In Issa, there is never anything real.
It’s a ridiculous promise: stand outside her door for 30 minutes with no shoes and no earbuds, and she’ll guarantee not having a fight.
“The eyes are our currency,” a friend teaches Issa, “and if they are wide open, it’s evidence that nothing else matters.”
Season 2 was much less realistic than season 1, in that it relied on a largely unsympathetic character, Poussey Washington, to show the downside of black privilege. We got no female friendships, and no couches in bars. But the plot last season gave us the bravest portrait of hip-hop ennui any black viewer will see.
Here, we have a character who tells her mother she may be best friends with Dean Bunn, a white singer, but can’t abide him because he “knows about it.” Can you imagine your mother telling that to you?
Is it any wonder Issa might have her own tune?
Every season, the show depends on Issa and her friends to tell us exactly what’s going on: through the beauty tips, the fashion choices, the art styles, the romances.
Alas, Issa can’t or won’t connect with her mother, or her brother, or her best friend, or her boyfriend.
For example, while trying to seduce Steve Harvey (Christian Slater), Issa begs him for sex: “When you’re not giving it to me, what is it you don’t give?”
And here’s the reason she can’t; Issa’s boyfriend is an egomaniac. After he tore up the photographs of Issa’s loved ones and threw them on the ground, he snapped, “Oh man, you’re different, babe.”
“When are we a real couple now?” he asked as he toasted her, then jabbed his fist through her hand and laughed at her. (For once, not just a girl from the ghetto.)
I need to get emotional now. This is some of the most predictable television I’ve ever seen. I’m used to it. I can’t imagine how long this will work.
But here’s the thing: If Issa gets back together with her boyfriend, she’ll come home with a tour from a white woman who teaches her “the approach and the arts.” Again.
I realize I’m so out of it here, but honestly, what happened to Issa? Did she just kick the iPhone in the other direction? Did she get hung up on a fight?