Donald Glover's FX dramedy ATLANTA

I didn't think as highly of E5 as some of you, but I thought E4, "The Big Payback," was excellent, especially when "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" (one of my favorite songs ever) played overtop Earnest/E holding court with Marshall. That would have been a great scene anyway, but having it play out to Roberta Flack covering a 1957 British folk song made it that much more complicated.

i think part of the reason why they don't show too much of paper boi's music is because it is so clearly donald glover rapping. the voice doesn't fit brian tyree henry at all haha

lolo yeah i had forgotten that & was very confused for a few minutes during this last episode

re: episode 4, i thought that the point it was trying to make was interesting, and i liked the epilogue a lot, but in general it was leaden and not super enjoyable to watch.

episode 5 was good, i thought that wiley was a compellingly weird character. paper boi could maybe overcome his writers' block by using wiley's little song as a hook!

the last scene of ep4 with the minnie ripperton song was really beautiful somehow

Ep6 was super on the nose (this whole season has been kinda on the nose) but I get why

As I was telling a friend -

I feel like we’re in a moment where creators are pointedly hitting the nail in the head because if they don’t many audiences will 100% not understand what’s happening - because they don’t have time to understand.. A lot of people exist on the surface of media because there’s too much media to absorb or they’re caught up in the chaos of life

this season is getting to be a little too much. enough of the one-off white ppl episodes

It's been an amazing season so far.

i was wondering if this was a one off or if we would see, maybe one of Sylvia's daughters or the Tribeca guy or maybe the dad again? the dad was the least cartoonish of the two parents. the scene where they were talking to Sebastian about death made me want to puke, their voices, blecch. but what is the value to the show of feeling yucky about those parents? i get it and yet i don't.

i'd did lol when i found out the Tribeca guy is Chet Hanks

Tonight’s episode, you guys

Died at “I’ll just let fate take care of it.”

Lol that was funny

You kinda have to watch this with the volume cranked or you miss a lot of incidental adlibbed dialogue

Or “adlibbed” dialogue

When drugged-up Al was walking along and listening to Stereolab, that felt so much like Joe Buck's arrival at the fake-Warhol party in Midnight Cowboy--may even have been an allusion.

“You didn’t have to call the boy Clarence Thomas. He ain’t THAT white.”

lol that last shot

lol'd at 'which soda is good for you?'

That last shot is amazing

one of the best parts of ATLANTA is how it shows all of these ways to be, and people moving between them, and they’re all so idiosyncratic and somewhat distorted so at no point do you think “hmm, yeah, that character… they’re a role model”

except maybe Van, and I have no idea where she’s going to end up. she probably doesn’t, either

life imitates art imitates life etc.

A white mom on Fox News is complaining that her mixed son now sees himself as “a Black man.” She’s suing the school, says CRT taught her son to not do his chores.

— Sophia Tesfaye (@SophiaTesfaye) May 16, 2022

i think i liked last week's ep more than any of the other anthology episodes

Is this gonna be a Van-centric episode? Feels like it.

https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/stephen-glover-atlanta-writer-interview?utm_campaign=complexmag&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR2UY69xgA-0WJL-9lDQiZhaPwPqCWV-Wo1NsF4Zjc_sdpD8eyDoNwZgTpU

regarding the weird show descriptions:

Stephen "Glover wrote the episode descriptions for Atlanta’s third season. The description for “Three Slaps” reads: “Wow it’s been a minute. I mean, I like this episode about the troubled kid but we waited 50 years for this?” “I told him to write them like somebody who hates Atlanta and he was like, ‘Bet,’” Donald Glover says."

I just caught up on the last two seasons. S2 was consistently excellent and hilarious. As for S3, most of the anthology episodes have been watchable, but I didn't like this week's Van ep at all and I usually like her character. it was a strange season overall, I didn't feel like they were always playing to their strengths

https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/stephen-glover-atlanta-writer-interview?utm_campaign=complexmag&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR3kiqrhQoRGgDW2iDeNqdAmA0CuEcntvIuQDbcisOeIEGQ6nhxGjrdqRbk

get this girl a cigarette she’s freezing

I didn't like the finale at all.

yeah I was pretty disappointed, the Drake episode that focused on Van in S2 was one of the series' best

the van/darius episode in s3 keeps floating back into my mind

i watched the first half of the Van episode and honestly idgi
Maybe the second half will explain it
maybe

Kinda does but also not really worth it

I'm not sure if I did end up getting it. Dream/fantasy sequence is the obvious answer, her Amélie-like adventure brought on by guilt over Lottie, but the transition didn't make that clear.

Damn! Italicized instead of hiding the text. Sorry.

Skarsgård’a last few lines were great

it was absolutely not a dream sequence, there wasn't even any ambiguity like there was in the edible adventure episode

anyway, i thought this episode was hilarious, one of the funniest of the season if not the funniest

for anyone wondering, my prior post about how maybe Van was going to show us how to be was definitely tongue-in-cheek. even I wasn't expecting this level of meltdown

I don't think any of it's a dream/fantasy sequence, just an ongoing state of absurdity that this season has leaned into

Read up a bit, and you're right, it's not a dream. I thought the whole thing was silly, even if it has all these artful references I just read about. I sat there the whole time thinking "this is ridiculous." And yes, I loved those other Van episodes like the Drake one.

The funniest line drop for me was Van admitting she started this Amelie shtick a few weeks ago

one thing this finale revealed is that van 100% definitely did steal that wig that the karen accused her of stealing lol

and it was likely the amelie wig

Good catch...I feel like I'm coming down too harshly on a show I've really admired. I thought about it some more, and here's the problem for me: stylistically, it's done in a broad, over-the-top manner that strongly suggests dream/fantasy. If it is for real, I think you need to tone that down quite a bit and somehow anchor it in the here and now. The celebrity cameo is not helpful in that regard.

i don't think it was particularly out of step with the heightened reality that has always existed in this show, but mileage may vary, i guess

feels a lot like satire through magic realism to me tbh

have we already forgotten the invisible car

or, say, the entirety of that teddy perkins episode

I actually have forgotten the invisible car (Teddy Perkins was one of my least favourite episodes).

Maybe I'm over-explaining something much simpler: I like the real Van a lot, and hated her as that character.

I had fun with this season but understand the frustrations many have with it.

Hopefully S4 will be more straightforward.