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

Episode Date: September 30, 2022

Charles and Van dive into colorism and broken black family drama as they analyze the fourth episode of the final season of ‘Atlanta.’ Hosts: Charles Holmes and Van Lathan Associate Producer: Jonathan Kermah Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Now available nationwide. Welcome to the Prestige TV podcast, a show where if you're hungry, you can dig into our purses, get some cough drops. I'm Charles Holmes in the Ringer Music Show. He's Van Lathen of Higher Learning with Rachel Lindsay, but together we're known as the Midnight Boys,

Poo! Poo! And we're here to be here. to discuss the final season of Atlanta. On today's episode, we're breaking down light-skinned, directed by Hero Marai, and written by Stephanie Robinson. Yo, then, I already know how you're feeling

because you texted the group chat after this episode. It seems like you're on Cloud 9 with this episode. Top three episode of Atlanta ever. All right, dude. Already with it. But you want to know how I do know this is good TV? How?

I woke up this morning, watched it, and I was about to text you and then I was like, let me save it for the fucking five. That's like, I was laughing. Like, way too much. Top three episodes of Atlanta ever. I like, seriously, top three because

there's very, there's very, it's very rare in any show. It happens with Atlanta more than other shows, but that your A plot, your B plot like hit together this hard. So you have the A plot of Earn's mother, actually dadnapping, her father. Not kidnapping. Not kidnapping.

Dadnapping the father and the familial issues and how that right there leads us to understand a dynamic about Ern's family and, to a degree, the relationship between Earn and Al that I never really understood before. I wanted to know how are their cousins, how are they related? Why is there that familiarity there, but still a little distance there a lot different? You know what I mean? But you get it. And I understood it better when I understood that this was a father that had dropped seed all over Georgia, right?

As your father rest in peace. Right. Through a many podcast, you have told me he was known to do. Right. So you have these people in your family who you are related to. But the friendship bond that you might have with them or the. animus that you might have with them actually means a little bit more than whether or not

your cousins or anything like that because the family is fractured in a way. And seeing that on screen represented in that way it was very interesting. I'm going to come back to another point about that later, but then also the father. Wait, before you're spoiling everything, let's give

the audience a little bit of summary. Wait, we're talking about it. This is a reaction podcast. I want to give it a summary in case they forgot. Okay. So, like, ended. Earn is tasked with taking his mom, grandfather, and aunt Jeannie to church, while his retired father spends his Sunday morning at the mall. Hygings ensue when Erne's mom drives away with her grandfather after claiming that her sister Jeannie is just keeping the father away from her to collect his

social security checks. Earn has to deal with ramifications of his light skin aunt and her antics, and meanwhile, Erne's father goes on a journey where he's duped into buying a hat. He doesn't need by a pretty woman. It is made fun by a bunch of young Atlanta hooligans. Then, you already were getting into it. And the reason I knew you were going to like this episode

because when I was watching it, I have my own, this mirrored my family, but this is a family dynamic that is like very specifically black and southern black in terms of like your dynamics. So can you please kind of like

walk our listeners through why this is actually something that, like, Stephanie Robertson, the writer did so well in depicting this family. Family where I'm from. I am from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. What does family mean? Obviously, I come from a place

where the familial ties and relations are almost ever present, right? You're playing with somebody in school. You start talking to him, and you're like, hey, what'd you say your mother's name was? And then all of a sudden, boom boom that's your cousin i'm being serious about this and don't even give you started about marringle where i'm from uh my father's hometown everybody there is legitimately related one or two

families over you're related so what happens is how you're related to someone has much more to do with the closeness that you were in which you were reared with them then whether or not you actually have blood relations to them they're cousins that i have that are third cousins that are much closer than first cousins that I have, right? And there are cousins that are cousins by marriage that I have that are way closer than actual first or second cousins might be because I'm from a place where so many people are related that it doesn't really matter, it matters more how you get on, right?

Okay, having said that, I saw this in Ernst family. I saw people who are all brother and sister, right? and one aunt that has chosen to separate herself from them because of a perceived slight. When really in the back of her mind, she knows that her sister has actually had to go through an actual slight. She had to find, the Ern's aunt had to find a way to separate herself for the rest of her family because she's disagreeable. We all learn that. But then we understand why Earn is so particular. so off-kilter because his mom has been dealing with an incredible sense of abandonment

her entire life. Her whole life, she's felt minimalized and unseen by her father. So Earn has really, and look, I'm telling you, when you're, we talk about what we give, what your parents give to you on purpose, right? but we never talk about what they give to you like on accident, like the mental health issues that they give to you on accident, how their unhappiness becomes, forget about trauma and all of that stuff,

just the unhappiness itself becomes a generational trait. The feeling that you're not good enough, the wanting that you'd have, all of that, so much of that character, so much of who Earn is. And I'm doing less than a stellar job of articulating it because I feel it,

so much. I related so much to this episode. I was him learning about the dysfunction between my father and his brothers. My mother, when I was 15, I learned that my grandfather wasn't my actual grandfather, that the man that I thought was my mother's actual father was her stepfather. And then I realized that she had actually never known her real father. And the guy that was my stepfather who really took after me was just some I mean this is my pa-paul don't get me wrong but he was just an older gentleman who raised my mother and liked me I didn't carry his same blood it made me relitigate what these things meant what these things meant and I didn't also understand why there was always sort of a barrier between him and my mom

why he was different with my uncle Hal and my uncle David than he was with me and why she was some of the ways that she was and why she pulled me so close and was so loving and so doting she didn't feel connected as much to her brothers and in a way to some of the other people than other people in her family it felt she felt like a small alien and nobody ever wanted to bring it up because they knew that she felt that way and in this episode when when she says, hey, he was cool with the rest of his children, but never really with her, and she made that face. I swear to God, dog, I've seen that fucking face before.

I've seen three kids be in the room. Two of them are looking at their father, and one of them is looking at the man that raised them. And it's just not the same. And, like, in the South, like, it's particularly where I'm from all of these dynamics, like they're at play and Atlanta managed to in this episode

without forcing the hand or being heavy-handed at all and I'm stop talking after this just expose those family dynamics to a degree even when the aunt walks in the studio and paperboy knows

he knows she's on bullshit yeah he knows you know that aunt he knows she's bad news he's like, shit. They're like, man, we got to get out. Everybody just get the fuck out. We're doing the whole thing now.

Just the whole thing, I really related here. And it just shows me how tapped in they are sometimes. As someone who was raised for a while by my grandparents, I think what this episode really does well is like, it's hard to articulate. But there's the role that like a black patriarch plays that my grandfather played. he was the oldest of his siblings. And the way I have seven aunts and uncles,

the way everybody looked at him, my grandparents, was constant politics. Because I was in the house, I got to hear the phone calls of when an uncle or aunt called and then what my grandfather would say after that. And I would see my uncles and aunts

fighting for love, fighting for attention, fighting for affection. And I think this is something that's true in all families, but specifically in black families, is that there's this constant succession level hierarchy that's based on different things. Are you light skin?

You know what I'm saying? That's one level of it. Of like the world treats you a different way. And sometimes your own family treats you a certain way. Then there's the like, who makes the most money? Who's the oldest? Who has the best job? All of these things.

And what I realized as I grew up, being in such a big family is that all of those politics get passed down to the next generation. I am the light skin person of the midnight boys. I realized when I had conversations with my cousins once we are grown up, how much it hurt their feelings that I was treated differently. Not only by society, but sometimes in my family, because this is what happened. colorsism, sometimes when you're light skin, there's self-hatred involved in terms of like how people perceive you, how people think just because your light skin, you're more attractive. I had this great conversation with my cousin who's now my sister.

And she was like, she was like, yo, like you don't understand what it was like for us. You guys were the golden children. You guys looked a certain way so everybody treated you a way that they didn't treat us. And I had to apologize. I'm like, I don't understand. I'm so sorry. Like, I didn't. And that was stuff that was happening a generation before with people who, like,

who came out looking this way, who came out looking that way. And I feel like we all have the light skin uncle. I'm one of them, the light skin auntie who's like, uppity. And you're like, yo, what, like, can you calm down? Can you stop acting like your God's gift to the world, please? So my uncle Hal wasn't uppity, but my mother felt like he was. Like, I never saw it. I never saw it.

He moved the way to California and stuff. He's a great guy, cool guy. I never saw it. I remember my mom one time, because my mother and my mother and my uncle David are both very dark skin. My uncle Hal is not. He's the light skin brother. So I remember one time my mom is talking and she goes,

I never saw this, but she goes, yeah, we all know that mom and I love my mom-mo to death. Mama, if she heard this, she would be. So I'm like, I'm, I'm, she doesn't hear this podcast because I know if she's done this mom said this. She goes, yeah, well, Mama always favored Hal. I was like, why would he, why was she favored Hal? And if you knew Uncle Hal, you could probably understand why people would favor him. He's so funny.

He, like, he was worldly. He was a great soldier. But she goes, no, she favored him because, like, he was white skin. Like, he's taking, and I'm like, what? She goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's like, it's just the way that it was. Like, she would favor her because he was light skin. I'm like, shit.

Because I'm dark and my sister is light like you to where you like, you know how you motherfuckers, we can see y'all veins and shit. Oh, right. She's light like you. And there was never in my family, never. Like, my mother is dark. My father is dark. It's one of those black.

And my sister comes out. She's light like, like you. There was never. any favoritism shown towards her. As a matter of fact, sometimes I think she had it worse. And it might have been because my mom had some residual

issues with that shit. And all of that shit coming out here, we haven't even talked about the subplot of the father who just wants, who who just wants to be he thinks that he wants to be left alone.

But what he really wants to be is seen. and that is hard, especially for older black men. My dad went through that. He wants to be left alone. He wants a mall of quiet to himself, so he can walk around until somebody starts to appreciate him. And then is I'll buy whatever hat you fucking got.

Because he just has not felt as a black man of a certain age. He has not. felt appreciated in a long time. And we can't really have this conversation in good faith right now because we have to make sure our sisters are appreciated. And black men saying, I'm not appreciated enough is going to be met with I, nigger, calm down. But you get to a certain point.

Remember what Chris Rock used to say with all the black daddy get is the big piece of chicken? You know what I mean? Like you get to a certain point where he's like, I want to be away from all this chaos. but the moment someone tells him, he's willing to eat it up. I mean, think about what he says to earn

when Earn calls him for help, because that is such a black dad thing to say. He's like, bro, I've dealt with this for 30 years. You could deal with it for this afternoon. Like, he's done. And what I think thematically is so special about this episode is that I think it's very clear at this point, four episodes in that this season of Atlanta

is so much about aging. And it's so much about, like, death and what we go through. And like you're seeing in this episode black characters that we don't get to see very often, who are 50, 60s, Earn's dad is retired now. And he's going through this thing where it's like he just wants a semblance of attention of like, oh, somebody sees me, someone's complimenting me. Earn's mom wants this one moment with her father that has eluded her, her entire career. You get Aunt Jeannie who, like, you get the feeling that, like, at one point she was, she was this desirable hot thing that was out here in the world. Absolutely.

Who's now falling on hard times and, like, she can't depend on her looks as much. And she's now, like, stealing social security checks. And you can tell that's wounded her. And everybody else in the family, even Uncle Willie, he's like, yo, while you're on the phone, you owe me $800. They're lapping it up. They're like, yo, like, finally, once the looks are gone, you like us now. And I think what's genius about that episode is, like, how many shows do you really get to see 50, 60-year-old black people dealing with this layer of human emotion? The only show I've ever seen with this is actual real life.

You would just watch it and you hear somebody be like, yo, man, don't nobody. care about what you got going on. We don't give a fuck about that. Like, why don't you relax and have a beer, please? When she says, it's because I'm light-skinned and then they laugh. And he goes, man, don't nobody care about you being light-skinned. Wait, can I just say this real quick? Sure, of course.

Light-skinned people, I have to, like, I have to say this to all of us. Brough, the only thing that's worse than a white person who wants sympathy is a light-skinned person want sympathy. I ain't going to hold you up, then being my skin is pretty fun. It is pretty fun. Like, it is just like, you get to be, you get to be part of the cause, cool, but then you get to run around like your fake Drake. You get

a lot of things in life. So when Jeannie starts goes, she's like, y'all are bitter towards me. Y'all have hated me ever since we were kids. I'm like, yo, you need to chill. Like, you, like, really need to chill the fuck out. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigued, ask your doctor

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That's OLLLY.com. Also, the episode sets a template and it's an interesting one about how Earn and Al's relationship is going to be. They have, I think there's something else. So with me and my cousins and me and my family,

we would look at some of the things that our parents and our uncles and our aunts went through, and we would be like, shit, man, I don't want to have to not speak to you for 15 years because you owe me $3,400. I don't want to argue with you over horses. I don't want to, it's people in the family that's like, yo, you see your aunt, I saw her first, he took her, or I was dating her, broke up with her, I went to the army, then they started dating and they got married, all kinds of shit that you don't learn until you can understand what they're talking about.

And you look at your cousins and you're like, damn, I don't really want to ever have them type of issues with you. I want a much more functional family, a much more prosperous one, one that's a little bit more tempered and more enriching. And Earn and Al kind of have that. They've been able to come together, make something, build something, and really be able to communicate with each other about what their individual needs are. So they kind of have that.

And the juxtaposition from them to their parents and their aunts and, um, uncles, it really stands out in this show. And there's some really funny moments along the way. Wait, let me pitch you on something really quick. Sure. Because I actually think that this episode is the spiritual successor to the season two episode Alligator Man with Uncle Willie. Because I went back and watched it. And Uncle Willie says something to earn. He says, you scared. Got to stay on his good side now because he missed their money bags. Remember Uncle Jarvis used to manage Damon when he was in that group.

Now they don't even talk no more because you find out family is business. And in this episode, you kind of get a peek into the larger family and realizing that, oh, Earn and Al, their relationship is playing out like this. And that's why Earn is scared and he turns to Paperboy and he's like,

I don't want us to turn out like that. And that's what I think is actually genius because you think about it. Uncle Willie loans Jeannie $800. She hasn't paid it back yet. These people haven't talked to each other.

And what I think is so interesting about connecting Alligator Man to light-skinned it is like, yo, as much success as both Paperboy and Earn have had, it's so hard to break out of that family cycle. And like, I don't know if you felt this in your own family,

where it's like when you're younger, You're like, man, I don't want to end up like my uncle's and aunts. This is all bullshit. You ain't talking. Everybody's mad. And then slowly, but surely as you grow up, you lend your cousin a couple thousand dollars because he's down on your luck. Somebody's like, don't loan him in that.

You're never going to see it. Then you're not talking to your cousin anymore. Do you know how I changed it? How'd you change it? I changed it by changing myself because you're right. You're absolutely right. I'm sorry to me to jump in, but you're right. I changed it by just going,

if I give you this $2,000, I have to be, and I have done this so many times. If I give you this money, I have to be okay with never getting it back. And I mean it. And the only thing I will say to somebody is, look, I look at you as broke now. I do.

Like, I'm just, I'm letting you know that, like, I'm letting you know, I'm not going to forget that I'm taking care of you. So they're going to be certain ways that you talk to me, right? But the reality is, it's just the way. It's going to be certain ways that you're not going to forget that I'm taking care of you. But here, have it. Because I'm not going to go through all of this bullshit with these people who can't give me the bread back.

It's like, and by the way, I'm doing so, I've been so blessed that I feel like I'm supposed to do that. But can I ask you this question then? Sure. This is how I think Earn and Alfred potentially break the cycle because I had to become similar to you where I realized that very quickly at a young age, I was more successful, at least on a financial level, than some of my cousins, aunts and uncles, had been who were older than me.

And I realize that I'm like, yo, Charles, why are you sweating people who didn't pay you back? Like, it's like at a certain point, like, you got to chalk it up to the game. What's the alternative? You never come to Thanksgiving. You never come to Christmas.

And what I realized is, and I'm like, if you think about it, all the fights that the Marks family is having, are because all of them are growing up in a situation where, like, they don't even have it like that. And it's funny to see them talking about money in this way because, like, Paperboy could spend it,

but Ern's father is like, nah, I got this. There's a pride involved. Yeah. Where he's like, he's like, little nigga, you ain't paying for this. Like, calm down. And I was just like, oh.

I'm still the man. Yeah, of course. And what I want to ask you this, too, we litigated it last episode. is Atlanta funny anymore? I got to be real with you. I came down on the fact that like Atlanta's going to do what it needs to do.

I don't need my comedies to be like, ha ha, laugh out loud funny. Dog, this is one of the funniest. This one was funny. I've seen in, like, there were so many moments where I, like, I had to pause

because I was like dying of laughter. This one was funny. This one was funny. Like when he walked by and the mild, the, the, so many small things about the show are perfect, right?

The slightly exotic mall kiosk sales lady. Calica can tell you this. I was on the phone with Kalika walking through a mall in Chicago. And I'm on the phone with Kalika, but I'm walking through the mall in Chicago, and this lady says, hey, can I see your hands? And I'm like, yeah. And she touched my hand, Mowly exotic mall, and she touched my hands and started rubbing some lotion in on it.

And Kalika's like, what's happening right now? I'm like, I don't know, this lady is like rubbing my hands, rubbing my lotion on my hands. And she's rubbing. She's like, you see this? Does this feel good? And I'm like, yeah. Kalika's like, Van, get your stupid ass away from her before she sells you that shit. How close we need of buying the lotion, I need to know.

Brough, she told me that the lotion was, so she looked at the back of my skin. She said she looked at my knuckles. And she told me I had the knuckles of a 52-year-old man. She said, how old are you? I said, I'm 42. She says, your knuckles are 52. I'm like, God damn, really? Well, I didn't know that my knuckles had an age.

Wait, did it hurt more because, like, she's bad. Like, she's hot. Yeah, of course it did. I'm like, are people looking at me going, God damn. This nigga got some old-ass knuckles. And so, but, but Coelig was like, get away from her. I'm like, go buy that stuff. But so the mildly exotic mall, so just down to the cast and got him.

As soon as she said hello to him, I laughed. I'm like, I'm like, he's in over his head. No, when he took out the secret, the secret hat, I'm like, pro, if this isn't the perfect fucking old 60-year-old man hat, I'm like, dog. part of me was like, I probably would have bought it too. There's also Isaiah Whitlock, who's obviously, you know, from the wires playing Ernst father, fantastic, fantastic casting, who really doesn't look that great in the hat. No, when she said you have the perfect head for a hat, I'm like, come on, like, no, he doesn't.

Like, no, he doesn't. Right. And Isaiah Whitlock is like a legend, but my man, come on. And that's what I thought, but I did feel bad because, like, when I talk about, this season being about aging. Like, you have to think about it. All he wanted is this empty mall. He's having such a good time.

He gets this hat. He's feeling himself. And when the teenager walks up to him, I'm like, bro, this young motherfucker is about to ruin his day. And you do realize, like, oh, all he wanted was to feel, wanted, to feel desirable,

to feel like somebody wanted to talk to him, and to see how, this young teenager treats him, it's the same thing that the white kid does to to Paperboy in the previous episode where it's like you get to this certain age where it's just like, yo, am I worthless? Am I like past it?

Do people think I have nothing left to offer the world? It's so sad to witness. Right. I thought a scene at the end, by the way, just on that real quick, he was feeling on top of the world. He had a new list on life when he had to have. the young man took her away in two minutes.

Brilliantly done. I mean, if that's not a metaphor for being black in America, I don't know what it is. I'll give you another metaphor. So they're eating at the end of this, right? They're all eating. It's after church. Remember, because everybody has to pack up whatever went wrong and they have to still go out and do the same rituals that they always do. So they're eating.

They're all together. And she wants some bread. Mom wants bread. Let me tell you why the bread is important. Think about what everybody's gone through throughout the day. And that's just like a normal day for them. Think about what everyone's gone through. Ernst Mom has had to hear from everyone the realization that her father never really cared for her.

And never really had a relationship for her. Even though she knew that, she had to hear that everybody else knew it and was, she had to hear that. The dad had to have all of his confidence taken away. Earn had to be taken on his wild ride. That woman does not have the patience. To listen to that boy say, he has to ask his manager for the bread. Yeah.

Doesn't have the patience for it. At this point, all of these things that are distinctly black that we go through, right? At the end, we just want somebody to pack the bread up, put it in the thing so we can enjoy it. We feel entitled to the bread. The bread was supposed to come. It didn't come. We're living in this country that's given us all this dysfunction

that is bleeding over into our family systems. We don't need you to ask nobody to get the bread. Put the fucking bread in the thing so we can go. It's like we didn't go through a lot today. We didn't have to ask your manager if it's okay to put the bread in the thing. I have a question for you. Yes. A lot of times when we talk about,

family, we talk about community and we talk about what it means to be connected as black people, we talk about it in times where we've bonded over traumas and things that have gone wrong. I feel like in this episode, what Earn and Al are really going through is whether or not they can bond in their life over something more than trauma. Think about it. When Auntie gets mad, the first thing she does is bring everybody. together. That's the first thing she does is

add Willie, add so and so, add Gloria. Like the first thing she does is bring everyone together. How many times do you think all of those people have talked on the phone together like that when something wasn't wrong?

Bro, do you understand most of my childhood was literally the entire family getting together on Sundays to litigate some bullshit that someone else had done? and I'm just like, bro, like, why are we only hanging out when we got, like, we would be going, like, I didn't know it at this point. We'd be going out to, like, an olive garden, which is like, it is a very black thing where it's like, we might not have the most money, but we're going to go to a chain restaurant and act like we live in like kids. You know what I'm saying?

Which speaks to the bread where it's just like, like, she looks at Ern's father and it's just like, better or not a bottomy thing. The master card bill was too high. already know they can't afford this shit. Right. That's half of what the bread is. And you already know they're coming together because it's just like, yo, to your point, we only, black people so many times, I think we are conditioned by America society to ban together when there's something wrong.

We don't know. It's so hard, you have to unlearn that and relearn. How do you talk to someone when it's not about struggle, when it's not about strife? And you see Ernst's snap at Alfred. Alfred's like joking on him when they're looking at Aunt Jeannie and Earned turns when he's like enough. And it's the first time I remember Alfred apologizing in real time to earn because throughout these four seasons, so much of Atlanta is Paperboy kind of shitting on Earn. And it's only been until this season where if you go back to last episode, Alfred realizes how hard it is to be a manager. He asks Earn, how do you do this?

it's not until this episode where Alfred apologizes in real time for always give and earn a hard time and is be like, all right, fuck, yeah, I get it. This is both of our aunts. We're in this together. And I think in real time, in such a little way, when they're walking together, not looking back at her,

that is a very metaphorical thing of like, no, if we want to kind of break the cycle of toxicity, we have to be friends. We have to be two people who can bond over something that is not rooted in, literally just our family's bullshit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Look, people are missing out the conversation about the show. Atlanta is doing this thing, man. We're four episodes in now. This is one of my favorite episodes of Atlanta, period. So why are you, so why were you getting at me when I said it was the top three episode then? I got to get the people going. By the way, I don't count the anthology episodes because a couple of those anthology episodes were insanely good, too, like ridiculously good, amongst the best episodes of television I've seen. But this made me contemplate so many.

I was laughing. It made me contemplate. So the moment where she drives off and takes. the dad, she goes, I'm going to steal him. She drives off to takes the dad. I howled in laughter. Howled in laughter. This made me think so much, it was so familiar to me. We haven't even talked about the guest cameo. Was it a little bittersweet to see gutta in this? I was like, oh, gunna. And then I realized he's like, oh, that was tough. Yeah, that was tough. Do you think you could be gunna in Una?

It doesn't seem like Gunna's very good. What are your house rules? I've never asked this. What are your Unah? house rules. I go by the basic shit. I mean, like, I think there's some new things that in Uno that people are doing now. Like, I play Shaw's daughter in Uno one time and she had a card.

They written on the card and the car was like switch hands. And so I almost... Oh yeah, yeah, that's a new card. I almost had her beat. I almost had her beat. She's ridiculously smart and incredibly competitive. I almost had her beat.

Boom. switch hands. I'm like, yo, I'm like crazy. Wait, do you do stacking in your house? I'm a stacking household. You're talking about like draw two, four, six, eight, the whole joint? Like, if it's same color, you could stack, same number you could stack. If you have multiple, like, draw fours, wilds, you could stack.

Yeah, yeah, of course. I just, just checking. Just checking it. Yeah, but that's the, but like, we, the Uno that we used to play was like speed Uno. They're like, them cars are coming out quick. quick, quick, boom, boom, boom, boom. I had to almost break up with my girl if she wins too many times with Uno.

I'm like, fuck this whole house. I'm leaving. I don't play head-up, Uno, though. What do you mean? I won't play if it's only two people. That's true. If there's only two people, I won't play Uno. Hey, let's play Uno, nah, let's play a game.

Like, I won't play Head Up Monopoly. What about Connect 4? Connect 4? I'll get mad at. Well, Connect 4 is a head-up game. So, of course, I'll play head-up, Connect 4. but I play we play team connect for one time and like it really ruined the date because I was looking at this shit like yo are you what the fuck what the fuck would you do that wait but see here's the thing this is why I can't play

and we're gonna wrap this up soon I can't play monopoly with friends because like let's say it's me and my girl and we on a team right and she's fucking up like I'm just like bro like I'm not about to lose in front of my best friend right now like come on we got like I can only play with monopoly people who are real monopoly heads I can't do that shit. also with Monopoly, real quick, we'll bring it back to the show, I promise you guys,

but also with Monopoly, you got to play with people that are wheelers and dealers. Like, you gotta play, like, I can't play Monopoly with people who don't want to trade cards and shit.

When I'm playing Monopoly, I got to be there with some cutthroat wheelers and dealers because I need to be able to look at somebody and be like, look, because what I'll do is, I'm,

when I'm playing Monopoly, I'm a slum lord. Like, that whole first row right there. Yeah, fucking fuck around and try to get boardwalk, park place, and all of those. I'm going to build low-income housing right here. And then I'm going to get that other thing. I'm going to have like four or five.

See, that's the thing. A lot of people think park placing everything, boardwalk are the real ones. I'm like, nah, you want them small, like, warm colors, put one house on each? Come on. One house on each, bro. Like, when we play, we allow you to stack up. hotels up because a lot of times they say only one hotel, not me, I stack

up four, five hotels on Baltic and you like you come through that, I'll slam your dumb ass. But I just thought, I thought this episode was fantastic. I know that we're not

seeing as much Darius and Zazi because Darius and Van because they were shooting the harder the harder they fall. So I mean, I do want to ask you this. My last two things for you first. Sure.

I got to be real, man. I really wanted to see more Uncle Willie. Cat Williams is one of the most talented entertainers for like how much he can squeeze out of a scene, even though he's on, like, he's probably in total in this episode for no more than five minutes. And that might be even too much. It's still, I was like, bro, you could have given us one more Uncle Willie episode. I looked at it and I'm like he's just good in this role Cash is just great in this role Would you do a break would you do a

Breaking Bad type spin off Better Call Saul with Uncle Willie Would love it Would love it Would love if Uncle Willie got his own show Because he's grilling on a Sunday And I'm like is he by himself grilling? Like

By himself grilling He said that he was busy He's like, he's doing, he's doing like, I would love an Uncle Willie show. And my last thing for you, and this is probably where we can wrap up, is why do we think this episode stands out so much in terms of late stage Atlanta? I had an idea where I think a lot of times we remember Atlanta as something that's so surreal that really gets at the heart of like, just weirdness. It is one of those shows that it bowled us over the first time because you remember where you were when you saw the invisible car or all of these different things. Yeah. But to me, this actually kind of got back to the nucleus of Atlanta that we don't talk about as much. I agree. Yeah. Which is like showing us something that is so black and so familiar and so nostalgic that A, you rarely see on TV and done in such a way that you're like, wait, why aren't there like 10 or 15 shows that are just like this?

there was something when I was watching this that I was like, oh, this is my family. Like every single aunt and uncle, I'm like, that's that motherfucker, that's that motherfucker. Like, I've had this exact conversation. And that's what I sometimes feel like we forget about Atlanta, is that it's just, it's so nostalgic, and it just hits the nerve in a certain way.

Yep. There's never been a show that I can remember that made me feel like sometimes I'm watching something that takes place on another planet, and that sometimes I'm watching something that's taking place in my childhood home. It's just never been another show that can take me so far away

but also hold me so close at the same time. And then just executing at a high level. Loved this episode. Thought it was fantastic. Thought it was great. I think Stephanie Robinson might be one of my favorite writers. Like I think her and Stephen Glover, like just whenever I see their name,

I'm like, bro, they're about to fucking kill this fucking episode. I get it. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I'm all out of thoughts, man. It was fantastic work for me. Yo, guys, that is our episode of Prestige TV. Thank you so much to Van. As always, we were both excited this episode. Thank you to Kerm for producing. And y'all, we will be back next week to talk about episode five in the last season of Atlanta. Pibu! Spring just slid into your DMs. Grab that boho look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that sandals that can

keep up with you and hang some string lights to give your patio a glow up. Springs Calling. Ross, work your magic.