This is definitely the guy. He doesn't live in the area, I've never seen him before.
We had already established in the past reviews ghow Atlanta is a show that likes to dwell in the surreal, with subtle images and representations of our world soaked in a at times unrealistic fictional city of Atlanta, but this week's episode took it to a whole new level.
Titled B.A.N. (which stands for Black America Network, a play on the real network actually called BET), the whole episode features an episode of a talk show called "Montague" which explores the very current issue of trans-identity and how it is perceived online, especially by the population of color. The two guests are a doctor Debra Holt, from the center of trans-american issue and our very own Paper Boi. The premise of the episode revolves around a rant that Paper Boi posted on Twitter about Caitlin Jenner and how the media want to alter our perception of the issue, giving, in Paper Boi's opinion, much more importance to it than it deserves.
These short segments in the studio of Montague, are intertwined by fake ads, strongly addressing a black audience, like the one with a black guy driving a Dodge or the one where a lot of black people buy the Swisher Sweets cigarillos, just to empty them and use them as paper to roll a joint. The Dodge one in particular could really pass up as a real ad, and has an excellent pay-off at the end of its three-ads-series. Worth of mentioning is also the Coconut Chrunch-os ad, that starts as any other similar ad for cereals addressed to kids, but then quickly turns into another shout-out to the current state of affairs in america, as the cartoon cop arrests the wolf wanting to eat the same cereals as the three children featured in the ads, before beating him up and abusing him, all while the children whip out their camera-phone to record the fact.
Amidst the studio segments with Paper Boi and the Doctor, and the fake ads, we're also presented with one of those good ol' "real life stories", with the young Antwoine Smalls, a black teenager from , suffering of "trans-racial indetity", since he identifies himself as Harrison Booth, a 35-year old man from Colorado. As crazy as that sound, this young guy sure looks to really believe in the part, as he dabbles in same kind of everyday activities that every other 35-year old white guy would do like playing golf or being racially biased. His story also has a nice pay-off when Antwoine later joins the studio talk show via Facebook video chat, with the delight of Paper Boi, hardly hiding his sentiment about Antwoine's blonde wig.
This was definitely the wildest outing the show has had so far, surely to be polarizing and probably a bit uneven, but that was to be expected seeing how many different sketches and segments where incorporated in a single half-hour, but even if you hated this episode, you should admit that this show isn't afraid of being very bold, in both its aestethics and the way it relates to current American issues. A unique kind of show, that probably couldn't live anywhere else other than FX Networks.1.07 - "B.A.N." - B
