What I’m Watching: Atlanta

Atlanta: Season 3, Episode 6 “White Fashion” (B+)

This episode allowed Alfred to direct confront the idea of tokenizing black people to apologize for racist behavior, agreeing to be on the company’s diversity board if he got free clothes and tailoring for three years. As soon as he was on the panel answering questions from reporters, he took the first opportunity to say that of course racism wasn’t over, which Khalil prompted stepped in to correct by saying that racism would be ended by 2024. It was interesting to watch the meeting play out and hear Alfred advocate for ways to help the community while everyone else just demanded what they wanted for themselves. The “we’re all from some hood” ad was a terrible bastardization of his “reinvest in your hood” campaign, and Khalil offered him some wisdom about how to get those who are only interested in rehabilitating their own image to contribute to foundations that can actually do some good. Darius got an unusually down-to-earth plotline, one that found him connecting strongly to a Nigerian restaurant only to see the woman he brought there with him buy the property and open up a food truck where she named a dish after him because it had peaches in it, a miserable reduction of identity that replaced something truly meaningful. Earn and Van also had an intriguing reunion when he helped defend her from a white woman who wanted to perform a citizen’s arrest and scored a free hotel room in the process, and she very deliberately avoided answering his question about whether she actually stole the bag by kissing him.