‘Insecure’ Broke Ground by Embracing Imperfection

The show, which ends this season, depicted its characters as authentically flawed. “True representation is the ability to show your vulnerability,” said the co-creator and star Issa Rae.

“Insecure” begins its final season by looking backward.

In the season premiere, which debuts Oct. 24 on HBO, the best friends Issa Dee (Issa Rae) and Molly Carter (Yvonne Orji) meet up at Stanford University for their 10-year college reunion, having spent most of last season fighting and apart. Over an eventful weekend, they reminisce about the origins of their relationship and pledge to move forward together, once again firmly in each other’s corners.

It suggests that for the final stretch, “Insecure” is returning to the thing that made it so appealing for Black viewers especially, and so subtly groundbreaking for premium cable: consistent focus on the ups and downs of Black women’s friendships. Created by Rae (then known for her web series “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl”) and the veteran comic and showrunner Larry Wilmore, “Insecure” was only the second comedy created by and starring a Black woman when it debuted in 2016. (The first was Wanda Sykes’s “Wanda at Large,” which premiered in 2003 on Fox.) “Insecure” briefly overlapped on HBO with “Girls,” which ended in 2017 — both descendants of the network’s “Sex and the City,” but which swapped the Blahniks and Birkins for millennial angst and awkwardness.