Atlanta - Season 1
The first season of the American television series Atlanta premiered on September 6, 2016. The season is produced by RBA, 343 Incorporated, MGMT. Entertainment, and FXP, with Donald Glover, Paul Simms, and Dianne McGunigle, serving as executive producers. Glover serves as creator and wrote four episodes for the season.
Atlanta - Season 1
The series was given a 10-season order in October 2015 and stars Donald Glover, Brian Tyree Henry, LaKeith Stanfield, and Zazie Beetz. The series follows Earn during his daily life in Atlanta, Georgia, as he tries to redeem himself in the eyes of his ex-girlfriend Van, who is also the mother of his daughter Lottie; as well as his parents and his cousin Alfred, who raps under the stage name "Paper Boi"; and Darius, Alfred's eccentric right-hand man.
The Emmy-winning FX show Atlanta has returned for its third season. This follows a long hiatus since the series' second season, which premiered in 2018. The newest season has been much anticipated after several other appearances by the main cast in movies like Deadpool 2, Solo: A Star Wars Story, and Marvel's Eternals.
After season 1 aired in late 2016, Atlanta was renewed for a second season, which didn't premiere until 2018. The new season had a lot to live up to and did not disappoint audiences with "Alligator Man," its premiere. Notably, this episode features an Emmy-winning guest appearance by Katt Williams as Earn's uncle Willy.
Not only does Willy make a lasting impression on Atlanta fans, but this episode also sets the entire second season into motion. Willy passes on some sage wisdom to a struggling Earn, along with a gold-plated pistol for Earn to hide from the police. This literal Chekov's gun becomes very important in the second season's finale.
Surprisingly, "Teddy Perkins" wouldn't be the second season's only foray into horror. The eighth episode, "Woods," finds Alfred frustrated with his need to be "real" in a modern world that requires celebrities to be "fake." After being mugged, Alfred finds himself lost in the woods, resulting in a pretty horrific dream-like scenario.
The tenth episode of season two takes place entirely in flashback. Earn, depicted here as a child in the late 90s, confronts typical middle school drama as his classmates accuse him of having a counterfeit FUBU t-shirt. Earn seeks out the help of Alfred, whose older authority comes to Earn's rescue later in the episode.
During its first season, Atlanta delivered an eclectic batch of episodes that highlighted the originality of its creator Donald Glover, as well as the visual inventiveness of director Hiro Murai. The series began extraordinarily strong, easily cementing itself as one of the best new shows of the year. Soon after, Glover, Murai, and the rest of the cast took a bold step, shifting the series' somewhat straightforward narrative of a young man working to satisfy his personal ambition and the expectations of those around him to something that was, on occasion, far more abstract. The result was a series that, at times, defied even the lofty expectations set ahead of its premiere.
Instead, the series does in 'The Jacket' what it's done all season long: find something meaningful in the smallest of details and blow them up so that everyone can see. Earn's growth from the season's beginning to its end is modest and more contemplative than, say, an invisible car running people over outside a club, but Atlanta makes those modest gains the emotional equivalent of running a marathon.
Cinematic comparisons this season range from the whimsy of Charlie Kaufman to the meta-reality of The Truman Show, the dark realism of Black Mirror, and the eerie tension of the 2014 horror film It Follows. With such a diverse toolbox, the showrunners ensure we never get too comfortable on just one timeline. Each metaphor unravels multiple layers of intrigue -- there is the instant gratification of recognizing an obscure social media reference or the staple of Black culture that is Jet magazine, but if you are willing to look a little bit beyond, dive in a little bit deeper, there is so much to download from the simple pan of the camera as a pregnant teen sips on a Capri Sun in a music studio. The story tells itself.
All 10 'Atlanta' Episodes Ranked From Pretty Good to Phenomenal (Photos)Just in case you're having the feels after the "Atlanta" season finale and want to binge watch all the episodes all over again, we've ranked all 10 for your viewing pleasure.
Earn and Alfred's relationship is tested in a season rife with tension as Earn tries and fails time and time again as Alfred's manager. This ultimately culminates in a near-catastrophic trip to the airport in one of the final scenes of "Crabs in a Barrel," the last episode of the season, where Earn opens his backpack in the TSA line and looks down to find his Uncle Willie's (Katt Williams) gold gun that he forgot he threw in there to get rid of later. For one long, earth-shattering moment, it looks like Earn has lost everything. It isn't until they are settling in for their flight that we find out that Earn slipped the gun into Clark's bag, but Clark lets Lucas take the fall for it.
Season 2 of Atlanta finds Alfred grappling with his newfound fame. As he rises in popularity, he grows increasingly aware that he can't go about life the way he used to now that he is becoming a recognizable name in the rap industry. In the opening scene of Episode 2 of the second season, "Sportin' Waves," Alfred gets robbed by his long-time dealer in a hilariously polite exchange that captures Glover's comedic styling and Al's trademark look of exhausted exasperation. Alfred and Darius try to find him a new dealer but can't escape Alfred's rising celebrity status. Just when they think they've found their new plug, a white guy with a bearded dragon and a seemingly chill understanding of Al's privacy, he sends Alfred a video of his girlfriend doing a cringy acoustic rap cover of his hit single. "Them white girls," Darius informs Al, "love that shit." And with that, Alfred says farewell to that farm-fresh weed as quickly as he says goodbye to his phone that he immediately tosses out the window.
The critically acclaimed comedy, created by Donald Glover, began with Earn (Glover) asking his cousin Alfred (Brian Tyree Henry) to let him manage his burgeoning rap career because he needed to make money to support his family. And, in the first season finale, the show returns to this premise in a meaningful and important way.
The opening five minutes of the show's Season 2 premiere, which aired Thursday on FX, doesn't choose to center on the vibrant characters it created in its critically adored debut season. Rather, it follows two men from Atlanta who find themselves in a robbery-gone-wrong.
It's hardly like the sun-drenched scenes that filled Season 1. In fact, it's far more noir than comedy. But it's an apt scene that describes "Robbin' Season," a moniker Donald Glover and co. chose deliberately to differentiate this season of TV. It's also one that also captures the theme of the season in more ways than one.
Robbin' season refers to an actual period of time in Atlanta, the city, right before the holidays where theft and robberies increase. But its use as a title for the show is both literal and metaphorical, executive producer and writer Stephen Glover said at a Television Critics Association Panel in January, per Vulture(Opens in a new tab).
That metaphor comes through a few times. This season centers on how Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry), Earn (Donald Glover), and Darius (Lakeith Stanfield) come to grips with newfound fame and success. Rather than show the glamour, Atlanta depicts division and alienation. It's not enough for Paper Boi and his entourage to make it, they now have to fit into the world that fame projects them into.
Atlanta's first season unfolded so unconventionally that it probably should have been labeled an anthology series. It flipped from drama to comedy seamlessly, and all of it worked so well in concert that there's almost no way in replicating it. This is the same show, after all, that created a black Justin Bieber and a 'trans-racial' black man who identified as a 35-year-old white dude from Colorado.
Through the three episodes available for screening, Robbin' Season isn't anything like that. But don't take that to mean it's any less creative than its ambitious debut. You could call this season a bit more formulaic, as many critics have, but that really wouldn't the right way to describe it. It still remains unlike anything on TV. And while it follows the main signposts of a basic season-long story arc from start to finish (as it previously did not), it takes wildly creative curves to get there.
Mid-way through the episode, Earn (Donald Glover), Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry) and Darius (Keith Stanfield) witness a gruesome, shocking shooting of a suspect by police that was jarring even by this show's standards. Though we've seen Atlanta's abstract, existential filter applied to "touchy" topics such as racism, transphobia, police brutality and more all season, seeing a man gunned down in front of a screaming infant took things to a whole new level. As the characters have done all season, they mostly shook off what they saw and carried on with their day...which is not to say the violence should be taken as casual at all.
That said, this last episode felt slower than previous ones, culminating with Earn shutting off the light in the storage facility where he's been sleeping. While there are hints of what might lie ahead for Season 2 -- Earn and Van get cozier and seem like they could make their relationship work; Paper Boi gets invited to go on tour, hinting at greater stardom for him -- the season just sort of fades to black. "I like that it ends on a nice note with Earn in his comfort place and on his own," Beetz said. "You see this arc between him and Van choosing love over conflict. The show exists in this surreal place, not the linear nature of life. It's nice to end on a note where there's not a cliffhanger. It's just another day in the life. I feel like that last episode wrapped up the whole tone of the show." 041b061a72