What I’m Watching: Atlanta (Season Finale)

Atlanta: Season 2, Episode 11 “Crabs in a Barrel” (B+)

I’m reading all of these reviews and recaps about how this is the best - and most layered - comedy on television right now, and though I really don’t agree, I do see its merits and how it works to address societal issues and preconceptions. The scene in the Hasidic-run passport expediting office was one that showed how a population that many make assumptions about might still be better off in the long term than African-Americans who will be forever marginalized due purely to the color of their skin. Earn should never have asked that question, of course, but let’s call it him trying to step up and be the manager he’s always supposed to have been, listening to Paper Boi’s request for a Jewish guy rather than the black man they met. Earn leaving the gun in his backpack as he was going through security was an enormous mistake, but he acted fast and all three of our protagonists got to just walk away and board their plane while someone else took the fall for it. Paper Boi did seem to moderately approve of Earn finally taking a bold action that benefited them, and maybe he won’t get fired as he expects to when they get to Europe. Going to the parent-teacher conference at his daughter’s school only to learn that Lottie is advanced and that apparently her school is awful and there’s no place for her to go there was a harsh bit of reality that’s certainly exaggerated in how it might play out but not so much in the way that things really are. There’s no word yet on a third season of this show, but as long as Donald Glover is up for it, this critically-acclaimed hit will be back.

Season grade: B
Season MVP: Donald Glover as Earn