'Atlanta' Recap and Review: 'Atlanta' Fails to Ride Its 'Sportin' Waves'

As usual, Glover’s creative genius takes form in his absurdly authentic take on life in Black Atlanta. After musing about the apparently ridiculous notion that a colleague can succeed as a rapper, two teenagers rob a fast food place. What they don’t know is that the cashier himself is also armed—with an assault rifle. When the cashier tries to shoot the thieves down as they drive away in their car, a young woman jumps out and starts screaming, covered in blood. Do we empathize with the woman? Do we respect or denounce the cashier, who was trying to protect himself and his workplace with a weapon so controversially accessible? Do we ponder the teenagers’ lives and the circumstances that might have led them to perform an armed robbery? The show presents this evidence but does not tell us what to think. Instead, it forces us to draw our own conclusions.

One such question arises in Episode Two, “Sportin’ Waves:” How does one cope with the reality that fame brings to both friends who take advantage of that fame and to social climbers who pretend to be friends? For instance, Paper Boi’s longtime friend and drug dealer robs him at gunpoint: ”I appreciate you, man,” he says as he drives away with Paper Boi’s money, leaving the betrayed victim to walk home alone at night. Forced to find a new source of marijuana, Paper Boi encounters two dealers whose interest in starting a relationship rests solely on the rapper’s growing popularity. His decision to throw away his phone and, by extension rid himself of the leeches who want to ride on the coattails of his fame, is not in and of itself a novel concept, but its originality arises in the details: in Paper Boi’s buzzing phone as it lies abandoned on the ground, receiving messages that will never be read, and in Darius’ flinch and groan as it falls to the ground; in Paper Boi and Darius’ glare at the first dealer they encounter; in the exceptionally strong weed Paper Boi smokes in his second dealer’s home. Together, they inform the innovation of Glover’s show.

Nevertheless, even “Atlanta” is not immune to the pitfalls of a second season: It rehashes old material by reframing it in slightly different contexts. When Earn and Al meet with a startup that spreads awareness of upcoming artists, the ideas behind the scene—from the awkwardness and fascination of (usually white) people working with a black man like Al to the competition to be the cool new black rapper—were originally introduced in the episodes “B.A.N.” and “Nobody Beats the Biebs” in Season One. But in this rehashed version, these moments lose their subtlety in the blatantly emphasized cuts to the Al and Earn’s reactions. Earn, too, falls victim to the same trickery he should have learned from last season in “The Streisand Effect.” Having written a majority of the episodes in Season One, Stephen Glover may have the experience but seems to have lost the inventiveness.

“Atlanta” seems to be riding on the success of previous bits to sustain its second season. The show cannot rely on what was once fresh and new in the last season, but has now become expected of it.