Welcome to "Atlanta"
Thursday, September 8, 2016 at 8:00PM 
The city of Atlanta, for as rich and complicated as it is, for how many different television shows and movies are shot there has surprisingly never been rendered on screen in a wholly honest way. It could be the zombie apocalypse laden landscape of “The Walking Dead,” where the embellishments are forgiven given the subject matter. Then there’s the curiously all-white fantasy in Mother’s Day, a movie that hardly needed to take place in Atlanta making it all the more galling. And of course there’s the glossy, sitcom nightmare-scape version of Atlanta as told by Tyler Perry, where the villains are dark-skinned businessmen and the heroes are light-skinned blue collars with rippling muscles and bad lace-front cornrow wigs.
It’s a much more complicated city, a blue dot in a red state. It's also one of the blackest cities in America (RIP Garry Marshall but you knew you were wrong for that) replete with its own internal conflicts of race, class art and culture. It’s viewed as a sort of Southern Mecca for young black artists—a burdensome reputation for a city to carry where dreams and aspirations can fizzle just as easily, if not more so than they can flourish. In just two half-hour episodes, Donald Glover’s “Atlanta,” which premiered on FX earlier this week actually comes the closest to capturing a recognizably authentic Atlanta, clearly birthed by his own experience living in the city...
The series follows Earnest Marks (Donald Glover), a young Princeton dropout and single father trying to break into the unique, yet very oversaturated Atlanta hip-hop scene as a manger. He’s joined along by his rapper cousin Alfred “Paper Boi” (a terrific Brian Tyree Henry) and their friend, the eccentric and ever seemingly altered Darius (Keith Stanfield). We examine the stumbles and failures (punctuated by the occasional triumphs) of these three very different renderings of young, black manhood in a show that deftly balances the comedy and tragedy this setup would suggest. There are moments in the two first episodes that are laugh-out-loud funny and there are also more heartbreaking moments serve as both obstacles for these characters and commentary on the current state of many issues that will hit close to home for many black Atlantan viewers and American viewers at large.
Donald Glover as "Earnest"
Diversity, specifically portrayals of Blackness (since conversations around diversity and representation in media still largely frame the issue as a black vs. white problem) are on the lips heavily in the wake of two years in a row of #Oscarssowhite and the many satellite discussions surrounding it. There’s something different (or at the very least something we haven’t seen in movies/television in some time) happening here. That is a specific portrayal of black characters relating to each other without the markers of white authorship (“The Wire”) or the centering of an imaginary white audience to whom the characters and creators are clearly addressing (Dear White People). “Atlanta’s” unapologetic, untranslated Blackness feels revolutionary. It’s a presentation of black people, complete with insular references to music, pop culture and intraracial issues that non-black audiences are invited to enjoy or not. The show’s handling of hypermasculinity in the black community via Earnest whose persona and outward affect straddles the world between Southern hip-hop and prestige academia, yet truly belongs in neither is a clear example of this. Glover’s first mandate is authenticity without filtration, as evidenced by the product itself and by “Atlanta’s” noteworthy all-black writers’ room.
Zazie Beetz as "Vanessa"
The show is not perfect. Like many new series, it stumbles over itself in parts. A scene in which Earnest mediates a conflict between a man hitting on a transwoman and the peanut gallery insisting he’s gay feels well-intentioned, if not necessarily gracefully executed in terms of the function it serves. The show also falls into certain traps of female portrayals that cross all racial lines. The women are not nearly as fleshed out as the men. They are mothers, girlfriends, side-pieces, etc. Vanessa (Zazie Beetz) who plays Earnest’s best friend and also the mother of his daughter serves an interesting relational function, as little as she is featured and one suspects/hopes she will leap forward as the show progresses. She graces her few scenes with an incredible presence and a certain sly knowing quality that is fascinating to watch.
Keith Stanfield, Glover and Brian Tyree Henry in "Atlanta"
“Atlanta” feels like a gamble from FX’s standpoint. Not in practice, of course—we know that non-straight white male centered content is not a “gamble” as is often cynically declared by studio executives. But in terms of the network’s own image, which heretofore has been so aggressively white and male. FX was dinged a few years ago when their declaration that they weren’t greenlighting anything without a white male protagonist was made public. Hopefully this spells a turning point, not just for FX, but for all networks and studios to be more adventurous and push content that truly doesn’t look like anything we’ve seen before—both in terms of characters and in terms of story.
"Atlanta" airs Tuesday nights on FX
Reader Comments (13)
Wonderful review. I'm doubly excited to watch now. And how did I not realize Keith Stanfield was in this??? He's so amazing.
I'm clearly in the minority, but I just didn't care for this at all.
Amazing review. This makes me so excited to see the show.
I also really wanna draw attention to Hiro Murai's direction. He's a music video director, but a lot of what he does here isn't just for show. There's one great joke when Donald Glover's character is in the holding area and a guy turns around and complains about being locked up for public intoxication. The punchline with the guy ahead of him turning around to reveal he's the 2nd party in this story worked so well because of the way it was shot. He's almost always in the shot, but so are other people like the guy behind Glover or the man on the phone in the middle ground. So the "reveal" as it were is really playful, like a background element who was a major character all along.
And the sound design was really striking to me. The natural sound of cicadas chirping, cars blaring rap music driving past, people having conversations just out of ear shot. It goes a long way towards building the authenticity and specificity of its world, and we're only seeing a small part of a much bigger Atlanta.
Really loved the show, especially as a black man. The in-jokes, the body language, the gestures, the rhythms...I love seeing this on TV, alongside several of my friends who could all relate and "get it". Its a show I'm really excited about, both for its form and its content.
This was good, but I think I liked QUEEN SUGAR slightly more. Anyone saw that? It's created/directed by Ava DuVernay.
I wanted to see Queen Sugar, but they decided to run both new black shows at the same time :/
@Tyler I agree, I thought it was boring and the jokes fell flat. I'll watch a few more episodes , hoping it catches on, but IDK. I was really looking forward to it.
I also like Queen Sugar a bit better. Not blown away by that either though.
The one they'll remember him for. Atlanta feels like a modern classic. And has already endeared Donald Glover to the black audience who initially saw him as the corny black guy in white spaces. My interest was sparked when Glover said the series would be Twin Peaks with rappers. The David Lynch oddness is there in the first two episodes without alienating the target demographic. And I was concern for Glover when the trans segment in the jail. I knew perpetual victim gender queers and their enablers would be up and arms. But the scene wasn't about denigrating (her) more so addressing the collective homophobia which keeps men like the delusional inmate closeted. Feeling he's still straight as long as the presentation of his partner is female. But (she) ain't passing for the real thing hence (her) placement in the men's jail.
@Ryan T - I get what you're saying and I will be doing a write up of "Queen Sugar" this weekend. It's absolutely beautiful. However, I have to take issue with the positioning of this conversation of which is better? "Queen Sugar" or "Atlanta". Two shows that (stylistically and narratively) have very little to do with each other. This positioning of which is better really rubs me the wrong way. To me, it would have been like someone in 2015 saying "I like Vice Principals but I think I like Roadies better." It sounds absurd, right? And it's not a comparison that anyone would ever think to make because the only thing those two shows have in common is the fact that they center white characters. They'd never be compared because there isn't this perception that there are limited slots for shows and movies that center white characters. Because that content is framed as the default. I'm sure it wasn't your intention, but we absolutely must be more introspective and examine the impulse behind the need to immediately compare "Atlanta" and "Queen Sugar" which are so different from each other. The same thing happened when "How to Get Away With Murder" and "Empire" had their debut seasons around the same time. Whether consciously or not, when you make that comparison it's feeding the notion that there are limited slots for programming that centers non-white, non-male characters and that widespread notion (I'm hardly blaming you, I hope that's clear) is frankly one of the biggest brick walls that stand in the way of true parity in terms of representation and access.
Re: FX's struggle to move away from the white male protagonist, I think the turning point may have been THE PEOPLE V. O.J. SIMPSON.
Between this, OJ, THE AMERICANS, and, I'm told, FARGO, FX may be turning out the best quality cable programming these days.
As a Black woman ,Im going to compare them because they came on at the same time and debuted on the same day. I had to decide which one I would watch with my mother and which one I would watch later. Just like people compare Mad Men and Breaking Bad etc. Hopefully Atlanta has some good parts for female characters because the first episode was lacking. It just didn't catch my attention.
Kieran, I totally get what you're saying and I'm sure some of that was working subconsciously on my part, but it's also hard NOT to talk about one without the other. I follow a bunch of TV critics and the fact that both shows premiered ON THE SAME NIGHT meant that critics talked about BOTH OF THEM and most in context of the other. So that's how my brain was primed was as well.
The first four episodes were shown to critics. I can't imagine how intense they're experience was having seen episode 3! Completely understandable the initial raves just from the first two episodes. But the darker turn of events for episode 3 has me floored for where the season is going and certainly how it'll leave us by episode 10.