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Mixed:
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Negative:
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Critic Reviews
IndieWireOct 25, 2021
Season 5 Review:
In Season 5, “Insecure” leans into its legacy for awkward small talk in place of punch lines and tensions that roil between the lines of every text message. Its charismatic characters progress, inch by inch, in pursuit of grand romantic love and career clout while taking for granted what’s already aspirational about their lives: to be entrenched with people who you know so well. And to be doing it all in Lotusland.
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Jul 27, 2018
Season 3 Review:
Molly’s starting a new job at an all-black law firm, a utopian-seeming office with its own brand of workplace politics. She’s still seeing Dro (Sarunas J. Jackson), Mr. Open Marriage, so that’s another It’s Complicated. Insecure juggles these complications marvelously, blending swoony-sexy swagger with laugh-out-loud comedy. The four episodes I’ve seen push the central characters to moments of change, some minor, some life-altering.
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Oct 22, 2021
Season 5 Review:
The great filmmaking is accompanied by fantastic performances from the entire cast. ... Despite my preamble about fears and insecurities, the fun parts of Insecure are still there. The parties, the one-line zingers, the hookups and relationship drama, the mirror raps, and the humanistic portrayals of complicated friendships still fill the screen with so much heart.
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IndieWireJul 18, 2017
Season 2 Review:
More is gleaned from creative story construction and careful scene setting than exposition. Her rapping doesn’t feel as disconnected from the rest of the show because of how thoroughly Rae’s personality is integrated into the series. She still occasionally steps into a bathroom to cut loose, but her personality shines through brighter and wider than before.
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Oct 25, 2021
Season 5 Review:
Assuming the rest of the season is as sharp, witty and melancholy as the four episodes made available for review there's no reason to worry about where it's headed. Rae and showrunner Prentice Penny prove they're still making one of the funniest shows on TV, but not at the expense of its sentimental mood.
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Jul 24, 2017
Season 2 Review:
The second season, which kicks off Sunday at 10:30 p.m., flows with more confidence and pluck than the first right off the bat--a good show that has only improved. Often a second season pick-up is the endorsement a creator needs to relax into her vision. Rae certainly has.
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Jul 20, 2017
Season 2 Review:
The risk in this kind of show is that viewers will complain that “nothing happens,” but that never feels like the case here because Rae and her co-stars shape every scene into a perfectly formed bit of social interaction, built around a core of conflict, but with fascinating bits of business happening in the margins.
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Sep 30, 2016
Season 1 Review:
A show that cannot help but carry with it the burden of being a standard-bearer for diverse voices on television, even as it attempts to be, you know, funny. Insecure proves to be ably up to the challenge. The show marries specific issues with universal questions to create situations that are both precise and affecting. ... Issa herself is a profane, brilliant lead character.
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Oct 6, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Like FX's Atlanta, the season’s best new comedy, Insecure is fighting, and winning, a two-front war: Exploring what's different about the black experience while reminding us that much of that experience is shared by us all. There’s nothing limited or limiting about Insecure.
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Oct 6, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Insecure is less inherently dramatic than some of the other Comedies In Theory, which makes the infrequency of laugh-out-loud moments a bigger issue than on, say, Casual, but Rae is a really engaging writer and performer, and the series is charming and compulsively watchable.
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IndieWireOct 6, 2016
Season 1 Review:
More experimentation occurs in later episodes and works to varying degrees. Time-lapse videos are implemented to great effect, while at least one dream sequence feels like a dangerously distracting red herring. These evolving ideas and developing structures speak to how Insecure is still finding itself, just like Issa.
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iDec 3, 2021
Season 5 Review:
As much as Insecure is a show about navigating life as a directionless millennial, it’s also a strong testament to the highs and lows of female friendship, and the focal point here was Issa’s reconciliation with her best friend, Molly, after falling out over a party last year.
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TV Guide MagazineNov 5, 2021
Season 5 Review:
Emotionally perceptive and brashly entertaining. [8 - 21 Nov 2021, p.9]
The GuardianJun 30, 2020
Season 4 Review:
It is not perfect. Like season three, it sometimes moves too slowly and the product placement occasionally feels relentless – especially when we get a closeup of a bottle of Lea & Perrins. But, ultimately, it takes us to an important place and shows that all of the progress the girls made can be undone without the right people around them.
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Jul 24, 2017
Season 2 Review:
That energy swells with tricky, topical realities of racism and sexism, but Insecure never feels like an exclusionary experience. The fundamental themes of bonds and sisterhood and friendship are too strong for the show to so blatantly wall off a segment of its audience. Issa and Molly are both in this together, and the simple beauty of Insecure is that it feels like you are too.
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ColliderJul 21, 2017
Season 2 Review:
Insecure is alive and engaged in the time after Tinder was new and fun, when you realize that bad luck in love and dreaded dry spells are often caused from within and politics are unbearably personal. It also happens to be a show that most fans of Living Single or Laverne & Shirley would probably love.
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RogerEbert.comOct 7, 2016
Season 1 Review:
At first, the relative inexperience of the cast shows, but they settle in over subsequent episodes, and the writing starts strong and gets better. Insecure is a remarkably observant show about “big issues” like race, class and education, but they’re woven into the fabric of a character study.
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Oct 6, 2016
Season 1 Review:
It's a smart and often funny look at young people looking for love and professional satisfaction in Los Angeles, which is about as common a genre as TV has to offer these days. But taken in the totality of the TV landscape, Rae's voice is one that wasn't being heard and that voice is what makes Insecure stand out, not necessarily as better than the Emmy winners or critical favorites in the field, but as gratifyingly distinguishable.
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TV Guide MagazineSep 29, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Insecure is brazenly confident in its comic, profane authenticity. [3-9 Oct 2016, p.23]
Apr 20, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Insecure remains funny and moving, a chill show about the hustle. ... There's a bit of specificity missing. [May 2020, p.85]
IndieWireAug 9, 2018
Season 3 Review:
Issa pointedly says in Episode 2 that she doesn’t want to be the voice of all black people--and while that’s resulted in less bold, creative choices so far, it doesn’t mean they won’t be coming. If Issa’s “mirror bitch” is given more chances to make an appearance, all these little moments could add up to something major.
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Oct 25, 2021
Season 5 Review:
The first four episodes of its final season were made available to critics, and they are for the most part strong and deliciously entertaining. But certain issues linger. ... Lush visuals serve as a counterpoint to the sparseness of the writing in the dramatic scenes. Regarding Molly and Issa strengthening their relationship: It doesn’t quite work. Their friendship, in all its fraught yet intimate nature, deserves a meatier reconciliation.
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Apr 10, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Watching Issa and Lawrence once again dance around each other and their history and witnessing Molly struggle in another relationship makes for repetitive storytelling, even if the friends' frustration with each other acknowledges this Möbius-strip behavior. Retreading old patterns isn't fun for friends, and it certainly isn't fun for viewers. ... The HBO comedy is as funny as ever, but I miss its lighter spirit.
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Oct 7, 2016
Season 1 Review:
The character dynamics are genuine and refreshing and also quite funny; although Insecure features its share of angst from its main characters, it never loses sight of the comedy, which often comes from the way that Issa and Molly feel slightly out of place among all of their supposed peer groups. The show stumbles when it focuses on a love triangle.
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Oct 22, 2021
Season 5 Review:
The first four episodes of this final season feel strangely remote; the professional issues are a touch too procedural. ... A show designed to comment, hilariously and wrenchingly, on the precarious moments of one’s 20s is struggling to find ways to keep up the big and rousing emotions while depicting a period that’s more secure.
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Oct 9, 2016
Season 1 Review:
Seems less a sitcom than a character study inflected by melancholy humor and hip-hop idioms. It sometimes tries a bit too hard to flash its street credentials (the episodes all have titles like "Messy as Fuck" and "Thirsty as Fuck"), but that's more than compensated for by its obdurate refusal to bill itself as the master narrative of black women. It's content to be the piquant story of two confused friends trying to navigate the uncertainties of the young-adult world.
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