The Watch - Ep. 71: 'Atlanta'

Episode Date: September 6, 2016

Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald preview Donald Glover's 'Atlanta,' the best new show on TV, and discuss how refreshing it is to have a series take place "today." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Jaguar, the art of performance. To learn more about the all-new Jaguar XE, visit jaguarUSA.com. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio. Paperboard, paper boy, it's Andy Greenwald!

This is a special one. This is fun. All right. We recorded this actually a few days before you're actually going to hear it because it's the Labor Day weekend. Time travel. All got plans. But we wanted to make sure we hit you with this for Tuesday because tonight, I think it's safe to say our favorite new show is airing. Tonight on FX, this is the debut of what I think is without question.

The most exciting, the most adventurous, the most entertaining, the most essential, dare I say. New show of 2016 is premiering. Glover's Atlanta. Yes, and you know what? It's been a fantastic run for TV, actually. I've just, maybe there hasn't been a huge high volume of stuff that we've been able to like always put in in the show. But when you go back and you think of Game of Thrones and you think of Preacher and Night of and Stranger Things and everything else that's been happening this summer. Yeah, when I say this is really good, I didn't mean to suggest that it's been a dry spell. No, no, no. This is the culmination. Which is only a higher compliment to Atlanta because

despite how much I love Night of, despite how much I love Stranger Things. and everything else, obviously, Game of Thrones. Atlanta's probably my favorite show the year. So I just got to see the pilot in January, and I basically wanted to kick down my door and tell everyone in the world about how amazing the show is. I'm so excited everyone else is going to get to see this show, too. This is so fully realized.

It is so exciting and artistic and imaginative. And here's the thing. Like, it could have been successful if you had stripped away a bunch of the things that make it great. I mean, just the fact that the eye that it turns towards a subculture that we find particularly fascinating, which is hip-hop subculture of Atlanta, that's kind of the Dainu thing. Like, that would have been enough. But you add to it the love and affection that it has for its characters, for its world, the point of view entry point that it chose for this world,

which is certainly not at the very top. This is not a Ritchie Finestra in his glory moment. This is about people at the very bottom of the ladder trying to climb the ladder, and it treats them with real respect and empathy and interest and curiosity. All that would have been enough. And then you get to the fact

that in speaking about the show that he created, Donald Glover said he wanted to make Twin Peaks with rappers. So you just throw in that soups on of weirdness. this is the show. Yeah, so I think that there's natural, it's natural to make comparisons and parallels when you're talking about like the Golden Age television, maybe even post-Golden Age,

as we've seen television enter more of an otorist era. You know, the showrunner is now becoming the director showrunner, Sam Esmell's directing. The filmmaker, basically. Yeah, the filmmaker, and, you know, that is, you're naturally led to say, like, oh, is this like 70s American cinema and television now? And I usually would say, well, no, because this, that, and the other thing is happening.

But this is the kind of show that makes me feel like that's true. This is the kind of show that makes me feel like the bravest, most interesting, most compelling, filmed art is being made on American television right now. And when you think about it in comparison to shows like I Love Dick, and you think about it with girlfriend experience, and all of these shows that are happening within a half an hour, that have new voices that haven't usually gotten to be heard ever in this kind of media. And new subcultures, new worlds, new communities.

New talent. Not that the communities are new, but new to the screen. On television. And when you think about that, I think that's why it feels so refreshing and alive right now. I think the fact that Amy Simons and Jill Salloway and Donald Glover are making television, and you kind of feel like I don't know these stories. This isn't the same old shit over and over again. I watch Atlanta, and I immediately love the characters.

I immediately love the world. But what I also love just as a fan of the art form was the feeling of whole. Holy shit, this is so exciting. Anything can happen in the show right now. There is a moment in the second episode, I'm not going to spoil anything, when there's a knock on the door, and we were talking about knocks on the door,

and we were talking about Mr. Robot last week, and a heavyset dude in a Batman mask is at the door. Why is he wearing a Batman mask? We don't know. We might never know, but give me the Batman mask. That's what I want. There's that, there are people on this show that even if you're like, oh, that's kind of like the Kramer,

but it's not, like, Like, Keith Stanfield, who's on this show, is probably going to be the breakout star. This is a star. Yeah. He was in Strait of Compton, but like... He was snooping straight out of Compton. By the way, can we just do a sidebar to say that when they write the book about, like, the actors who define this generation or whatever, short term 12 might be the secret er text.

I know, man. Because, first of all, great movie. Second of all, that movie stars Bree Larson, Rami Malick, and our man Keith Stanfield. Yeah. They are all the stars of this movie, and you should check it out. So basically, I mean, in case anybody needs the elevator pitch, Donald Glover plays this kid, this guy named Earn, who's in his late 20s, early 30s. Yeah, he's moved, he's living in Atlanta, he's left Princeton, and he's living in Atlanta selling credit card accounts at the airport. By commission.

Yeah, basically gets a commission off of that. One thing that I fucking love about this show is that it deals with not having any money in your pocket. Yeah. Like, that is so rare to see on a television show when it's not, like, poverty. You know what I mean? It's just, like, he can't, there's, like, an incredible episode where he basically, like, is so vexed about how to pay for a dinner that he's taking his girlfriend out to. There's just so much, like, reality in just very little gestures that happens in here.

There's so much story to be mined. You know, I think I wrote this in a piece once for granted. Like, there's so much story to be mined from something as simple and, obvious and inevitable in every day as financial struggles. Yes. But very often the people who are writing the shows are removed enough from that, they don't remember it. Right. And they want to make it like a Don Henley song where it's like,

I've been looking out the window and thinking about stuff. It's my favorite Don Henley song, by the way. It's just like sometimes you just have a lot of money in your pocket. And that's like that makes going to get dinner weird. So he's in Atlanta. He's sort of shuttling between his parents' house and his girlfriend's house. They have a daughter. She, God, I told myself I would write down her name because I think this actress is

tremendous too in her part. She plays Van. Hold on. Let me find her name. You keep talking. And basically, there's an ongoing, perhaps series-long argument between them, which is becoming adults and responsible and whether that means they should both give up on their more artistic or personal dreams. She wants to be a designer and open a boutique. He, in the beginning, doesn't seem to know what he wants to do, but in the pilot finds out that a cousin of his is suddenly popping off as a rapper named Paperboy, a trap, a You know, Trapp House rapper, basically.

And Earn puts himself in the situation of saying, I want to be this dude's manager and finds himself in a world that I think maybe he was supposed to not be a part of. But Chris just, what was the website you used? Was it Ask Jeeves? Yeah. It was our sponsor. IFTB.

Ask Jeeze Beetz? Yeah. By the way, she's Jaliel Beetz's younger sister or something. I don't think they're related. It's fucking amazing. She's tremendous. So he ends up hanging with his cousin, Paperboy, the rapper, and his consigliary, who's played by Keith Stanfield, who we were just mentioning. And it just burrows in deeper and deeper to the silliness, the quotidian, whatever, of being, whether you're being a drug hustler, or you're trying to take your girl out to dinner, or you're trying to become the biggest rapper in town.

Everything is shot beautifully and interestingly on location in Atlanta. Donald Glover's collaborator is this director named Hero Marai, who does exceptional work throughout. And, you know, last week we talked about, we were talking about the night of. And there's a moment in the night of when in the finale, and this is not spoiling anything if you didn't watch it. But there's a moment when the wizened prosecutor, her workday is done. Helen Weiss, yeah. Helen Weiss. And you suddenly see her work pumps appear on the table, and she walks out of the classroom.

Some Skechers, yeah. Yeah, it's Skechers, basically. And I was like, that's the show. Yeah. Like, that's a story, that's a moment, that's true. Sure. And I love that there was room for that. The way I feel about Atlanta is that it is in a series almost entirely made up of those moments.

Yes. It's just exceptional with the specific details of those moments, whether it's when they go out, the moment they get wings and the guy says something funny to them. It's the moment when, you know, moments in bed between Erne and Van. every tiny moment is observed and real. And then the real trick, I think, is that by building a show out of those tiny bricks, they made some really smart choices

about the big plot-moving mechanism that they hitched them to. We'll keep talking about this show. We want people to be able to see it, so we don't want to jump too far ahead of it. I will say that Rember Brown, our buddy, did a really good piece on Donald Glover in New York Magazine. There's a quote in there where Rem, quotes, Glover, at event, you know, Hero Mirai never made television before.

He had not done narrative work with him before. And at some point during the shooting of Atlanta, Glover goes up to him and he goes, is this how, is this normal for a show? And Hero Mori says, I have no idea. You can kind of tell that in a great, great way. Now, that being said, it is very polished. It looks like a million, like a hundred million bucks. It looks fantastic. But for instance, the protagonist in a lot of television shows is usually the audience avatar.

So they come into a situation and they're like newborn babies. They're like, I don't know what's going on. Explain to me how like this works. That's Animal Kingdom, like any show. Usually if it's a younger protagonist, it's a new lawyer coming to a firm. It's a new doctor. It's Meredith Gray showing up at Gray's got it. Peggy Olson's first day of work is a secretary.

Exactly. This is different. And this is where I think that like, yeah, I'm not really going to play by television rules. Works is Earn has his own shit going on. Yeah. Like, Earn has a backstory and Earn has mystery. And Earn knows what he's doing. but doesn't know what he's doing.

And it's not as simple as your audience avatar doesn't always have to be as dumb as the audience. Also, here's a sign of real, like, just big balls, bravery or confidence in what you're making. And obviously, we'll talk about this next week when people have seen, we'll do it on the re-up next week when people have seen the second episode. But I absolutely fell in love with the show in the pilot,

but I felt like to a deep committed relationship in the second episode. I won't spoil anything about the second episode. I just wanted to mention it that what other show, in its second episode, separates its main character from the main plot in a way that is really fascinating and very cool and takes some turns that you'll have to wait and see them to believe them,

but puts us in, basically in the house with Paperboy and his dude, in a way that any other show that was trying to other them would not. They are whole people too, and we're gonna know that about them. The other thing I really, really love about this show, is that, you know, it's been, it's been,

television has really been investing itself, and really good television shows have really been investing themselves in being period pieces. We've talked about why some of the reasons that might be, whether it's because storytelling is easier without the internet because there's not as many shortcuts, or perhaps it's because television networks know that to sell a show in perpetuity,

it helps to have them not be instantly dated by three, four years later of technology. And also, to sell a show with some, some sizzle in the room, sometimes that sizzle can be, oh, they're all going to be wearing suits and fedoras, or they're going to have Tommy guns. Like, that becomes the hook, and it almost doesn't matter what Spackle used to connect it. So I love Stranger Things and the Americans and Halton Catch Fire and all of that. You don't love the Americans. I'm really, it's really cool to have a show about now. About right now. Yeah, it's really, really cool to have a show

that's just like, yeah, that was yesterday. That was yesterday in Atlanta, whatever. You know what mean like it I felt that way too like just you know you just don't get a lot of shows like a lot of network shows that are set in the present day don't feel like they're set anywhere at all yes you know it's like Vancouver as Atlanta as New York but think about this think about one of the excitements of the last few years of TV has been oh boy when um think about when madman gets to uh oh yeah yeah wait to let it be comes out that's going to be a big deal oh when you know when summer of love hits like we knew these events were coming i can't wait till mike from stranger things, discovers R.A.M.

Exactly. Or, God forbid, hits puberty, because as you said last week, that would just end the show. But, or similarly, in Halt and Catch Fire, it's like, oh, what happens when someone invents CompuSER? I guess that already existed. Bad example. Doesn't matter. What I'm saying is, just think about the electricity around

a show like Atlanta, where we're like, Atlanta's just there. It can respond to anything. It can respond to things that haven't happened in our world yet. And by the way, that's a false construction. It doesn't need to respond. Yeah. It can just be fueled by it. it can feed off of it. It's not even, it's alive.

It's not even, yeah. I guess it's not even what I'm responding to isn't even like the date as much as its vibrancy. And it feels very vibrant. And at the same time, retains a very unique, lynchian kind of, you know, like, what's going on? Like, it opens with a moment of deja vu. And I would say that my highest compliment I could pay to this show is that I feel like I've been living with it for a really long time, even though I've only seen two episodes of it. And it reaffirms my theory that not just is,

it's not just that the half hour right now is the most malleable and creative form for TV. It's essentially the most pleasurable delivery system for TV. You are so right. I mean, you just are. And you can do such complicated things. I hope we get to talk about, I love to Dick, a little bit more later on.

That's Jill Sallow's new show on Amazon. The pilot went up. But that is another example where it's like really dense, pretty complicated ideas about, feminine sexual power and authorship and creative, you know, self-determination, like 32 minutes. Yeah, and then if you enjoyed it, eventually, I mean, there's only a pilot of that show, but you can watch more. Yeah. And then when you watch these hour-long shows, you're like, what the fuck are you doing, man?

What do you do? Why did you have that scene? There's so much time. There's so much extra space. And I think that the feeling of at the end of a, the end, if we think about the greatest Breaking Bad episode, right? You think about like Osamandias. The feeling you're left with at the end of it is breathlessness. You've been punched in the gut,

and you are emotionally drained and exhausted, and that's incredible when art can leave you hung out to dry like that. But there is something about a half-hour show when it is just taking flight, and you are so excited. It fills you with joy, and it's pleasurable, and you can watch another one, and you can watch another one, and you can still... I think this is a much longer conversation,

but I think the caveat to your idea is that those shows need to exist on streaming. Because I don't... I think the half-hour show with the three-comer, commercial breaks is still like an unsatisfying experience to watch a new girl that is basically three six minute blocks that's absolutely true and I realize this is coming from a position of great privilege because they sent us four Atlanta's and I'm still saving the fourth one because it's too it's too good like I'm too excited to watch it um all right man well we can't recommend the show more highly you should check it out we'll be talking about it a lot over the next

couple of weeks we'll try to do a show Thursday about something we'll talk about something we'll talk about some stuff, probably a robot. I think we're going to do the hacking robot after show. Yeah, hacking, hacking, robot. Yeah, but hacking robot returns this week after Mr. Robot live Wednesday, September 7th. You're going to be in New York. I'll be, in New York, just up in my business, my own business. I'll call you.

All right, man, talk to you later. Good job, Britske. We know it is a little rude to interrupt, but while we have your ear, let's have a brief conversation about manners. As the British like to say, manners make a them. So it's no wonder that Jaguar's first ever compact support sedan, the Jaguar XE, and their first ever performance SUV, the Jaguar F-Pace, are well-mannered. They both put you at ease the moment you enter, remain composed in almost any situation, and know when to make themselves hurt. For the full Jaguar Guide to Manners, please visit jaguarUSA.com.

Thank you, Jaguar. The Art of Performance.