The Prestige TV Podcast - Atlanta’ Season 3, Episode 4 Recap

Episode Date: April 8, 2022

Van Lathan and Charles Holmes break down the fourth episode of ‘Atlanta’ Season 3, “The Big Payback.” They talk about the horror nature of the episode and share their thoughts on episodes that don’t involve Darius, Paper Boi, Van, and Earn. Plus, they discuss the role generational wealth plays both in society and in this episode. Hosts: Van Lathan and Charles Holmes Producer: Mike Wargon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. Welcome to the Ringer's prestige TV podcast feed. I am Van Lathen, joined by Charles Holmes of The Ringer Music Show. And of this other little podcast called The Midnight Boys. Have you heard of that one with Charles? Do you like that one?

Pee-boo! I mean, I like you when I'm not in the hot seat. Hot seat, hot seat. You're hearing from me and Charles. You're used to hearing from us when it comes to talking about all things fandom. Or as some people are saying right now online, all things Disney Plus, whatever. But today we are talking about a different show outside of. the fandom realm. That show is

Atlanta. Now, I've been joined by Rembrandt Brown for the first two, first three episodes of this. Charles is filling in for Rembrandt right now. Don't know when we'll have Rembrandt back or if we'll get remembered back, but I'll tell you one thing, there's not a better critic in the entire world than Charles Holmes of the Ringer music show. Look, a lot of people might say, because a lot of people are lauding your

performance on the watch. Oh, for real? Oh, Jesus Christ, people love you. on the watch. You don't read your own don't read your own shit? No. Yeah, people love you on the watch. So maybe people want to hear more takes of Charles outside of the fandom space. You know what I mean? Maybe they want to hear what you got to say about stuff like Atlanta. Oh, I got so many takes for this episode. I'm so

fucking excited. Yeah, it's great. So this episode is episode four. The Big Payback. Now, we have once again deviated from the central narrative of the show, which is Van Erne, Al, and Darius' exploits over in Europe. This episode takes a page out of episode one, which was a separate story that didn't have anything to do with that narrative. Now, episode one ended up being a dream sequence that Erm was having. This episode is actually not. I

did not see anybody wake up or any tie back to it. Did I miss something? I watched it twice. Oh, I have a big, like I have a big theory. I, like, I'm not going to get into it yet, but I don't, like, yes, episode one was a dream, but I think these two episodes are connected in more ways than one. It's not, we shouldn't think of it as a dream, but I'm going to get into that later. Interesting. Okay, so, uh, the big payback was written by Francesca, Francesca, Francesco, I don't know why I went to Francesca. Francesca Sloan. And what it is about is this alternate history or alternate society where black people have been given the ability to sue for their slavery reparations.

And you go through your family tree and you find out that someone in your family was a slave. find that slavery and you sue that slavery and it's an amazing it's amazing device because they never explicitly tell you that they use the storytelling of the show to have

that dawn on you. It starts off by the way it stars Justin Bartha from the hangover who has this super waspy thing about him. It is actually

perfect casting. It begins in the coffee. I didn't even like hate him throughout the episode. There's something kind of like likeable about him in this weird way, even as he squirms. Oh, wait a minute. I hate him.

I'd argue that I empathized with him. You empathize. You kind of feel bad. Yeah. Like I hate him. I'd argue that I felt I felt bad for him.

I was almost scared for him at times, which is to me, To me, to me, it's the genius of the episode that there were parts where I was wondering if I was on his side. They disarmed me from a lot of my anger and resentment from America. As a black person, I'm just like, I am not supposed to be feeling bad for this man. Like, I should be with Shinikwa. I'm like, yo, you're about to get paid. But I'm like, damn, I kind of feel bad for him.

So let me tell you why this show is so well written. A little shout out hat tip to the writer, which we try to. do every single time that we're on this prestige TV feed. Through device, they show you how awesome it is to be a white man in the very first scene. He is in line at a coffee shop. And he is completely not paying attention. He's listening to NPR. Very white thing to do.

In Atlanta. He's listening to like a New York NPR station in Atlanta, which I find hilarious. Right. He's listening to NPR, which tells you. a little something about this character. Number one, this guy's probably a liberal. You know, he's probably not the guy that you would typically think

would get kicked in his ass by a sort of black ascendancy. You know what I mean? Like, a black ascendance, should I say? Like, he's the kind of guy that you would expect to be on your side if you, you know, believe in those sort of political affiliations and those people's ability to be allies.

He's listening to NPR. NPR's, you know, that's Left liberal radio. So he's probably all right. You know what I mean? But while he's in line, a woman looks past a black guy

who is standing in front of him to take his order. He was looking at some cookies and he inadvertently steals them. So right away, two examples of privilege. He inadvertently steals the cookies and looks and when he's in the car, he's like,

Oh my God. Look at this. And then he just eats them. Like the cookies represent to me, but it means to be white in America. You didn't mean to do something bad in the past, but it happened and you're eating the cookies anyway. I mean, it's funny.

We have two cookies in this episode. We have the one he steals that we have the one in the hotel and this symbol of a cookie of like white liberals kind of always wanting a cookie for just basic human decency. And the thing that I find that's hilarious is even like, immediately after that they signify in this very short scene that he's also

an ally because he's in this elevator with his friend and like his friend is like overtly like fuck these reparations like did you hear what this black guy like did to Tesla blah blah blah and the guy is kind of on black people's side he's like no I kind of get it like I'm not that mad at it

and then slowly the writing is so good you slowly start to see sin after sin after sin that he commits that shows you he's not as much of an ally as we think he is. Well, this episode to me is very much about the cost of allyship.

All right? It's very much about the cost of allyship because look, everyone is down for building a new playground until it's got to be out of your taxes. everyone is down for being an ally until it means now look there are different ways to be an ally i'm not saying you have to give up all your money and and go start waiting tables shout out to all my servers out there

in order to do that right but everyone is down for it until they have to pay for it because it says like the reality is that this system is one big gigantic fucked up machine and in order order to dismantle that machine, eventually you're going to have to get some oil and you're going to have to get some grout and you're going to have to get some grit on your own hands. And you can't just say, yeah, it should be dismantled and go let somebody else do it. No, if you really want to take it apart, you're going to have to get your shit fucked up. And when you stick your hand in a machine, you risk losing a limb, you know?

So like when I watch this episode, it's just the stakes get higher and higher. And he gets pushed to the brink of trying to figure out what it is that he's willing to sacrifice or what it is that he's willing to do without because the rabbit has the gun now. See, the first thing that happens that made me realize that what they're doing in this episode is so genius is that he picks up his daughter from school. and the daughter's like, somebody at school said, I'm a racist, is that true? And this is when the facade slowly, slowly, slowly starts cracking.

There's like three major sins that he commits in this episode. The first one is, he's like, you're not racist. Listen, that stuff happened a long, long time ago. We're Asha, Hungarian. We were enslaved during the Byzantine Empire.

And I do this with white people all the time. I always ask them. I'm just like, do you think you're racist? And 100% of the time, white people are like, no, I'm not racist. They clutch the person. Like, no, I can't be racist. And then I laugh.

And I'm just like, I ask that question to white people all the time. And they always say no. So if no one's racist, why is there still racism in the world? And then it dawns on them. And I'm like, part of being a good ally sometimes is realizing that whether it's overt or not, just by you being white, there's privilege. There is a way of thinking that automatically makes you racist. And once you admit it, you're able to see in a new lens.

And I love the fact that like, while he's an ally in the sense of he's not. not personally mad at black people fighting for reparations, the minute it starts to encroach on his life, to your point, everything starts crumbling about his worldview. And that is brilliant to me. Absolutely. Also, I am very intimately in tune with that idea

that it's hard to admit your implicit biases because I'm a man. And I think that I am the biggest feminist in the world, But every now and again, a woman will look at me and be like, hey, Van, you're mansplaining this to me. And I'll be like, no, no, I'm not, you're talking about somebody else? Not me. I'm Gloria Steinem. You know what I mean? And they'll continue to do it.

But it's hard to look at yourself in the mirror. And this episode forces him to by taking him down to the base level of who he was. He had the quintessential American existence strained relationship, but maybe they were going to get back together. His little girl also tells him that Mommy put on perfume before he came. His life was looking up, and he was going to his cubicle job feeling pretty good about himself. Yeah. And in comes Shinikwa.

Shenequa comes into this episode as an absolute tornado because he starts to see in his job he's saying that people are losing their jobs, right? There's going to be layoffs. There's going to be layoffs because the job themselves, the company themselves, shall say, has been hit by one of these slavery suits. So because the company has been hit by one of these slavery suits, now they have to lay people off. Okay, so he sees people crying.

He sees around him. just individual sort of, he doesn't see just individual ramifications. He sees societal and communal ramifications, which is another parallel to being black. Being black doesn't mean that you just go through stuff personally. It means that you see people in proximity to you, have it tougher and have it harder because they are black. And a lot of times you wear that pain. Like it becomes a part of what you are. Even if you've never been called a nigger before, it still stings when you see somebody else called a nigger, right? Because you're one?

Right? So, you know what I mean? So it's like, so it hurts. And that's something that a lot of times is difficult to explain to people who aren't black. And that starts to happen to him. He sees other people crying, other people distressed because of a situation that they're in that he has a lot of, like I said, proximity to. Gets home, Shaniqua comes to his house.

And Shaniqua is absolutely the absolute stereotype of the loud black lady that don't give a fuck about. It's tunnel vision on what it is that she wants. And she comes into his house and she's scouting it because that's what she's going to live after she sues him because she finds out that his ancestors were in fact slave owners. So one thing I want to bring up is that what's, so brilliant about this episode is that it unfolds almost like a horror movie or like a movie where it's scary or like a pandemic movie where like you don't want to catch this catch this virus you want to catch this curse and i want to bring it back to the first episode because the white man from the first episode who's on the lake talking to the black man we learn that his name is earnest in this

episode and he says quote in that they paid to be white with enough blood and a money anyone can be white, but the thing about being white is it blinds you. It's easy to see the black man. It's curse because you've separated yourself from him, but you don't know, but you don't know you're enslaved just like him. So this whole episode to me is this curse. You don't want to get infected with this curse. And when Shiniko like bangs on his door, he realizes that, oh, I caught it. The woman that he walked by at work, he was crying because she lost everything. Like, he realizes, oh, shit. Now, I'm cursed. And now the thing that I, the, the, second sin that he commits in this episode is that we know what it is for a white person

to call, to threaten to call the police on a black person. So the first thing, instead of trying to understand Shinika and why she's on his doorstep and everything, he's like, I'm going to call the police if you don't get out of here. And right then I was just like, ooh,

you don't know what you're doing right there. Right now you feel so threatened by this curse. Instead of trying to understand somebody who's also been cursed from birth, you're just threatening to call the police on her. And I'm like, that is brilliant writing. It is, but it also sums up the conundrum that sometimes we're placed in. Sometimes it seems like in these issues,

there's no right way to act, right? Sometimes it seems like there's no right thing to do because if someone barges into your home and starts filming you, of course you're going to want to call the police. Like, of course you're going to want to call the authorities, right? it's not what you should do but it's not like necessarily the wrong

thing to do and doing something like that, well, I don't know if it's not if it's not what you should do either. I just know that it's a much more dangerous predicament for one person to be in than for the other person to be in, right? And it would take you really understanding

the historical significance of what she's talking about and the present day ramifications of it for you to want to have that conversation. See, if He didn't think that his ancestors were from the Byzantine era and he was absolutely 100% one of the good guys. He might be compelled to enter into a conversation with her, but because he doesn't, he won't. And so that is a huge, huge hurdle to jump over.

Yo, yo, now I'm one of the good guys. You're infringing upon my space and my beliefs. What I got to do is called a bigger white man. I'm a white man, but the ultimate white man is the police. So I got to call the bigger white man to come get you out of here. Doesn't work. She comes back like a specter. By the way, in this episode, blackness is very, this episode is a horror episode of television, I believe.

And blackness is very, very, very much the specter and the Freddie Krueger of this episode. So here's the thing. I want to push back on the horror aspect because one thing that Donald Glover said in the press, store is he's like, when they were talking about this season, he wanted to do a season where we just want, he said, quote, we just wanted to make a black fairy tale. And the thing that I walked away in this episode thinking is a black fairy tale is a joyous story for us and is a white nightmare. Because at the end of the episode, we see this, we see this vision of white people serving black people at this very ritzie restaurant. And when I saw that, that was a powerful image because you don't

see that a lot. When it's this ritzy thing, it's like you see people of color as the servers and white people have generational wealth as the people eating. And I was just like, oh, no, this is a nightmare through the white gaze because white people don't want to catch the curse of having to pay for reparations. But for black people, this is a fairy tale. This is something like, oh, if this happened in my life, my life would be fundamentally better than it is right now. So it's only a horror story. depending upon which gaze you're seeing the episode through. Fantastic point. Let me tell you why I stick to the horror situation.

The gaze of the episode comes from your protagonist to me, right? It comes from your main character. And in this case, it's Justin Barthor's character. I'll use another book. I'll use a book that I read as an example of this. A book called I Am Legend. Have you ever read the book? No, I know the story, but I've never read that.

the book. Right. So if case people have never read, I Am Legend, I Am Legend is about Robert Neville, who, you know, there was a Will Smith movie that's loosely based on it. It's really not the same thing. And Robert Neville is a human being. And he spends his days, vampire hunting, basically. He spends

his days going around finding vampires, stabbing them up, all right, killing them. Because he is essentially one of, if not the, last men on earth. So his job, there's been a disease, there's been some situation where everybody's

turned to vampires and he's going to go try to kill as many vampires as he can. Well, we spend all of this time with Robert Neville. We watch Robert Neville kill vampires. We watch Robert Neville do all this. They eventually, the vampires are eventually vampire-like creatures or whatever. They eventually capture Robert Neville.

They captured Robert Neville and they have him and he communicates with them, talks about them, and learn to him. And what we end up learning at the end of it is the monster in this story is Robert Neville because Robert Neville when the name of the story I am legend is about him

he is their monster humanity has evolved to being all vampire like bloodsucking creatures and he is the last person that is left behind in that evolution and so whereas we understand him because he is actually

like a human being and we are human beings. Like watching what he is going through, we don't get that he's going around killing them. They didn't have to be turned. They didn't have to be this. That's just what society is now. So if the purview was flipped, we would get that. In this purview, it starts off with a relatable guy,

a guy who's had some relationship problems, a guy who's just a regular dude. So it's hard to see that what's happening to him until we get to the end of the episode. And also, by making Shinikwa herself as intruding and boisterous as she is, a complete stereotype, right? It's easy to feel, damn, I wouldn't want somebody to do that to me too. And I'll give you another scene that kind of brings us around. Later on, he goes to her Instagram.

And when he goes to her Instagram, he sees her taking her kids to ride bikes. and being in the Instagram for him, it humanizes her. It takes her from being, like you start to see that what she really wants is a better life for herself and her children, which even though she was explicitly saying that when she was in his apartment, it's hard to feel it because she seemed so unconcerned with the fact that she was in somebody else's home. I mean, it's also her excitement seems so stereotypical, but it's like, for her, she's won the lottery. A white person wouldn't, like, a white person wouldn't understand that because if you've had generational wealthier whole life, like, it's something you take for granted. If a black person wins the lottery, you're like, this is like, this will like, foundationally change not only my life, my kid's life, their kids' lives.

But I want to go back to one of the scenes that, like, was the third thing that he did that I was like, this is hilarious because it's happened to me, is he goes. to work. And like he's talking to this, he's, uh, this woman. And she's, he's about to ask a question. He's like, yeah, you're wondering where all the black people are. And I think it's like Willie and Lester, I think their names are the only people who show up. And he goes to ask Lester about like what he should do. And the funniest, the funniest thing happens is like,

Lester's like, hey, you know, I've been raised by a black woman my whole life. You know, you just got to listen to her and give her as much money as she asked for. And then he does this thing that is so whack where he asked the black person for his opinion. When he doesn't hear what he wants, he goes to his white friends to be like, what should I do? And this exact thing happened to be what I used to work at a charter school because it was a charter school run by a bunch of white people serving predominantly black Hispanic children. And Philando Castile died. And like I was on the verge of getting fired, but Philando Castile dies all the kids. kids in the schools are

just like freaking out rightfully so. I'm working on social media and like one of these heads of these departments like Charles we need to see you in our office. I'm like all right sure sure I'm not popular at this company and they're like Charles we know this is a rough time and I'm like yeah no shit

they're just like what should we do? What should we say to the people? I'm like what do you mean what should we say? They're like we need to release a message and I'm like okay and they're like we're thinking that we're should have a Martin Luther King quote. Which quote should we use? And I'm just like, I don't know if we should go with Martin Luther King. I'm like, why not? Everyone loves Martin Luther King. And I'm like,

well, you know, when a black person dies, white people always bring up Martin Luther King. I'm like, if we're trying to inspire all of the black children, like let's maybe show another civil rights activists. Like, let's just show that we're not going to the only black person that white people know. And they're like, you're totally right, Charles. You're totally right. Absolutely. I leave the meeting. And then the white people have the, their own meeting and I see that they're having their own meeting. And then later they just put up the Martin Luther King quote. And I'm just like, oh, I'm just like, this is exactly what happens.

When you're working, it's like they have the meeting with the black person to say they had it. But when they don't get what they want, white people are like, all right, I'm just going to ask the white people and we're just going to make the decision anyway. Right. Because, because like, like, what, what, first of all, I want to say two things. Number one, that's a hilarious story. And number two, you said something very important. You said born with generational wealth.

And a lot of people are going to look at the episode and be like, he was born with generational wealth. He doesn't have generational wealth because he didn't look to be wealthy. Generational wealth means being born with anything that was handed down to you. Yes. Like, my parents love them. Left me nothing, really. Like, they gave the only thing that I have, they weren't given anything.

So, like, so bust it. So my parents weren't, like, there was no one, like, we don't have, like, we don't have even, I'm not going to get a house from them. I'm not going to get, I'm not going to get, like a head start or anything. Like, my parents did well, but there were, there were things that happened during that time. And from them on, so, like, if you got a car from somebody, if you got a, any of the things these are called in vitro transfers

even if somebody was able to pay for your college you know what I mean? Like if you got a little loan when you were starting off in life if your parents were able to give you X amount of money you know what I mean? Like by and large now I'm not saying this is true for all black people not even right

by and large black people don't have access to those type of transfers and white people and other places it's been a large part of the way American wealth is transferred. You know what I mean? So there's a significant wealth gap and it has to do with that. Number two, to your point, is that sometimes it seems like the number one thing that white supremacy really wants to be is coddled.

Yes. Like, we got drug through the mud, but white people want to be told they're okay. Once again, I understand this as a man. as a man, I just want women to say I'm one of the good ones, right? Never ever, ever actually, like, pay attention to the fact that being one of the good ones means you have to look at things in such a fundamentally different way that it might be uncomfortable to me. But I just want to be told, hey, you're cool.

Right? I want to be coddled as a man, even though I have all of the power. And that's what happened with him. He didn't want to hear the answer that there was not really going to be a way to, to throw her off, you're going to have to confront whatever's happening with her in some sort of way. He wanted to hear an answer that made sense to his sense of, his sense of privilege. So we're moving through the episode now. We get to the point to where he is, his wife, who is now Peruvian, she was white yesterday, his ex-wife.

That was the funniest moment of the fucking whole thing. Wait, before you described, did you catch the little text exchange where, the skin color emoji that his wife used changed. It was white earlier in the day. And then she turned it to brown. When she figures out she's Peruvian, I'm like, that's such a small detail,

but it's fucking hilarious. And once again, it's a small detail, but it's a huge societal thing. It's like, it's, it's, it's like the only time,

the only time, like, people don't want to be white is when they rap it. You know what I mean? Like, you know, it's like, you white at the bank, but when you're on the block freestyle and, yeah, you know, like my people. And you get weird questions asked. Like, people would be like, yo, man, I'm my people from France. I'm like, yeah, they're white.

My people from Spain. I'd be like, yeah, they're white. They're white. You're white. Like, no, man. Like, nah, man, he's French. I understand, like, you're not white America. But, like, people would be like, no, that he ain't white.

Nah, you're white. White people have like a little Spanish. And I'm just like, that don't mean you're not white. Like, white people can be Spanish. Like, do I have to explain whiteness? Right. Like, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, like, my great, great, grandfather spoke Spanish.

I'm like, that has nothing to do with it, bro. Right. I'm sorry. Like, like, you fucking, you know what I mean? You know, Sammy Sosa speaks Spanish. And at one point, he was black. But now he is. Yo, don't do that to see.

But now he is it. Sammy made his. choice, bro. I'm sorry to tell you, Charles. Sammy made his choice. Anyway, all right, so he comes home, and I knew what was happening. As soon as I heard the song, I knew what was happening in front of his crib. He's driving back home, and we hear Keith Sweat,

make it last forever. As soon as I heard, make it last forever, I knew people were cooking out. I started laughing as soon as I heard it. Like, I knew people were cooking out. I knew what was happening. to his crib. And I'll give you another example of why I feel like this episode has a horror tenor to it. He drives up to his home. He sees what's going on, right? They're outside, they're cooking out, he's sweat is blasting. It looks like a lovely scene. Damn, I can't wait for someone to come. It looks like a lovely scene, right? She sees him. She's at his house. She sees him.

She looks at Justin. Justin, I'm assuming, is one of her sons or one of of her nephews or something like that, right? Justin or Jamal, excuse me, Jamal. She looks at... No, it was Justin. It was Justin. What was Justin? Yeah. And she looks at him and she sends Justin after him.

When Justin starts running after him, Justin looks like this unstoppable, unbreakable force of blackness that is running down a car for a time. He looks like the African T-Whorred, 1,000 from the Terminator. And they, and they intentionally, to me, framed, wrote and shot that scene to show the fear in our, in Justin Barthor's eyes. Because there was a horror entity chasing him.

Yo, but one thing that happens after that is when he goes to the hotel, we get, we get the return of the white guy from the first episode. whose name is Ernest, which is funny because that's the name of the main character who Donald Glover plays. And they have this conversation where Marshall, the protagonist of this episode, he's melting down, he's losing everything. And Ernest, or E, as he likes to be called, says this thing that's so poignant. He says, you're separated from your wife. She's taking the kid. Now she has to be raised without a father. She has to build wealth and success from the ground up.

similar to the position we put them in, but we're going to be okay. And the thing that I think is radical about that is that even in this world of reparations, even in this world where he's going to have to take 15% out of his wages, he's fine. White people will be fine. This world isn't a world where black people have taken over. This is a world where black people can start approaching being on equal status, as he says later, the curse has been lifted from her,

from all of us. We were running from it, but now we're free. The curse, the haunted aspect of this entire episode is just like, once you start repaying

what you owe, we can start having conversations that we will never have until white people as an entire, you know, community race, start being like,

yeah, we do owe black people something. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Here's the thing about that, though. What happens to that gentleman after that? He kills himself. He blows his brains out. He recognizes that the world would be a fundamentally different world, maybe a better world, if we confronted these things, but he makes the decision that it's not a world he wants to live in.

And that, to me, is the most powerful moment of this, something I didn't see coming. He sits down there. We've seen this character twice, right? seen this character before when he knew all about what was going on at Lake Lanier right

and after he what he turns into in Lake Lanier is a specter right in this situation right here I was watching this scene so uneasy

because I kept waiting for him to do something scary bro and I don't like that type of shit dog I'm gonna keep a gazing with you bro like I don't fuck with that horror shit

bro bro like bro look man like there's a like I told this to people before Twilight Zone the movie. The first scene of Twilight Zone the movie, Albert Brooks and Dan Aykroy are driving down the street and they're talking about different television shows. And then Dan Aykroy says, you know what television show I loved? I love Twilight Zone. It was so scary.

And he could talk about an episode of Twilight Zone. Dan Aykroy looks away and he goes, you want to see something really scary? And Albert Brooks goes, sure. And then Dan Aykroy goes, you got to pull over the car. It's really scary. He goes like, wow, I have to pull over the car. Yeah, so he pulls over the car and Dan Aykroy turns around like this and then when he turns back, he's a monster and he fucking kills the guy.

I was fucking, I don't give a fuck, okay? How old are you? Bruh, like nine. Like, bruh, terrified, bro. Terrified. Like, terrified. Like, terrified. Like, maybe younger,

to be honest with you, terrified when I first saw Twyzer in the movie, which is a great movie, by the way. And that scene before reminded me of that, and I was very pissed. Just to let people know because I'm watching fucking Atlanta, and I didn't sign up for that,

watching Atlanta. So I was very upset. So this entire scene, I kept waiting for this guy to turn into something fucking scary. So I was only half watching it. Okay? And I was only half watching it

trying to look at it because I was scared of him. I was very afraid. And then he gets up, he walks away, and he killed himself. And that was scary. I saw that coming.

I saw that coming once he walked out. I'm like, dog, he's either going to drown himself or he's going to do so. Because you see him putting the gun. I'm like, all right, he's. Yeah, what you should be? So it ended up being a world that he didn't want to live in, that he maybe couldn't live in. So he recognized that that world had to come, but he wanted to be somebody else's burden, which to me symbolizes sometimes how white America looks at racism.

It's like, yes, we have to do this. somebody else's problem and I don't need to be a part of the solution. He essentially took himself out of being a part of the solution. And do you know in the end of this episode, who ended up being the hero? Justin Bartha. He ended up being a hero because he came around to a fact that, look, this is life now. This is the world. This is what it is and I'm going to be a part of it. He didn't seem embittered at the end of it when his job situation had change. He didn't see embittered. This was the reality. And the reality was this was something that he had to do. All right? And then you see him in the server and you see the beautiful scene

at the end of the episode. And that brings us to the end. Charles, what else you got on the, uh, well as you got on that? Also, I think going back to Donald Glover being like we wanted to make a black fairy tale, there's so many connections between this episode and the first episode. did you notice that the meal that the father is so excited to cook for the daughter is spaghetti what spaghetti means to a white family is different than what spaghetti

means to a black family if a black bird's like we got spaghetti in the fucking fridge like god damn it like spaghetti again for the for the daughter she's like oh yeah spaghetti garlic bread

same thing with earnest showing up again I'm like oh is Ernest an actual person in this or he as he likes to be called or is he like this this season is set in Europe is he like a Grimm's fairy tale type person

who is like moving in between these stories telling you what the moral is because in the first episode he tells you what the moral of the story is in the beginning and in this episode he tells you what the moral of the story is at the end and it makes me wonder

is he going to keep returning I think so in other episodes and he is like the fairy godmother, the type of person who comes down from above. And it's like, no, this is the moral. This is what you're supposed to learn from the story that's unfolding for us. To me, he's Donald Glover. After I watched Donald Glover interview himself in interview magazine, he's Donald Glover.

He is literally looking at us and parroting back to us what the intentions of the show are. He's contextualizing the world that we're in. where we're away from Erne and Van and the rest of them. Look, we haven't talked about the absence of Erne and Van and and Al and Darius in this episode. And I don't really want to because I didn't miss them. There was nothing so crazy that happened in the old man in the tree that we had to come back and, like, get answers for it.

And as long as that's the case, as long as they didn't leave us on the cliffhanger, sure, I'm kind of wondering why Van is acting weird and not answering Ern's calls, stuff. But I love this. As a matter of fact, cast my vote for a whole eerie spin-off show of one-offs, a horror type of anthology series, right, of one-off shows that deal with race in America, sex them in America, in this almost scary, ethereal, cool way. I would watch this every fucking Thursday, man.

But let's say what the audience might think. Because, like, I thought this was a phenomenal episode. But I was, there was a little tinge of me who was like, man, like, I'd still want to know what's going on with Paperboy, Donald, Van, and Darius. But I was just like, this is still a great episode. Do you think that this season is going to start pissing people off? Because they're not getting the thing that they want. Yeah.

And I think that this is kind of. what Donald Glover was talking about in that interview where he basically said that, you know, uh, sometimes, you know, Anthony Bourdain would either a smash burger and Anthony Bourdain would eat wagoon, but, uh,

one is not better than the other. That's just a different experience. I think that in this season, they're trying to take people in a different experience. This is a wholly different show from season one. And even season two, it's a wholly different show, wholly different show. The narrative is disjointed a little bit in a way that used to be the outlier of the seasons,

but now it is the sort of spine. Yeah, the spine of them. Thank you for that, well said. So, like, for me, I don't have a problem with it. I think the audiences will have a problem with it. I do also think that these four actors are busy these days, and these episodes where they're not in them, is a way for them to shoot Atlanta,

but not have to cast aside some of their other commitments to have the show going. Also, it's COVID in Europe. So they were filming in Europe during COVID. So I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this was just kind of like it's really hard to get these four people together at the same time during COVID and shit like that.

I will say, like before we go, do you think that Donald Glover's interview magazine interview complicates this because I saw a lot of black women, rightfully so, pissed off at him. Like, the, the people are not happy with Donald,

and I was watching this episode being like, does the tenor of this episode change for people, knowing that a lot of black people, a lot of black women, rightfully so are a little pissed. So let me bring up something that is a little troubling. I love Donald Glover.

Okay. Van is in this episode. A van is in this show. Zazzy Beats. And she has played in this show as a very pragmatic, very even-keeled, very sort of heady black lady,

right? Culture, stuff like that. She is fair-skinned. I'd have to go back and look. But when you see darker-skinned women, in this show, they seem to be portrayed in a different way.

I'd have to go back and look at every time. If you remember, they went to a party and this was one of the worst scenes in the history of television. I love Atlanta. They went to a Drake party.

When they went to a Drake party, there was an interracial couple there. And one of the women that Van was with accosted this interracial couple. And she looked unhinged. She looked angry. She looked, she was almost feral.

in the way that she attacked this couple and this white lady specifically, the white woman came across as completely in control of her emotions and the black lady came across as something that is like emotionally shattered, right? We saw the sister earlier on in this one. I will say that the social worker in that episode was a black lady who seemed cool. Or I don't want to say seem cool, who seemed to be written not in this way.

She was the hero of the episode. She was the hero of the episode. And the mother, though, was portrayed as somebody who was like, yo, take my son, whip the son at school, all of that stuff. And then you have Shanique when this one, who is portrayed in a way and you have to dig deeper to figure out that she's not a way. If I was a black woman, I would be uncomfortable with some of this. And given what he has actually said, first of all, fuck that.

I don't have to be a black woman. I'm a black man and I am uncomfortable with some of this. And I truly believe that as much as I revered Donald Glover as a, as a creative, as much as I revered Donald Glover as for everything that he's been able to do, both in film and on this show, he has a black lady problem. He does. But I, like, he has a black lady problem and he tiptoed around it in the interview. And he said, I don't want to take up too much options.

I'm sorry, Charles. And he said, he's asked him, to question, are you using black women to question my blackness? You don't have to be dating a black woman, necessarily, but you do have to respect them and seemingly give them some sort of grace, oxygen, and latitude to be who they are.

And these some-timey caricature type for, like, personifications of them, portrayals of them, it's, a little troubling. What do you think? I think what we're starting to see is that when, when Atlanta happened, we had this kind of like auteur boom where you had a lot of white writers and a lot of white publications, lauding Donald Glover, Issa Ray, Jordan Peel, all these people, and rightfully so,

from making kind of these transformational TV shows, movies. And a lot of the white people reviewing it were like, oh, we've never seen anything like this. if you're black, you're just kind of like, yo, this is, all of this shit is dope, but like, come on, these aren't the first black geniuses we've ever had in film or TV. And I think you're starting to see that, like, yo, Donald Glover has blind spots. Issa Ray is going to have blind spots. Jordan Peel is going to have blind spots. It doesn't take away from their genius.

It's just kind of like, it's part of the black experience where sometimes I'm like, I'll read Donald, a Donald Glover interview and a bunch of the interview. I'm like, dog, this shit is tight. Like a lot of this shit he's saying is true. You know, what he's like, yo, Zendai, it's time to come to death row. It leaves him, livings him behind. I'm like, that's hilarious. But there's other parts of the interview where I'm like, part of my, part of my Frenchman, nigga, you tripping.

Like, come on. Like, you know what I'm saying? And that's why, like, I don't think of him as an auteur. Right. He's a person. He's a person. Like, yo, Issa Ray, Donald Glover, Jordan Peel, they're dope. But they ain't like, Jesus Christ.

They have blind spots. So I can think that like he's a genius in this one field. And sometimes when he says certain shit, I'm like, all right, you know, as a people, we're just going to have to deal with this. Like, I have the barbecue. But yeah, like I, like in close. I thought that this episode was genius. I love this episode.

I think that if you're disappointed that you didn't see like Earn and Paperboy, Darius and Van, I get it. But like, you'll give this episode a chance because I really do think what they're doing and this episode is like some really just high level TV shit. And I was, I was enthralled. I think it's, I think it's amazing. I think it's amazing. And by the way, these episodes are the ones that I find myself rewatching.

This one in three slaps, they're like these weird. I'm telling you, I'm here for this. I'm here for this. I love the Twilight Zone. I love Black Mirror. And we've never had a show with a black voice that was like that. I've always been asking for it. I love Vineyard Horror Movies.

I love all of those things We've never really had it And I'm telling you right now There's something here There's something here And they're hitting it They're doing it I'm glad they are All right

That is Charles Holmes He is the host Of the Ringer music show He is also one half One fourth Of the Midnight Boys PooPew Over on the Ringer podcast

Network on the Ringerverse I'm Van Lathen One Half of Higher Learning With Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay and also, or Rachel Lindsay and Van Lathen, depending on who you like more. Or, and of course, I am one-half of the Midnight Boys

or one-fourth of the Midnight Boys on the Ringiverse. This was fantastic, Charles. I hope that you can come back next week and do this with us again. Yo, I would love to. Great combo. And, yo, shout out Mike Wargan for all of his hard work producing this episode. Mike Wargan.

I call him the Playmaster. Woo! All right. Bye-bye.