TV Recommendations: ‘Atlanta’
If you aren’t watching Atlanta then you really should be. This show right here encapsulates what telly these days does that no other medium is getting at anymore. Like, when they talk about golden ages and all that junk, this is what they’re really meaning. A show like Atlanta, a show that in 25 minute pockets each week gives you an earnest glimpse at something honest, funny and moving. Again, you really oughta be watching this thing.
Atlanta is the brainchild of Donald Glover (aka Childish Gambino, aka Troy from Community). Airing on the FX Network, it continues on a recent trend of FX fair dominating in the realms of quality programing that HBO once held so tightly – Fargo and The Americans are multi-seasoned dramas that live with most anything else on telly, while Archer remains as funny as ever and Baskets was for damn sure a critical success when that one arrived. There are high hopes for Better Things as well.
Those last two are the group in which Atlanta best fits in. Glover’s baby also walks that tragi-comedic line, although not as literally as Baskets does to be fair. Donnie plays Earn, a fairly down on his luck twenty-something living in Atlanta who might have been kicked out of Princeton but he doesn’t really wanna talk about it. He’s got a young daughter with girlfriend Vanessa (Zazie Beetz) though their relationship is a little strained/complicated. His cousin is an up and coming rapper that goes by ‘Paper Boi’ (Brian Tyree Henry) – “all about that paper, boy!” – and Paper Boi has a bud named Darius (Keith Stanfield – who was in Short Term 12 and Straight Outta Compton and is absolutely hilarious in a stoner philosopher kinda way). They all live in Atlanta.
Anyway, Paper Boi has this song that’s kinda making some waves and Earn reckons he can manage him and guide them all to success. That’s the kick off point as far as the plot’s concerned but really that’s all irrelevant. You watch for five minutes and you’re in. The characters are immediately knowable and sympathetic and the humour shines through the realist nature of it. Plenty of shows are funny and plenty of shows are honest. Not many of them are both.
Episodes of Atlanta don’t unfold the way you expect them to. This isn’t a sitcom, nor is it some miniseries with a fixed first, second and third act. They might build up towards a big climax, like when Darius and Paper Boi are off in the woods stocking up their stash of narcotics (from a set of dealers played by the lads from Migos) only for a hilariously anti-climactic solution in the time it takes to cut from one shot to the next. Later in that same episode, after trying to fix a night out for him and Van on next to zero dollars, Earn pulls out a heartfelt speech about trust and love from behind a closed door – the kind of thing that known on his last show as a Winger Speech – only for Van to open the door and tell him, in no uncertain words, that he’s an idiot and his big speech made no sense. Cut to credits.
If there’s a show that you can compare this to, it’s probably another favourite in the FX stable: Louie. It’s similar in the tinted lenses they seem to use. It’s similar in how much the show is the vision of the main actor/writer (writing credits are split between Donald and his brother Stephen). It’s similar in the grittily realistic way the world is created – where characters make decisions and then have to actually live with those decisions – but also in the way it then takes that setting and spins off into the realms of surrealism. Hovering on a weird shot, carrying things to the brink of absurdity. Both shows also eschew their own structure to follow the whim of the director (who in Atlanta’s case is mostly Hiro Murai – a Tokyo born filmmaker who’s done a few music vids for Childish Gambino).
You wanna know about the absurdity? How about when Justin Bieber has a run-in with Paper Boi, except that they cast an African-American actor as the Biebs. Or the possible psychopath with the dog that gives Earn a bit of advice on the bus in the pilot only to keep talking well beyond the point of the wise stranger cliché.
Then on the other side of things there’s the second episode which Earn spends in a prison holding room waiting for them to put him ‘into the system’. He finds himself sitting between a transgender inmate and her former boyfriend who is keen to reintroduce himself… unaware of the whole gender thing going on. Earn is stuck in the middle of the two and offering to move (“sexuality is a spectrum, you can really do whatever you want…”) and is increasingly marginalised and intimidated as this random, unnamed fella is suddenly made aware that he maybe might possibly be gay. You won’t see a scene like that anywhere else. It’s captivating, tragic, hysterical and poignant.
But where Louie is the story of a middle-aged white guy in New York, Atlanta is the story of a young black man in Atlanta. Rather different, those. First of all, it’s definitely unashamedly black. Not in a tokenised statement way but in a ‘this is my life, this is my experience’ kinda way. It’s exactly what the current media climate needs, to be honest – a non-judgemental depiction of black suburbia. No white saviours here, no dismissive sympathy either.
And every bit as important is that this is a young show, based around characters in their 20s which is another identity so rarely depicted accurately in the media. Earn is a young man finding his place in the world. He’s not some teen soap icon with a daddy who’s a millionaire and a house in LA either – he’s a poor man from a poor neighbourhood. He spends the first few episodes literally scrounging for money. Now, if that ain’t relatable to you uni students then nothing is. See, everyone on this show is a hustler. From Paper Boi, Darius and Earn to the Instagram fiend they meet in the fourth episode (his first scene is so damn funny) to the amateur valet with the mental problems (he goes by the name Luke Skywalker) to the fella behind counter at the pawn shop.
Paper Boi’s a rapper and a slinger. His art is a reaction to his situation and it’s also potentially a way out of that situation – which is an oxymoron right there. In fact he’s borderline threatened at a diner in one ep by a superfan who’s paranoid that he’ll betray his status as the Last Real Rapper. Coz, oh yeah, he shoots a dude in the pilot. Long story.
And yes, generationally, everybody’s always checking their phones. Social media matters in the daily lives of these characters – as indeed it probably does to you reading this (where’d you click the link to this article from/on?). Thankfully though, unlike so many weak-ass attempts in films, novels and shows to integrate new media into an old media platform, in Atlanta it all feels natural. It feels natural when a phone buzzes and they all think it’s theirs. It feels natural when Mr Instagram Fiend shows off this meme he posted that got 29,000 likes in the middle of conversation (satirical, but natural). 100% there will be Swedish, Japanese, French, New Zealander, South African, Jamaican people all watching this and thinking: finally, a show I can relate to. And yet it’s set very firmly in black Atlanta.
Which is something Earn has to deal with now and then. Even though he doesn’t know who Steve McQueen is, he still gets treated a little like the dude on the outside. He’s black… but he’s equally fluent with white crowds too. In fact that’s part of his proposal to Paper Boi – he can be the one to deal with the white promoters and all that. Given that Donald Glover rose to prominence on Community, that’d make a bit of autobiographical sense. Why does this show feel so authentic to itself? Because it’s made by those who know, not by some smartass execs looking to cash in on the culture.
Hey but let the Washington Post and New York Times digest the progressive way that this show digests racial politics. Who cares, it’s just a top notch show and it’s one that earns every second you’ll spend watching it.