Week after week, this show has proved that it cab be about much more than just a funny TV comedy series, merging both the comic-y side of it with a genuine effort in displaying what is like to be an african american in Atlanta (and basically the US), and this week's outing may have been the best at doing so yet, at presenting us in the usual surreal manner, a bunch of people celebrating something that they shouldn't have any business celebrating.
But let's dial back a bit, once again the show shift its focus and while last week we had the whole crew, now the main stage belongs again to the relationship between Earn and Van, while Alfred and Darius don't even appear (though the first one is mentioned and in a big way in the latter stages of the episode). The episode begins with Van picking up Earn to the house of some girl that he likely won't ever see again, basically telling us that A) Earn is back to the one-night-stand business and B) Van hardly seems to care, so they have stopped pretending to be a couple (at least with each other), and are now just co-parenting their daughter Lottie. They're going to a Juneteenth party -if you live in the US you probably already know this, but is a commemoration of the day the African Americans emancipated from slavery in 1865-, held by Monique a friend of Van that has she puts it "could be really good for her" meaning that they need to go kiss her butt so that she could probably offer Van a job.
It's clear very early, that Earn's "status" as a Princeton graduate (though we know from an earlier episode that he's actually a dropout) is why Van had an "in" to the party. Every guests at the party is a person of color, with the exception of Monique's husband, Craig, a white middle-aged rich guy that is fixated with the black culture and seems to think he knows more about it than anybody else (and also later gets to give an embarassing performance as a poet/rapper). The party is choke-full of so called fancy people, one more lunatic and out of whack than the other, from the reverend of the "mega-church" to the writer and director of a play that takes place during the Katrina hurricane with the very likely occurance of two criminals holding a pastor, a drug dealer and a pregnant teen-ager in a strip club.
With this kind of crowd, Earn and Vanessa are forced to play nice to each other and pretend to be an happy, lawfully wedded couple. Earn in particular seems to be very good at this, especially when in a monologue he praises Vanessa as the underrated provider of the famly, something that may have felt real and nice, just until he concluded saying that he would never look at another woman, exposing the whole speech as sarcasm (to him and Vanessa, not their speakers), which seemed to kind of hurt Vanessa, that later while talking to Monique comments her being married to Craig, a phony rich white-guy, asking her how could she not need someone to confide in, strongly implying that she's in the same situation now with Earn.
Their whole sham lasts up until a couple of valets recognize Earn as Paper Boi's manager, and he can't hold himself from defending Alfred and basically what he believes in, standing up to Monique and her acid, snotty comments about how having a "rotten apple" is sadly to be expected in every family. Earn storms out of the house, while Vanessa keeps apologizing to Monique. Back in the car, while driving home, Vanessa, every chance of finding a nice job through Monique -who only hours earlier had mentioned multiple career opportunities for her, from teaching to designer, event planner, or even a Real Housewife contestant- now evaporated, asks Earn to pull up before having sex with him, as she probably felt invigorated by him standing up to something he believes in, though that's just my interpretation. Yes, another amazing half-hour for Atlanta, in a first season that has showed incapable of doing anything wrong, and has experimented with its themes, its characters and its structures more than many series get to do in their whole lifetime. With only one week left, what are your thought on the series, have you enjoyed as much as I am, and will you be back again next season? Sound off in the comments below.
Episode 1.09 - "Juneteenth" - A-
