Atlanta (Season 1 and 2)

This is a show I've wanted to check out for quite a bit of time. I'm a huge Donald Glover fan, I've heard fantastic things about this show, and in the time that I've been lazy and not watching it, almost everyone involved with this show have gone on to do really great things on top of this show. I won't lie and say that current events haven't affected my drive to watch this show and I hope this review doesn't seem exploitive of a moment because that is not the intention. I just think it's better late than never to watch this show, especially after watching the first and second season.

On a side note, I dove right into Season 2 immediately after I finished Season 1 so I didn't see the point in dividing it up because it has felt like a long season rather than two. Now I'll talk about the two halves of that long season but that's the reason why I decided to combine the two season's reviews.

Atlanta follows the story of Ernest "Earn" Marks (played by Donald Glover) a Princeton drop out who is homeless and ultimately just trying to make ends meet while still trying to find what he wants in his life. He sometimes lives with his sort of girlfriend and the mother of his daughter named Vanessa (played by Zazie Beetz.)

His cousin Alfred (played by Brian Tyree Henry) has begun a pretty underground rapping career under the moniker of Paper Boi. In the first episode Earn sees an opportunity to start a career in music management and offers to be Alfred's manager. Lakeith Stanfield plays Alfred's eccentric friend Darius and he's hilarious.

It doesn't feel totally honest saying that the whole plot of the show is Earn maneuvering through the music management world with his cousin. While there are episodes that focus on that, the majority of the show is just Earn, Alfred, Vanessa, and Darius maneuvering through life in ways that are sometimes comedic and sometimes very serious.

It's very hard to really explain what Atlanta is. I would say a lot of the show is Earn and his friends walking through life as black people and their experience. There are episodes dedicated to Earn and Vanessa's relationship or one of the characters going through a normal day. A whole episode in the second season about Alfred getting a haircut.

Especially the first season, I remember watching and thinking that while I don't usually just watch shows about people's lives, I became invested in Earn's story and kept watching not only because the show can be really funny, but because I care about the characters.

And then there's episodes that come out of no where that make you stop for a second and think, what was that and why isn't that the whole show? The comedy goes from average every day scenarios to really funny satirical commentary or almost horror-like and barely funny at all. If you get far enough to know what Teddy Perkins is, you'll thank me later.

Atlanta distinguishes itself by having an all black writing staff and because of that the stories and themes focus a lot on the experience of being a black person in America. There's themes within the episodes, ways that the characters interact with one another, scenarios that they find themselves into that aren't portrayed as genuinely in mainstream shows.

Part of the fun of the show for me came with reading continuous stories about Donald Glover's writing process and what inspires him and the other writers.

I would say it takes a few episodes to really get the real vibe around Atlanta and what kind of show it is. In the first two episodes you think it will be a linear story about Ern as he's trying to be Alfred's manager. But the timeline of the show is very loose, the episodes could seemingly be watched in any order, and it's more about the people rather than the overarching story.

The show is very accessible once you get that understanding, but again, it's kind of hard to explain exactly what the show is because it manages to cover so much ground.

Oddly enough, for how unique Atlanta is, it does kind of fall into the category of other FX shows (What We Do in The Shadows is another example of this) I've seen where on face value, it's not a show I would automatically watch but end up really enjoying when I finally get into it.

The performances are fantastic. I think the thing that does carry you through to the moment where you at least think you've figured this show out (which I'm not totally sure I have) is the characters, the performances, and the writing.

The show is super funny, very reflective, and just a lot different than most shows. I think because it's difficult to explain it gets overlooked by a lot of people but if you have the opportunity, I would say this is a perfect time to check out Atlanta.

But have you seen Atlanta? What do you think? What's your favorite episodes? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films and TV shows that I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!