One visit to Atlanta isn’t enough
The Show: Atlanta, Season 1, Episode 9 The Moment: The playwright Earn (Donald Glover) and Vanessa (Zazie Beetz), the mother of his daughter, attend a Juneteenth party thrown by a rich, interracial couple. Vanessa is hoping to impress the wife, a black woman who wishes she were white. The white husband, who wishes he were black, is trying to impress Earn.
Earn hates it all: the vibe, which he likens to a “Spike Lee-directed Eyes Wide Shut.” The centrepieces shaped like slave ships. The pretentious guests, including a playwright who touts her latest work, With Tail Between Legs.
“It takes place in a strip club,” she trills. “Two gangbangers hold a pastor, a drug dealer and a pregnant teen hostage, in the middle of hurricane Katrina.”
“That’s a real situation,” Earn deadpans. “I’m glad that story is being told.”
This is the third new series starring black characters who are navigating through largely white worlds (the other two are Insecure and Queen Sugar) and it’s the most original. Glover, who created and writes it, has absorbed a key lesson from his years on Community: you can pull off anything on television if you’re fearless enough.
So Earn, a depressed Princeton dropout who’s managing his rapper cousin, can spend one episode at a fundraiser with Justin Bieber (who in the world of this show is black) and another witnessing his Uber driver being shot by cops for dealing drugs and weapons. The tone is so subtle and the wit so dry, each episode is better the second time you watch it. Atlanta airs on FX Canada. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.