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The analysis of Atlanta, season one, episode nine titled "Juneteenth" is meant to inform readers about the message of the episode being that members of black community are still not free, even with financial privilege.

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"Juneteenth": The Illusion of Freedom

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Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

When multihyphenate Donald Glover first developed his upcoming FX show " Atlanta," the network's enthusiastic support occasionally exposed their ignorance about life for some in Black communities.

As Glover told writer Rembert Browne for Vulture (the story also appears in New York Magazine's new print issue), FX initially suggested that a drug dealer character live in "traplike" apartment. "We were like, 'No, he's a drug dealer, he makes enough money to live in a regular apartment,'" Glover said to Vulture. "There were some things so subtle and Black that people had no idea what we were talking about."

Glover aims to shine a light on those contextual differences with the surrealist comedy-drama, which premieres on September 6. "I wanted to show White people, you don't know everything about Black culture," he said. To that end, Glover employed an entirely-Black writing staff, featuring primarily Atlanta natives like Glover and his brother Stephen.

His goals with "Atlanta" also reflect the criticism Glover received for years over his popularity in White cultural spaces. "I know when I go to Baltimore, when I go to D.C., it's like 50-50-half of them are like, 'I love this dude, this dude's cool.' And the other half are like, 'This coon-ass dude,'" he said. "But I have no hate in my heart for no Black person ever. Because we're in a position where the system has fucked us up so bad we can't always trust each other."

Glover created and stars in "Atlanta" as "Earnest 'Earn' Marks," while Bryan Tyree Henry ("Boardwalk Empire") portrays his cousin, "Alfred Miles." The series focuses on Miles' burgeoning celebrity as the rapper Paper Boi and, as Vulture describes, "Earn's ever-evolving balancing act between his origins and a life often spent in predominantly White settings."

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Donald Glover on Why 'Atlanta' Has an All-Black Writing Staff

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Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images When multihyphenate Donald Glover first developed his upcoming FX show " Atlanta," the network's enthusiastic support occasionally exposed their ignorance about life for some in Black communities. As Glover told writer Rembert Browne for Vulture (the story also appears in New York Magazine's new print issue), FX initially suggested that a drug dealer character live in "traplike" apartment.

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Directed by Janicza Bravo. With Donald Glover, Zazie Beetz, Cassandra Freeman, Rick Holmes. Earn and Van attend a Juneteenth party hosted by a wealthy couple and meet some unusual characters.

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I've said this before, but it bears repeating: Van is better than me. When it comes to the practice of patience, she operates at a level that I find befuddling. If I could gather Van's homegirls for red wine and Drake, I'd love to know what they make of her dealings with Earn. There has to be a gaggle of them gagging over how much she bends for this dude.

Like, would you pick up your ex at his girl's house? If so, you also operate at a level of maturity I'm two Star Wars prequels away from accessing. Yes, we begin the latest episode of Atlanta with the sight of Earn in bed, next to what's-her-name. As Earn realizes he's late for something, he rushes to get dressed and she asks, "Coming back tonight?" After a moment of hesitation, Earn answers, "Uh, no ... thanks." How nice of him to thank her for sex. Then he heads outside and into Van's car, smelling like a one-night stand.

Van asks Earn if he's high and his response is "... not really." Technically, that's a Vanid answer. The two are en route to the home of Monique, another one of the bougie people in Van's life, for a pretentious Juneteenth celebration. If you're wondering what Juneteenth is, let the Google guide you and may the white guilt flow freely thereafter.

As a Texan, I'm quite familiar with Juneteenth celebrations - but they don't include black men leaning on a staircase, singing songs. I mean, Zapp & Roger might be playing, but it's a much less formal affair than what's going down at Monique's place.

Consider their fixed cocktail menu, y'all: Juneteenth Juice, Frozen Freedom Margarita, Emancipation Eggnog, Plantation Master Poison, Abolition & Absinthe, Underground Railroad, and Forty Acres and a Moscow Mule. This is the kind of menu Phaedra Parks would create for a very special episode of The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Monique strikes me as the type that would be on The Real Housewives of Potomac, though: I kind of hate her, but I do like that she likes Van. As she explains to Van, "You are a smart, beautiful, and determined lady like me."

As far as Monique believes, Van and Earn are married, Earn actually finished Princeton, and they are the kind of adorable black couple her stuck-up ass can appreciate. Monique refers to Earn as Van's "fancy Ivy League husband." Why are they lying? Well, Van needs Monique to help out her career - you know, since she admitted to smoking weed after botching a drug test and all. We also meet Monique's husband, a white dude named Craig who strolls down the staircase and shouts, "Happy Freedom Day!" Yes, he's as annoying as he seems.

Earn isn't eager to be at this party. You certainly can't blame him after his interaction with Craig, who takes a liking to him. How awesome for Craig that he's tolerant, but in a separate scene, he tries to scold Earn for having not gone to Africa yet: "You gotta go! Man, it's your motherland. What are you thinking?" This guy is way too comfortable in how he talks to black people; just look at how often he reaches out to physically touch Earn, or wrap his arm around him. I guess I should be mad that he poured Earn a glass of Hennessy, but stereotypes like that and the splendor of Popeye's Chicken are fine on my watch.

At one point, Earn tries to figure out Craig's deal. Is he an archaeologist in African studies or something? Nope, he's just an optometrist. When prompted by Craig to reveal which country from Africa his family is from, Earn quips, "I don't know. This spooky thing called slavery happened and my entire ethnic identity was erased."

As Monique later tells Van, "You don't think I know how crazy my husband is? This whole 'black people as a hobby' shit? Slam poetry, Martin reruns? That nigga told my 95-year-old grandmother she was cooking her collard greens wrong." He comes across as the type. I'm surprised Nana didn't put hands and hot pots on him.

After his exchange with Craig, Earn finds Van and tells her he wants to go home. She's not nearly as bothered by the party. "It doesn't feel like you're in a Spike Lee-directed Eyes Wide Shut?" he asks. Van wants to seize upon the reason she brought herself, Earn, and their lie about marital bliss to this awkward party. "Do you think that I am happy that I am having to prostitute myself for an opportunity?" she asks in response. "Do you think that I am happy that I need you here in order to do that?"

Earn answers in his typical sarcastic jerk-off fashion, so Van snaps back with some venom of her own: "Can we for once just pretend that we aren't who we are? I mean, because we both know you're good at pretending."

After that, Earn plays along and we see them turn on the charm for these caricatures of black high society. (Or certain bastions of it, at least.) This includes the playwright who gleefully talks to Van and Earn about some new project she's working on, which sounds like a Tyler Perry play penned by a grad student. When she's finished, they get stuck listening to a holier-than-thou sermon from the pastor of a mega-church.

That's not all. They get cornered by a group of ladies who invite Van to join the Atlanta chapter of Jack and Jill, a social organization that fits exactly with Monique and the other people at this party. It's worth noting: I didn't know what Jack and Jill was until I attended Howard University. Like Earn, I am not of that world.

Earn strikes a nerve when he starts telling these ladies all about his alleged wife, though: "Van does everything. She works, she raises our child, she's smarter than me, better than me. I mean, that's why I married her ... Gun to my head, I don't think I could even look at another woman." The act went too far, it seems, and Van excuses herself to cry in the bathroom.

When Van gets back, she tells Earn, "You're mean." He apologizes, but she told him not to be sorry - she'll just go get drunk instead. Eventually, Van and Monique have a private conversation where she reveals the reality of her life: "I get this big-ass house and he gets the black wife he always wanted. That's marriage: I like Craig, but I love my money."

Monique is all about that money, so she compromised herself and made a life with a man who doesn't completely understand her. It raises the question: Would Van ever decide to compromise?

By the end of the episode, the valet guys recognize Earn as Paper Boi's manager and request a picture. Then Craig, too, finally places Earn. He couldn't put his finger on it before, but he knew he had seen Earn from somewhere. (No, it wasn't the country club.) That's when Monique turns up her elitism, making comments like, "You aren't going to shoot up this party, are you, Earn?"

She describes Alfred as a "trifling thug," prompting Earn to unleash his venom at Monique and her condescending husband. "I'm sorry, this is wack. This isn't real life," he says. "This party is dumb. She's dumb. This is all dumb. You know that, Van. This is dumb." He's right to be offended, though I do wonder whether he took the wrong tone. If Earn checked Monique on her snobbery in a language she spoke, it would have stung her more. People like her expect that type of reaction. Meanwhile, isn't Earn only here to support Van? She need a break, and these are the kind folks who can provide one.

The party was all about Van's searching for an opportunity, but in that moment, Earn makes it about him. Again. Van doesn't seem to mind, though: On the ride home, she asks him to pull over and they start making out. Maybe Van saw that party for what it was? Maybe she appreciated Earn for being real? Maybe she's even a little proud of him? That'd be a big step for them, but it doesn't change the fact that she's still looking for work.

Good luck finding a new plug, sis.

I'll be honest: I don't know how these two are going to make it work. I don't even know if they can. I want them to last, though. They offer a good balance to each other, and although much of their tension is rooted in Earn's precarious place in life, I like watching them move together. Their relationship has led to some of the best aspects of Atlanta 's inaugural season. Let's hope they get closer to figuring it out in next week's finale.

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I've said this before, but it bears repeating: Van is better than me. When it comes to the practice of patience, she operates at a level that I find befuddling. If I could gather Van's homegirls for red wine and Drake, I'd love to know what they make of her dealings with Earn.

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Week after week, this show has proved that it cab be about much more than just a funny TV comedy series, merging both the comic-y side of it with a genuine effort in displaying what is like to be an african american in Atlanta (and basically the US), and this week's outing may have been the best at doing so yet, at presenting us in the usual surreal manner, a bunch of people celebrating something that they shouldn't have any business celebrating.

But let's dial back a bit, once again the show shift its focus and while last week we had the whole crew, now the main stage belongs again to the relationship between Earn and Van, while Alfred and Darius don't even appear (though the first one is mentioned and in a big way in the latter stages of the episode). The episode begins with Van picking up Earn to the house of some girl that he likely won't ever see again, basically telling us that A) Earn is back to the one-night-stand business and B) Van hardly seems to care, so they have stopped pretending to be a couple (at least with each other), and are now just co-parenting their daughter Lottie. They're going to a Juneteenth party -if you live in the US you probably already know this, but is a commemoration of the day the African Americans emancipated from slavery in 1865-, held by Monique a friend of Van that has she puts it "could be really good for her" meaning that they need to go kiss her butt so that she could probably offer Van a job.
It's clear very early, that Earn's "status" as a Princeton graduate (though we know from an earlier episode that he's actually a dropout) is why Van had an "in" to the party. Every guests at the party is a person of color, with the exception of Monique's husband, Craig, a white middle-aged rich guy that is fixated with the black culture and seems to think he knows more about it than anybody else (and also later gets to give an embarassing performance as a poet/rapper). The party is choke-full of so called fancy people, one more lunatic and out of whack than the other, from the reverend of the "mega-church" to the writer and director of a play that takes place during the Katrina hurricane with the very likely occurance of two criminals holding a pastor, a drug dealer and a pregnant teen-ager in a strip club.
With this kind of crowd, Earn and Vanessa are forced to play nice to each other and pretend to be an happy, lawfully wedded couple. Earn in particular seems to be very good at this, especially when in a monologue he praises Vanessa as the underrated provider of the famly, something that may have felt real and nice, just until he concluded saying that he would never look at another woman, exposing the whole speech as sarcasm (to him and Vanessa, not their speakers), which seemed to kind of hurt Vanessa, that later while talking to Monique comments her being married to Craig, a phony rich white-guy, asking her how could she not need someone to confide in, strongly implying that she's in the same situation now with Earn.
Their whole sham lasts up until a couple of valets recognize Earn as Paper Boi's manager, and he can't hold himself from defending Alfred and basically what he believes in, standing up to Monique and her acid, snotty comments about how having a "rotten apple" is sadly to be expected in every family. Earn storms out of the house, while Vanessa keeps apologizing to Monique. Back in the car, while driving home, Vanessa, every chance of finding a nice job through Monique -who only hours earlier had mentioned multiple career opportunities for her, from teaching to designer, event planner, or even a Real Housewife contestant- now evaporated, asks Earn to pull up before having sex with him, as she probably felt invigorated by him standing up to something he believes in, though that's just my interpretation.
Yes, another amazing half-hour for Atlanta, in a first season that has showed incapable of doing anything wrong, and has experimented with its themes, its characters and its structures more than many series get to do in their whole lifetime. With only one week left, what are your thought on the series, have you enjoyed as much as I am, and will you be back again next season? Sound off in the comments below.
Episode 1.09 - "Juneteenth" - A-

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﻿Atlanta - Juneteenth - Review: "The Sound of the man working on the chain"

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Week after week, this show has proved that it cab be about much more than just a funny TV comedy series, merging both the comic-y side of it with a genuine effort in displaying what is like to be an african american in Atlanta (and basically the US), and this week's outing may have been the best at doing so yet, at presenting us in the usual surreal manner, a bunch of people celebrating something that they shouldn't have any business celebrating.

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A quick review of tonight's Atlanta coming up just as soon as I feel like I'm in a Spike Lee-directed Eyes Wide Shut ...

"Juneteenth" is another remarkable half-hour of TV in a debut season full of them. It's one of the purely funniest episodes of Atlanta so far, as the Juneteenth party thrown by Van's friend turns into a parade of ridiculous people behaving ridiculously, and Earn and an increasingly drunk Van doing their best to hide their natural reactions to them. But it also works as an achingly poignant look at where things stand between the two of them now that Van is no longer the obvious breadwinner.

Alfred and Darius were absent, but they weren't really needed, thanks to how well Donald Glover and Zazie Beetz played Earn and Van's response to Craig the honorary black man, to the aging playwright boasting of her play about a hostage situation at a strip club during Hurricane Katrina (Earn: "That's a real situation!"), to the gigantic mega-church reverend, to the valets who carry their sister's panties around with them at all times because "You never know, man," and everyone else. Some of the most effective comedy can come from reacting rather than dialogue, slapstick, or other more active choices, and it was hilarious watching Earn in particular try to contain himself around Craig.

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On 'Atlanta,' Earn And Van Celebrate A Ridiculous 'Juneteenth'

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A quick review of tonight's Atlanta coming up just as soon as I feel like I'm in a Spike Lee-directed Eyes Wide Shut ... "Juneteenth" is another remarkable half-hour of TV in a debut season full of them.

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Atlanta has been guilty of self-aware dialogue before, especially from its minor characters. Whether it's Zan from " The Streisand Effect," the bartender in " The Club" or the newscaster in " Nobody Beats The Biebs," there's always someone nearby willing to puncture Earn or Alfred's delusions and soberly explain to them the nature of things. In "Juneteenth," the self-aware voice of reason role falls to Earn, who calls the swanky party Vanessa has dragged him to as a "Spike Lee-directed Eyes Wide Shut." That line was one of many that slightly took me out of the moment, but it was also helpful to understanding how Donald Glover and writer Stefani Robinson conceptualized the episode. Each episode of Atlanta is its own thing, so even when it's a little jarring to hear a character speak directly to the episodic theme, in this show, a little context goes a long way.

It was also nice to hear direct acknowledgment of the Spike Lee motif kicked off with the music in the title reveal (Kamasi Washington's "Change Of The Guard") and followed through to the establishing shots of the Juneteenth party, the theme for which is apparently "the opening credits from School Daze but with bacon-wrapped shrimp." The Lee remains heavy throughout, even in some of the visual choices by director Janicza Bravo. I couldn't help wondering if and how "Juneteenth" might resemble the She's Gotta Have It series Lee's working on for Netflix.

Lee's show will probably be a bit more earthbound compared to Atlanta, which stays in a lane all its own even while executing a very traditional sitcom plot. Vanessa forces an over-it Earn to accompany him to the party, held in a tony residential enclave, hoping it will lead to important networking opportunities. (Lest anyone forget, Van's back on the job market.) To make a better impression on the guests, Earn and Van pretend to be a happily married couple rather than one that highlights the importance of Facebook adding an "Intervene immediately" option to its choices of relationship status. Based on that description alone, "Juneteenth" could be an episode of any traditional four-camera sitcom.

But this is Atlanta, so none of the story is about the risk of Earn and Van's ruse being exposed and what that would mean for their relationship. Instead, it's another opportunity to put Earnest in an uncomfortable environment and watch him attempt to slide out of his skin. Speaking of sliding out of one's skin, the party is hosted by Monique (Cassandra Freeman) and her haughty white husband Craig (Rick Holmes), who has taken his passion for black culture entirely too far. Craig has no formal education in African or African-American culture and he works as an optometrist, presumably one who specializes in third eyes. Craig pledged a black fraternity, composes abstract paintings inspired by Malcolm X quotes, and has lots of feelings on how important it is for Earn to visit his motherland.

"Juneteenth" is best filtered through Donald Glover's quotes about how he wasn't striving to make an "important" show out of Atlanta. There's a lot to unpack in Craig's clueless and condescending appropriation of African-American culture-he apparently passes off Ntozake Shange quotes as his own-but maybe, as with " B.A.N." the provocative subtext isn't really the point. (Put another way: "The price is on the can, though.") Atlanta has been remarkably nuanced and delicate even in its broadest moments, so I'd like to think that if there were keen insights to be gleaned from Craig's behavior, Glover and Robinson wouldn't be quite as overt about it. As a statement about how white people claim and configure black culture, the Craig stuff is all over the place. The script can never quite decide if Craig is annoying because he knows too little, because he knows too much, or because he's generally oblivious to how to appropriately engage with blackness. While the prison scenes in " Streets On Lock" felt like they were meant to provoke dialogue about masculinity, mental health stigma, and the prison system, the Craig stuff just feels like a goof.

But if the Juneteenth party is, in fact, simply another weird-ass environment in which to drop the characters to see what will happen, it's a strong idea. Earn doesn't quite fit in anywhere. He's never been totally comfortable running in Alfred and Darius' circle, but neither is he at home in this funhouse-mirror take on Atlanta's black high society. He's dressed like a mannequin in Marshall's young men's department and it's clear he would sooner be anywhere else. But he does his best to mingle with the other guests and keep up appearances while trying to keep Vanessa in the right place on the alcohol intoxication spectrum. As always, the fleeting moments leave the deepest impression, whether it's the elder pitching her high-concept gospel play or the pastor who extols the importance of respecting your wife as he treats his first lady like a piece of furniture.

As I've said before, Atlanta is probably best enjoyed as if it's a loosely connected anthology, because at this point it's impossible to know how much of what happens is even objectively real, let alone how important it is to the broader story. It's jarring for the episode's third act to call back to the Paper Boi shooting incident, which is sometimes a looming storm cloud and other times a vague, irrelevant memory. It's hard not to think about the narrative looseness during a moment like the closing scene, in which a soused Van tells Earn to pull the car over and initiates sex after hours spent needling Earn about their odd relationship. Their physical reunion feels heavy and earned, pardon the pun, but also like it might never be mentioned again. Atlanta is about savoring the moment.

Stray observations

As a black person who has spent years longing for nuanced representation of black culture in media, I never get sick of stuff like the mention of Jack and Jill, which I was in as a kid.

So many great drink choices on that cocktail menu, but I'd have had to go with the 40 Acres And A Moscow Mule.

Between this episode and the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend premiere, the Scott Joplin estate has been killing it this past week.

Does Lottie have sickle cell anemia? One of the society women mentions something about it before Van cuts her off.

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Earn and Van get a bitter taste of Atlanta's upper crust

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Atlanta has been guilty of self-aware dialogue before, especially from its minor characters. Whether it's Zan from "The Streisand Effect," the bartender in "The Club" or the newscaster in "Nobody Beats The Biebs," there's always someone nearby willing to puncture Earn or Alfred's delusions and soberly explain to them the nature of things.

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There is no experience more painful than being forced to attend a party hosted by someone who wants to aggressively hang out with you while you'd prefer to do anything else, and I don't think I've ever seen a fictional character that hates socializing more than Atlanta's Earn. And while "Juneteenth" represented a potential step forward in Earn and Vanessa's relationship, undoubtedly the funniest part of the episode was the introduction of Van's stepfather Craig, Atlanta 's resident uncomfortably woke white person. And in the span of a single episode, Atlanta manages to perfectly pull off dealing with a "Craig" type that should be familiar to the show's POC audience and, as usual, likely resonates with black viewers in particular.

First, there's Craig's overly chummy greeting, complete with a tortured attempt at a fist bump. Note how totally out of place a complicated fist bump/secret handshake was at this fancy - dare I say, bougie - Juneteenth party. Everyone is dressed in daytime formalwear, the vibe is relatively somber, and the occasion is literally celebrating freedom from white oppression. This was before it was even revealed that Craig was Van's stepfather and that they were visiting her mother too, so the intimacy level of greeting Earn that way stuck out even more. It made me want to escape through a secret trapdoor.

Next up, that supremely weird trip to Craig's study, which was like a museum exhibit in the study of performative wokeness. Painting a picture in honor of a Malcolm X quote when he doesn't even seem to understand that the quote was talking about dismantling systematic discrimination and white supremacy? Oof. Adding in the clichè but no less infuriating "you should visit Africa, the homeland!" was a great touch.

And then, there's talking about rap. Not only was this the pinnacle of why Craig was such a hilariously cringeworthy character, but it also provided the actual climax of the episode, as Van and Earn's charade was revealed to be a lie, and Van loses the chance to both professionally network and potentially form a closer relationship with her mother. If only Craig and his deep knowledge of trap remixes hadn't gotten in the way.
Images: Guy D'Alema/FX (2)

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'Atlanta' Introduces The Painfully "Woke" Craig

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There is no experience more painful than being forced to attend a party hosted by someone who wants to aggressively hang out with you while you'd prefer to do anything else, and I don't think I've ever seen a fictional character that hates socializin...

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Donald Glover intended to show what it feels to be black, and that journey was both joyous and necessarily upsetting.

Donald Glover intended " Atlanta" to show people what it feels like to be black, and after 10 unpredictable but glorious episodes, the result is inconclusive but hopeful. The show is masterful in eliciting a range of feelings - a combination of joy and horror, tension and relief - but none more so than surprise. But can you now say you know what it feels like to be black? No, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
READ MORE: 'Atlanta': Meet the Hip-Hop Music Director Who Made FX's Beautiful and Baffling Series
What "Atlanta" does instead is use tonal shifts, wholly unanticipated events and surreal elements to create such an atmosphere of subversion that it's unsettling. And this is turn creates an openness in the audience to experience what comes next without expectation. To use a food metaphor, the acids in a marinade prepare the protein in the steak to absorb the rest of the marinade's oils and flavors. We are the steak, and only by creating holes in our assumptions can our outlook be ready to take in new ideas, to change, evolve. This impacts both black and non-black viewers alike.

Guy D'Alema/ FX

As we saw in the penultimate episode "Juneteenth," well-meaning white guy Craig (Rick Holmes) thinks he knows what the black experience is all about but falls into the trap of co-opting the struggles and identity of his wife and friends. He celebrates black emancipation on Juneteenth, has traveled back to Africa ("the Motherland"), drinks Hennessy, performs very bad spoken word poetry; in short, he's an ass. This level of cultural appropriation is empathy gone wrong and actually prevents Craig from truly getting to know someone.

Perhaps the most notorious device the show used was from the episode "No One Beats the Biebs," aka the Black Justin Bieber episode. Having a black performer (Atlanta singer and actor Austin Crute) play the show's version of Justin Bieber with no explanation or winking to the audience was the pinnacle of unsettling. This was no mere gimmick. On one hand it could be seen as a commentary on Bieber's unchallenged adoption of black culture. On the other hand, it could highlight the double standard in how society views black people who misbehave versus white ones. Regardless of how one interprets Black Bieber, his power to create conversation and doubt is his true gift.

Quantrell D. Colbert/FX

Danger also pervades the series in a disquieting manner. Instead of offering up explanations or conclusions, violence often happens suddenly and just as quickly is left behind with no discussion. Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry) shooting another person in the pilot is left on a cliffhanger, but never really dealt with other than a few mentions by other characters. But did his victim die? Will Paper Boi stand trial? No telling. It's just life as usual.

Yet somehow through the weighty social observations and menace, "Atlanta" manages humor with a deft touch that ranges from light and whimsical to audacious. There are no better moments than when the show flips the script in the most outrageous way possible. We see this in almost every aspect of the Black American Network episode "B.A.N." - a play off BET - that Glover directed himself, or in the Black Bieber episode when Darius (Lakeith Stanfield) is at a shooting range and takes aim at a paper target... of a dog. The implication that he is practicing to shoot a real dog someday is horrifying, but there is no proof. Nevertheless, the outrage that witnesses feel escalates to the point where Darius is told to leave the range at gunpoint.

Guy D'Alema/FX
READ MORE: 'Atlanta': Donald Glover Wants You to Feel What It's Like to Be Black
After the heightened ridiculousness throughout the season of Black Bieber, B.A.N., Craig's cultural appropriation, and many more moments like those, the finale instead goes back to the somewhat lackadaisical pacing seen in the earlier episodes. The focus on Earn (Glover) finding his jacket after a night of heavy drinking is puzzling at first and even more confounding after he witnesses a man wearing his jacket get gunned down by police.

Ultimately, we discover that Earn wanted the jacket because of a key that is for a storage unit where he's now living. It's a sobering conclusion to such a wild ride of a season, yet feels necessary. Despite the hijinks, despite everyone else's attempts to define him, despite having close friends and a girlfriend, despite any success he has achieved, in the end, Earn has chosen this night to be on his own, to answer only to himself even if it means more meager surroundings.

Glover had equated being black in America as being an outsider, and that lack of belonging is the final upsetting emotion we're left with. The show's true achievement isn't a literal picture of life what it means to be black, but rather the evocation of a host of feelings to overturn our own. "Atlanta" gives us the feels, and the better for it.

Grade: A
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'Atlanta' Review: Season 1 Masterfully Subverts Everything, Including the Sweet and Somber Finale

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Donald Glover intended to show what it feels to be black, and that journey was both joyous and necessarily upsetting. Donald Glover intended " Atlanta" to show people what it feels like to be black, and after 10 unpredictable but glorious episodes, the result is inconclusive but hopeful.

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While FX has done well with their dramas, the cable channel has had less ratings success with their comedies. How will their newest entry, Atlanta, fare? Will it be renewed for a second season or, will it be cancelled instead? Stay tuned.

follows two cousins who work through the Atlanta, Georgia music scene as they try to better their lives and the lives of their families. Earnest "Earn" Marks (Donald Glover) is a young manager who's trying to get his cousin Alfred's career off the ground. Alfred Marks (Brian Tyree Henry) is a new hot rapper trying to understand the line between real life and street life. Lakeith Lee Stanfield and Zazie Beetz also star.

In the changing world of television, TV execs look at many factors when deciding to renew or cancel a show. However, the ratings are still very important. The higher the ratings, the better the chances for survival. This chart will be updated as new ratings data becomes available.

9/20 update: FX has renewed Atlanta for a second season. Details here.
Note: If you're not seeing the updated chart, please try reloading the page or view it here.
What do you think? Do you like the Atlanta TV show? Do you think that it should be cancelled or renewed for a second season?

More about: Atlanta, Atlanta: canceled or renewed?, Atlanta: ratings, FX TV show ratings

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Atlanta: Season One Ratings - canceled TV shows - TV Series Finale

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While FX has done well with their dramas, the cable channel has had less ratings success with their comedies. How will their newest entry, Atlanta, fare? Will it be renewed for a second season or, will it be cancelled instead? Stay tuned. Atlanta follows two cousins who work through the Atlanta, Georgia music scene as ...

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There's some poetic justice in the fact that the network that gave rise to the term "Peak TV" is home to the fall show that's transcended it. Atlanta concludes its spectacular first season on FX under the watchful eye of " Mayor of TV" John Landgraf this week; Donald Glover's struggle-comedy is an unmitigated success, both in numbers ( Atlanta enjoyed the strongest basic-cable comedy premiere since Inside Amy Schumer) and in the less quantifiable but arguably more important "conversation." Atlanta isn't just rapturously reviewed; it's also relevant, rhapsodized by the internet at large, in large part because it's utterly without precedent - in form, in substance, and in sensibility.

Going forward, competitors, and even FX itself, will try to replicate Atlanta's breakout success. But what, exactly, should those competitors be imitating? With the conclusion of Atlanta's freshman run comes our first chance to ask what, exactly, made the show resonate as strongly as it did. Here are some lessons Atlanta offers for the rest of television, starting with Tuesday's finale:

"Finale" Doesn't Have to Mean "Climax"

"The Jacket" is the kind of episode that, apart from a fateful money wad, could have come at almost any point in Atlanta's 10-episode season. Meditative and droll, it sent off Atlanta by embodying the show to the fullest. Instead of injecting an off-character cliff-hanger or going out with an extra burst of zaniness, it brings Earn's wandering full circle (by returning to the site of that fateful first 4:20 break, he's literally right back where he started). And it substitutes climax for the most Atlanta-y version of Atlanta possible, giving satisfaction over suspense: Yes, there's the informal offer for Paper Boi to go on his first real tour, but we're happier to get a few minutes of Van and Earn just hanging out than to hear that phone call. All that is a minor distraction, anyway, from Earn's fruitless, Hangover-esque search for his missing jacket. Sometimes, the best way to end things is by reminding us what we've enjoyed all along.

Inexperience Isn't a Bad Thing

What stood out about Atlanta from the very beginning bears repetition: Atlanta isn't like the rest of television in part because so much of its creative team didn't come from the rest of television. While Donald Glover himself fits into that nebulous category of people "due" for a television show - alumnus of multiple hit sitcoms, successful stand-up career, UCB affiliation - the show he created is leagues apart from the comedian's comedy that dominates so much of Peak TV. That's because it's a group effort, the product of Glover's sensibility, but also those of Glover's brother (and Paper Boi stand-in) Stephen, director and producer Hiro Murai, and writers Fam Udeorji and Jamal Olori, none of whom had worked in scripted television before.

The novelty of Atlanta feels like a direct extension of the newcomer status of its creative team - an all-black writers' room in an industry that's short on opportunity for writers of color. The dialogue is pleasantly shaggy, eschewing the rapid-fire set-up-to-punch-line-to-new-set-up rhythm in favor of more naturalistic, offbeat jokes, most of them mumbled under Keith Stanfield's breath. Only one episode has the A-plot, B-plot, C-plot structure that's the law of the TV comedy land, with the rest pairing up or isolating characters at will. Atlanta never needed to throw out the playbook because so many of its collaborators never read it in the first place.

Location Matters

Atlanta actually lives up to its name. There've been countless loving homages to New York and Los Angeles, and even more casual substitution of soundstages, screensaver-esque establishing shots, and studio lots for actual noncoastal locales. Atlanta is the rare series set outside a media-heavy metropolis - though, thanks to Georgia's friendly tax code, one of many series to actually be filmed there - to truly embrace its sense of place, from its literal locations (the wing joint!) to its sound. Better yet, the show films with the same loving, [eye roll] cinematic gaze typically reserved for either prestige dramas or the adrift-in-Silver Lake set. Atlanta knows and loves its city, and it shows that with every muted, delicately composed frame.

Going Plotless Is a Freedom, Not a Challenge

Quick question: What, exactly, happened in the first season of Atlanta? Paper Boi got more famous - famous enough to play celebrity basketball games and make club appearances, though the extent of his success still isn't entirely clear. (Or even his talent, as demonstrated by an actual performance rather than a minute-long fragment of his hit single booming out of various car stereos.) Van lost her job. Earn went from less than $100 in his bank account to $200 in cash. And ... that's pretty much it.

Atlanta isn't the first serialized comedy to take on the subject of urban aimlessness. But Atlanta feels liberated from the obligations of its larger narrative. Instead, it takes Earn and Paper Boi's come-up and setbacks, accepts them as a given, and shunts them essentially offscreen. On any other show, earning Paper Boi a spot at that charity game would be the bulk of an episode, with the game itself a final reward for Earn's hustle. Instead, Atlanta gave us black Bieber and Earn's bizarre case of mistaken identity - and then pushed the fallout from both of those misadventures into the gap between episodes. How did a local rapper tackling the biggest pop star in the world play out in the media? Did Earn follow up on those contacts he made upstairs? Who knows? Who cares?

It's a trick that allows Atlanta to get away with major change and the total absence of it alike. On the one hand, it takes the edge off Earn failing to come up with rent money or Paper Boi literally shooting someone in the pilot - a murder charge of Damocles that ended up simply contributing to the overall sense of unease that's essential to the show - because the show barely lingers on them before moving on. On the other, Atlanta could pick up next season with Paper Boi already having gone double platinum and we wouldn't bat an eye - just like we didn't when Paper Boi went from a viral-ish single to talking head on a public-access round table. We'd simply wait for the next 20-minute vignette.

Talk About Money

Compared to the yuppie ennui of Girls, Love, and their ilk, the trap of being perpetually broke is a far more compelling reason for characters being unable to move up in the world - and one that's far less explored on narrative television. Atlanta incorporates need into its worldview the way almost every other show folds in casual affluence: as a presence that's undeniable but often unremarked upon. Earn being brokeis frequent fuel for the show; in its world, being poorcan be a fact of life.

The result is proof that stories about financial hardship don't have to be dour deep dives into the ravages of systemic oppression. Atlanta isn't a lamenting of the forces that keep its characters from making personal and professional progress, or a painstaking account of those forces' consequences. It's simply a document of what happens in their world they create, and one that benefits from acknowledging, however tacitly, a fact of life so much of entertainment ignores.

Treat Your Costars Like Regular Stars

Despite all our fervent anticipation, we still haven't gotten a stand-alone Darius episode - but it's only a matter of time. As "Value" and "B.A.N." proved, Glover isn't just willing but eager to share the spotlight with Stanfield, Brian Tyree Henry, and Zazie Beetz, creating a show that doesn't rest on a single protagonist. Instead, the audience just has to trust that its favorite character will eventually get their due - and Atlanta has given us plenty of reason to do so. By now, we've learned these people's lives go on when we're not around to watch them. This show lets us listen in anyway if we just wait.

If You Don't Move Forward, Move Side-to-Side

Out of Atlanta's first 10 episodes, a full four are basically concept episodes: one dedicated completely to a supporting character ("Value"), one episode of a show-within-a-show, à la Donald Glover training camp 30 Rock's Queen of Jordan ("B.A.N."), and two bottle episodes that stuck a group of characters in a single location, then stuck with them - a club ("The Club") and a high-society party ("Juneteenth"). Even the so-called "normal" installments had an experimental feel, like the way the second episode immediately separated Earn and Paper Boi after Atlanta spent the entire pilot bringing them together.

Typically, concept episodes are reserved for after a show develops enough of a template to deviate from it. But Atlanta 's writers immediately treated its baseline more like a guideline: something to be strayed from, played with, and returned to rather than left untouched or nudged forward. It's a pliability that's unique to weekly, episodic TV, where installments stand on their own rather than blurring together - but with a heavy dose of the streaming era's free-form flexibility.

Ignore the Hype

One of the more remarkable, and unremarked-upon, parts of Atlanta is how much of a surprise it was. Much like Stranger Things, Atlanta occupied a prominent-enough position to guarantee attention when it came out: Glover getting a television show wasn't a huge surprise, and "two cousins trying to make it in the rap world" sounded like a fairly conventional hustle plot, à la How to Make It in America. This wasn't ultrahyped The Get Down or Westworld, though, and Atlanta benefited accordingly. Liberated from the burden of carrying an entire network on its back, Atlanta gives off a discernible vibe of not giving a fuck what anyone wants or needs from it.

My dearest wish for the second season is that Atlanta retains that quality, even as it benefits from an avalanche of well-deserved hype. Atlanta feels adjacent to the "real" world yet totally outside it, existing in a raucous yet glacially paced bubble of its own that feels deliberately unconscious of its own exceptionalism. It's key to the show's ability to surprise us, something I'm optimistic it'll retain even now that we're expecting it to surprise us. I have no idea what's coming in Atlanta Season 2, and that's the most exciting thing about it.

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What the Rest of TV Can Learn From 'Atlanta'

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There's some poetic justice in the fact that the network that gave rise to the term "Peak TV" is home to the fall show that's transcended it.

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Juneteenth | Season 1 Episode 9 Trailer | Atlanta

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Why my Auntie trying to make me go to one of these bougie Junteenth parties again? I don't like them sadity people and I'm gonna miss my shows. Le sigh. FOLLOW ATLANTA http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/atlanta/episodes https://www.facebook.com/atlantafx https://twitter.com/AtlantaFX https://www.instagram.com/atlantafx/ ABOUT ATLANTA Medium Description (400 characters max incl.