There comes a time at night when the only people still awake are drunk, high or looking to take advantage of the first two. This is the scene in “Money Bag Shawty,” the thirteenth episode of Donald Glover’s hit FX series Atlanta. Glover plays Earnest “Earn” Marks—a chronically impoverished Princeton dropout who has just received his first check as a manager for his perpetually caustic cousin Alfred (Brian Tyree Henry), a.k.a. rapper Paper Boi. Earn spends the entire episode trying to blow a bag, only to be halted or scammed at every turn.
As Earn and his intermittent girlfriend Van (Zazie Beetz) are leaving their final stop for the night, they discover former Falcons quarterback Michael Vick racing against patrons for money on the street outside. “It’s just a good hustle,” says a bystander. Fueled by the frustration of an evening that didn’t go his way, Earn decides to try his luck. “Sometimes you just gotta stunt on people,” he says. His arrogance receives a satisfying and predictable humbling in the form of a smash cut to the ride back home with Van in their limo. Their silence is broken by her sharp delivery: “It’s Michael Vick.” Cue credits. It’s a brilliant bit made even richer by consolidating one of the show’s driving themes: the absolute mindlessness of money.
There are seldom any guarantees in the world of television, but Atlanta is a particular streak of lightning in a bottle. Part of it could be due to the entirely Black writing team; something almost unheard of in this field, particularly when most of the writers were newcomers to the form. Perhaps that is also why Atlanta so often breaks the traditional rules of sitcoms, like the near no-brainer that every episode should feature each of your principal characters. Earnest and Van take multiple absences throughout the series, as do Alfred and his roommate Darius (Lakeith Stanfield), who has become the series’ most quotable character for his off-the-wall aphorisms and conspiracy theories—like his belief that “AIDS was invented to keep Wilt Chamberlain from beating Steve McQueen’s sex record.” Atlanta’s second season took this character-focused approach to the next level by devoting solo episodes to each of its four protagonists, bolstered by a minor cameo from their co-stars at most.
It’s OK if you don’t always “get” Atlanta.
By all accounts this rule-breaking is intentional, and it has led to award-winning results—including two Golden Globes and two Primetime Emmys—despite the series certainly having its fair share of confounding moments. But it’s OK if you don’t always “get” Atlanta. After all, some of its actors didn’t. Stanfield confessed to initially hating the show and his character, until continued viewings brought him to a better understanding of both. In his case, mystery has yielded some fascinating results, particularly in the instance of Atlanta’s greatest enigma: Teddy Perkins.
Introduced in a self-titled episode, Teddy Perkins is a reclusive musician whose home Darius travels to in hopes of securing a novelty piano. Viewers immediately clocked his appearance as mimicking a late-stage Michael Jackson, with shades of both the King of Pop and 70s soul crooner Marvin Gaye manifesting in Perkins’ personal backstory about growing up under the heel of an abusive musician father. In one of the series’ biggest departures from form, this captivating gothic isolates Darius with this eerie figure in an investigation of sacrifice and identity. Incidentally, the true identity of “Mr. Perkins” was kept from Stanfield for the breadth of production. It was Glover wearing heavy prosthetics and makeup, but Stanfield only learned the truth after asking just about every person on set until the beans were spilled. He got to be behind the charade at the 70th Primetime Emmy Awards, where Glover had someone attend the ceremony in full Perkins regalia.
Image: Courtesy of Everett Collection/FX. Design: StyleCaster.
So much of Atlanta feels like that—an inside joke you just had to be there for. Most of the time, the “being there” is being Black. It’s Earn, stunned that a white man felt comfortable saying the N-word in front of him while telling a story, later inviting him to recount that same story for Al and Darius and seeing the blood drain out of his face. It’s Al ditching his flakey barber for a new one, then silently realizing he has no idea how to communicate the kind of cut he wants. Atlanta conveys perspectives of Blackness in ways that don’t feel didactic, which helps authenticate the show to its intended audience.
As for its more surreal excursions? Glover attributes those to a simple source: cannabis. “The effortless chaos of Atlanta…is definitely shaped by weed,” he told Tad Friend of The New Yorker in 2018. The winking eye with which this series stares back at its viewers is a glassy and reddened one as well. It guides us into an environment so fraught with anxiety that an outstretched blunt becomes the easiest way to escape. But the stimulants of this stress are as important to the show as its uncanny side effects, and sooner or later the mellow fades and life floods in before the characters have a chance to spark back up.
Atlanta conveys perspectives of Blackness in ways that don’t feel didactic.
It’s no coincidence that the character nicknamed Earn spends most episodes teetering on the dollar edge of abject poverty. And yet for someone who so often needs money, he can be extremely careless when he gets it. After Darius brings him in on a dog breeding deal to yield dividends down the road, Earn scolds him that “poor people don’t have time for investments because [they’re] too busy trying not to be poor.” But later, when Darius gives him his share of that very investment, Earn is easily duped into a gift card scam by Al’s paroled friend Tracy and winds up forfeiting the bulk of it. We find out early on that Earn is smart, but he isn’t very wise.
Image: Courtesy of Everett Collection/FX. Design: StyleCaster.
The criticism isn’t exclusive to men, either. Van gets caught up in the hype too after a nasty fight with Earn, when a girls’ night out becomes a quest to flex on her ex by snagging a selfie with Drake. Of course, she doesn’t, and soon the tedium of her everyday rushes back to greet her. But her position in the show is relatable in its lack of glamor, and an important piece of the tapestry Glover seeks to weave. Like the Jazmine Sullivan song says:
This one’s for all the baby mamas and the down ass chicks
Remember y’all used to take bathroom pics, In the crib
And he said if he ever got rich, we out this bitch
Believe that shit
But now you’re living good while I’m sitting…
Sometimes Atlanta satirizes with a solemn tone, like in “FUBU” (S2E10), an episode that follows Earn over the course of a few days in junior high when the most devastating thing one could be accused of was wearing a fake brand. When another boy walks into class with a nearly identical yellow jersey to his, accusations of fraudulence fly first class around the building and it soon becomes the only thing everyone can talk about. The incessant harassment eventually leads the other child to take his own life. Upon returning home, Earn and Alfred are admonished by their mothers to always look out for each other. When last we saw the two, Al was on the verge of firing his cousin, and with Atlanta season 3 taking them on tour in Europe, their pact will be tested more than ever before.
Donald Glover sold Atlanta as little more than a Black sitcom, but what FX actually got was something quite beyond definition that has captured the attention of millions. Even Jordan Peele has praised it for being the “elevated” content Black audiences deserve. Its genre may continue to elude easy description, but on the cusp of its penultimate season, there couldn’t be a better time to rediscover Atlanta as what it ultimately is: part of a renaissance in essential Black storytelling.
Atlanta Season 3 premieres March 24, 2022, on FX and is available to stream the next day on Hulu. Here’s how to watch it for free.
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Source: Stylecaster.com