Mea culpa on Atlanta

This isn't a TV blog. You know that.

But I made it one momentarily by bringing up Atlanta in the context of discussing Donald Glover just a little over a month ago. (Which in itself was more about Childish Gambino's "This is America" than any of his film exploits, though I did see it as a bit of a Solo tie-in, justifying its inclusion on the blog.)

I couldn't have said anything of substance about Atlanta back then, because I'd only seen a single episode -- one I caught on the plane at that. However, I thought I knew enough about the show to be a bit dismissive of it. For some reason, I thought it was Glover's attempt to "be cool," after his character on Community had been so dorky. This is what I said about Glover in that piece:

"It reflected a conscious choice to trade in his nerd bonafides for something more clearly hip and stylish."

"... Earnest Marks was the coolest cat on screen."

I had actually wanted to be more dismissive except I was conscious of how little I did actually know about the show.

Some of that dismissiveness was a result, I will admit, of this poster. Not knowing the other two characters and finding this to be a big break from what Glover was doing on Community, I guess I thought of it as an instance of Glover "forsaking his roots" -- "roots," of course, being a very weighted word when it comes to an African American performer. But I have a long history of being mildly annoyed when someone thinks that "what got them there" is now passe, something they should turn their back on. This was my impression of Glover vis-a-vis Atlanta.

And then I actually watched Atlanta.

"This is America" re-attuned my wife and me to the fact that we had always wanted to watch Atlanta, and a very little digging made us realize we had that opportunity right now. It plays in Australia on a network called SBS, and SBS has an on demand component that allows you to pick up whatever shows you want for as long as they're sitting there. As it happens, both seasons of Atlanta were sitting there, ready for us to watch them.

And in about a month's time, we've watched all but the final two episodes of the second season. That may take us a little longer than what our pace has been to this point, simply because we want to savor what remains before we have no more Atlanta in our lives until next season.

I could never have guessed how much this show would play by its own rules. I'm not sure I knew what I thought the show would be, outside of the posturing I thought Glover was guilty of, but the one episode I saw did give me some idea of what I thought its narrative thrust would be. Episode one of season one is devoted mostly to Earn (Glover) trying to represent Paper Boi (the wonderful Bryan Tyree Henry), his cousin and a burgeoning rap star. I kind of figured it would be a fairly plot heavy show about the trials and tribulations of making it in the music industry, and though that would be interesting, it did not feel like it would be particularly novel.

Having watched most of Atlanta now, I don't think I can imagine a more novel show on television. And it's only gotten better in its second season.

It being plot heavy could not have been further from the truth. There are a couple episodes where they nudge forward the narrative of Earn's attempts to manage Paper Boi and to pull his own broke ass up by his bootstraps, and of course, that's still the narrative backbone of the series. But it's a particularly squishy backbone, and the series is happy to have three or four consecutive episodes where how or whether Earn is managing him at all is not even touched on.

What is touched on? The day-to-day lives of its characters as black people living in Atlanta, though even that makes it sound more pedantic than it is. Each episode is interested in some fashion with the social norms experienced by blacks in America, either with regards to whites or in among themselves, but there isn't a single moment of this series where any message feels obvious or foregrounded. Many of the episodes are, in fact, these weird one-off exercises in comedic drama, total departures from the story and even from any recognizable narrative convention. Like the episode where Paper Boi gets involved in a bizarre odyssey with his barber while trying to get a haircut. Like the episode where Earn's girlfriend Van (the wonderful Zazie Beetz) attends a New Year's Eve party at Drake's house. Like the episode where Paper Boi's friend Darius (the wonderful Lakeith Stanfield) tries to pick up a piano from an oddball music legend who has been whitening his skin (Glover). In fact, I think those may have been three consecutive episodes (though not in that order) in season two.

If I were trying to find the most similar TV show -- that I've watched, anyway -- it would be Louie, in its disregard for traditional episode structure, or the role of each piece within the series' overall structure. But even that is a poor comparison, and not only because Louis C.K. has been revealed as a sexual deviant. Atlanta goes outside the box in ways Louie had only started to touch on.

There were times during season one when I felt a bit frustrated by the series' unwillingness to be more like the thing I thought it was going to be. This was part of that adjustment period when I was still figuring out what Atlanta was. In season two I fully embrace everything that it is, and don't wish it to be anything other than exactly what it is. And can't imagine a better way to spend 24 minutes of viewing time. (Honestly, it feels shorter than that -- each episode flies by.)

I've got two left, and then however long until season three.

Of which there were certainly be one, but I hope it's not the last. Glover strikes me as the type of person for whom to stand still is to die. Even when a show is doing as many things right as Atlanta is, he will probably not want to make five or six seasons of it because at some point it will start to feel less vital than it currently does. At some point the ideas will start to run out, and the show will have overstayed its welcome. I suspect Glover will reach that moment before we will.

Until then, I'm going to appreciate the hell out of it. It's not, in fact, Glover's attempt to "be cool" -- Earn isn't even all that cool much of the time. It's Glover's attempt to inject something true and incisive and scintillating into the entertainment landscape, and he has done so, brilliantly.