'Atlanta' Season 3 review: Donald Glover (finally) returns in searing series
Four years is a long time to wait for anything, let alone the third season of a TV show.
But not every series is FX's "Atlanta" (Thursdays, 10 EDT/PDT; streaming on Hulu Fridays; ★★★? out of four), actor/writer/director Donald Glover's wildly acclaimed passion project about four young Black people making their way through a sometimes absurd world in the Georgia city. When the first two seasons are as good as this show's in 2016 and 2018, fans will wait for more.
The new episodes live up to the ones that came before, although only two were made available for review. Both run the gamut of what "Atlanta" can be: Bold, experimental, and allegorical; comedic and astute examinations of the mundanities and oddities of Black life. They remain singular, exceptional and thought-provoking in the way only "Atlanta" episodes can be.
The premiere, "Three Slaps," doesn't feature any regular cast members (save for a glimpse of Glover's Earn). Instead, it follows in the footsteps of Season 2's lauded "Teddy Perkins" or Season 1's "BAN," by throwing away the series' format, this time for a mix of horror, satire and surrealism.
The second, more "regular" episode finds music manager Earn, his ex Van (Zazie Beetz), his cousin and rapper client Alfred/Paper Boi (Bryan Tyree Henry) and Al's friend Darius (LaKeith Stanfield) gallivanting across Europe with wooden clogs for Paper Boi's tour.
Few series have the ambition or skill to begin a new season with an extended installment that eschews famous faces and familiar settings, but "Three Slaps" is completely different from other "Atlanta" episodes yet instantly recognizable as part of the series' larger framework.
The episode tells a short story about a young Black boy who winds up in a foster care house of horror after a minor incident with his mother and grandfather sends his nice white guidance counselor running to child protective services. The resulting odyssey that young Loquareeous (Christopher Farrar) is forced to endure at the hands of the two white women into whose care he is thrust is both outrageous and believable, an example of how racism can lazily trickle downstream and cruelty can be so easy.
No one is quite as adept at combining the farcical with the ordinary as Glover and his writers, and most episodes of "Atlanta" have a lackadaisical feeling that obscures greater themes and messages until the moment the writers decide to hit the audience in the face.
Although the hazy, humid streets of Atlanta are missing in these early episodes, the world the four Black characters find in Europe is both familiar and foreign. In the second episode, "Sinterklaas is Coming to Town," Earn and Al are constantly confronted with white people disturbingly in blackface in Amsterdam, a weird Christmas tradition that feels more sinister every time they see it.
A lot has changed in the past four years, in the world at large and in the lives of the talented actors who help make "Atlanta" a uniquely searing piece of art. All four stars have appeared in hit films. A pandemic has raged; politics have changed. Other series have dipped their toes into the same realm as "Atlanta," from HBO's "Lovecraft Country," which also examined race from a magical realist perspective, to FX's "Reservation Dogs," which shares pacing and tone with "Atlanta." But there was never a question of whether there's a place for "Atlanta" all these years later. Good TV shows are consistent, but the great ones know how to change and grow with their characters and with the times.
"Atlanta" has always been one of the greats.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Atlanta' Season 3 review: Donald Glover returns in searing series
