"And poor people don't have time for investments,because poor people are too busy trying not to be poor, okay?"
As it has been the norm for the now 3rd week in a row, the episode is made up by two short stories, one led by Earn and the other by Alfred, with the two sharing the first couple of sequences, before going on their separate adventures.
This week we meet Zan -an half-asian half-colored online troll- who keeps taking jabs at Alfred, accusing him of being a crappy rapper and a crappy drug dealer too. He employs the far too well known techniques of nowadays trolls, the short video on Instagram or Vine, the longer on YouTube. Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, you know, the whole shebang.His deal isn't limited to just trolling Paper Boy, he uses all the hits he gets on the various social media to sell his merchandise. Hats, t-shirts and a whole lot of stuff with his face or some campy hashtag on it. Alfred tries to track him down, and after finding out where he lives, he goes to confront him.
He hops in in the car that Zan and his little Vine partner (a kid that knows just about a couple of curses too many) use to deliver pizzas, and in a sort of monologue/venting speech, he accuses Zan of exploiting him and his fame to sell his merchandise, and how he's making his life and his career harder, a career that he cannot afford to lose since is the only thing that someone like him (the sort of person that would scare other people off of ATMs, as he puts it) could do with his life. But Zan doesn't pretend of being something else, as Alfred is exploiting his race and his thug-like appearance for his rapper career, he's exploiting his and other people’s fame, to get more hits and sell his stuff. That's just how the game works. The story ends with a sequence where the kid delivers the pizza and gets robbed, while Zan just stands there and gets the whole thing on his camera phone instead of helping him.
Meanwhile, on the Earn side of things, we find him still very much broke, after the events of last week's episode, and with the company of Darius, he goes to a pawn shop to trade his phone in exchange for cash. Here Darius hits him with an idea, instead of just trading for cash, trade for a cool Japanese sword, which in turns could earn him much more than the 2 hundred dollars that the shop was offering Earn for the phone. After some pondering Earn agrees, he takes the sword and follows Darius' lead. They trade the sword for a dog, a big grey Cane Corso, which then they trade to a breeder in exchange for half of the money for every puppy the dog would procreate (to the tune of 2 thousand dollars a puppy). Despite turning less than 200 dollars in more than 2 thousand, Earn is distressed. He needed the money short term, he can't afford to wait many months to see his investment come bearing fruits, as he says in the quote that I have opening the review, poor people don't do investments. But Darius had warned him, back in the pawn shop he said "if you need the money now, take the money", and Earn -just like us viewers probably- didn't take him seriously. Darius is a much smarter and profound character than he has let transpire since the beginning of the show, behind that always-stoned-guy facade, there's actually a culturally aware guy (the bit about black people not knowing who Steve McQueen is was hilarious) that knows what is doing. Since Earn is so desperate for money right know, he just gives his phone to him, before declaring "now we're friends".
Also, news came just before this episode was release that FX renewed the show already for a 10-episodes Season 2, and I'm already giddy at the thought of being back in Atlanta one year from now.
So what did you all think? Sound off in the comments.
1.04 - "The Streisand Effect" - A
