “Transparent” and “Blackish,” is doing its damndest to tell meaningful stories from the vantage points of perspectives we seldom see on television, and that in and of itself makes it worth checking out. I can’t say that the first half-hour of “Insecure” blew me away on any level, but I can say that I will definitely still be watching.
Joe Swanberg’s new Netflix comedy “Easy” is a different kind of show: one that’s attuned to the frequencies of a world we’ve seen represented to a greater degree in film and television, but executed in a fashion I’ve never quite seen before. “Easy” is an anthology series, and like HBO’s recent “High Maintenance,” each episode almost functions as a standalone short film, with only the most tangential connections to any kind of larger narrative. Unlike “High Maintenance,” though, which lost me with its baffling and off-putting second episode, “Easy” is a show that is rich in emotional subtext and wry human comedy. It’s not always cohesive — this is one the drawbacks of the kind of anthology format the Swanberg employs here — but in terms of structure, it feels like something daring and refreshingly new.
Honestly, the anthology format makes a whole lot of sense for Swanberg. The Chicago filmmaker has forged a career off of scrappy, just-hanging-out indie comedies like “Hannah takes the Stairs” and “Drinking Buddies,” most of which are made on the fly, with low budgets and a rotating gallery of friends and collaborators. These are films that emphasize small, mundane moments and instances of recognizable human behavior over plot, and Swanberg has just been getting better as a filmmaker, culminating with last year’s surprisingly affecting and winsome “Digging For Fire”. “Easy” might just be his most easily enjoyable work to date, and its unorthodox narrative blueprint allows for Swanberg to experiment a bit with tone and style, at least within the very recognizable D.I.Y. framework he’s created. Those who yearn for plot twists and big reveals might want to wait until HBO’s “Westworld” premieres its debut episodes, but lovers of comic minutiae are going to want to make time for this one.
The first episode of “Easy” isn’t one of its strongest, but it sets an intriguing precedent for what’s to come, and it establishes sex and romantic stasis as two of the show’s defining thematic preoccupations. It’s called “The Fucking Study,” and it’s about a well-off, agreeable couple played by “Mistress America’s” Michael Chernus and the marvelous Elizabeth Reaser, both of whom are making active efforts to spice up their stagnant sex life. All of this leads to a pretty hilarious reveal, in which the characters don gender-specific costumes (a construction worker for Chernus’s henpecked husband, and of course, a French Maid outfit for the wife) in hopes of boosting their levels of lust, only to peter out when their naughty time is continually interrupted by the crying of their infant children from the next room. This same theme of invasion on the homefront is mirrored in a later, somewhat darker episode called “Controlada” where a couple who is trying to conceive a child has their life thrown off-course when their loutish, hard-partying friend comes through town and ends up staying on their couch. These nearly invisible narrative threads end up connecting some seemingly disparate installments of “Easy,” though the episodes are mostly easy to enjoy while taken on their own individual terms.
My favorite of the eight episodes that Netflix has posted for review is “Art and Life,” a cautionary tale about a disheveled graphic novelist (a terrific Marc Maron) who is notorious for mining his personal life in his work, and what happens when he ends up on the receiving end of this particular treatment at the hands of a sexy, smarter-than-she-looks millennial photographer played by an unexpectedly convincing Emily Ratajkowski. This vignette culminates in an excruciating showdown at an art gallery, one that sees Maron’s predictably cranky old gasbag laying into the legions of hip young things who amusedly record his phglem-spitting tirade with their iPhones. In spite of the episode’s trafficking in the Comedy of Awkward, however, “Art and Life” ends up saying a great deal about the limits of what we should borrow from our own lives in relation to our creative output, and the hard consequence of having to answer to the folks you’ve lampooned for the sake of your work. Another striking installment is the second episode, “Vegan Cinderella,” which uses a sweet, budding romance between a cute babysitter and a lesbian vegan to examine co-dependence and the notion of wanting to be better for our romantic partners. Granted, this particular tale involves some grisly slaughterhouse footage and the vomiting-up of an entire pepperoni pizza, but hey, Swanberg has always been interested in the more roundabout way of getting to the point of his story.
“Easy” could be considered too slight for some viewers, but that would be a shame. Swanberg’s show is part of a new movement that I like to call the Comedy of Behavior, where the character’s psychological ruptures and revelations determine the story as much as any quote-unquote plot points would in an ostensibly more serious-minded drama. Though the characters scattered across this wintry, warm-hearted Chicago fable all come from different social stratas and possess different dreams, there are nevertheless tangible connections that bind them to each other. The show’s final episode, about a pair of best friends who are find themselves at a professional crossroads when it comes to the fate of the brewery they’ve dreamed of operating together since they were kids, is a fitting metaphor for this wayward intersection of fate and purpose. Swanberg’s characters talk about the virtue of wanting to stay unknown versus selling out, and how if their product becomes available to everyone, it will no possess the modest charm it did upon its inception — in other words, it will no longer be cool.
The characters, played by Evan Jonigkeit and Dave Franco, are talking about beer here, but it’s hard not to listen to the dialogue and here Swanberg wrestling with his own conflicts about the filmmaking process. Over the years, Swanberg’s films have grown bigger without ever reaching comedy blockbuster level: whereas he once worked with almost complete unknowns for shoestring budgets, Swanberg’s films now actually look pretty great and he’s given to working with stars like Anna Kendrick and Orlando Bloom (the latter of whom pops up in one of “Easy’s” funniest and most surprising episodes). And yet, while Swanberg can’t help but expand his generous cinematic vision, he’s stayed small in all the ways that count. His insights into people still run deep, his command of scenes is still loose and unlike anything I’ve seen in other so-called “mumblecore” pictures and his trust with actors allows them to access parts of their personalities we may not have dared to imagine. “Easy” goes down just easy enough in the moment, but there’s some real pain — and real humanity — roiling just beneath the show’s cheery surface. My advice? Seek it out.
Grades: “Insecure,” B. “Easy,” B+.
