Atlanta tugs at the roots of Al's fame and Earn's nature during one weird-ass house party
Season 3, Episode 3: "The Old Man and the Tree"
It seems like Atlanta likes to move in cycles, for one reason or the other. Most of the time, it feels thematic—for instance, I pointed out in my ranking of the first two seasons that the third episode of both mirrored each other in significant ways—but there are little things that I wish the writers could kick. Namely, I feel as though there’s one episode a season that has a lot of ideas to ponder, but not enough to connect them into something that feels truly cohesive. Season one had “Nobody Beats the Biebs”, where the guys split off into three different stories with themes, (one of which wrapped up by the episode’s halfway point) and Robbin’ Season had “Sportin’ Waves”, a really weird twenty-five minutes that had one great scene and a bunch that felt like they were all from different episodes.
And now season three has given us “The Old Man and the Tree”, and Atlanta has fulfilled its own prophecy with an episode that has a lot of ideas, both profound and funny, but they don’t come together as well as I’d like. This is absolutely a better episode than the two I mentioned above and there’s a lot of things I like about it, but this is no “Three Slaps”, and I can’t tell if I like it a little more or a little less than “Sinterklaas”.
Here’s something I wish I didn’t do prior to watching this episode: I watched the thirty second teaser FX released on YouTube. TV trailers have been really screwing me lately, (Better Call Saul and Barry notwithstanding) especially that disgusting Ozark trailer that I won’t even bother to link. The teaser for “Tree” promised a full-cast “Teddy Perkins”, where the group is stuck at this weird house party and there is, indeed, an old man present. There’s also, shockingly enough, a tree. The editing is quick and chaotic, the soundtrack and music cues are dark, and the lines are cut in a way to give them an uncomfortable, foreboding feeling. Everything points towards something rough and terrifying, and “Tree” is…not that.
But despite the letdown, falsely raised expectations, and slightly messy structure, “Tree” is still very good, and I can’t really complain about that. For starters, this episode looks absolutely fantastic. The gold-white walls of the mansion pop in contrast with the night sky outside, everything shot in a way that looks perfectly hazy and dim to match the party’s bizarre atmosphere. Atlanta has always been consistently excellent at creating strange but enticing environments, and it seems as though season three is pushing itself to make those environments look amazing. The first two episodes of the season left me contemplating exactly how Glover was going to incorporate elements of Kanye West’s Graduation, (as he said this season is based on, although it seems he prefers it to Late Registration for…some reason) but “Tree” shows us exactly how. On Graduation’s album cover, the visuals are eye-popping and borderline hallucinatory, and the lack of continuity between tracks when compared to West’s previous efforts is what makes the album so memorable. Graduation is not the individual episodes of season three—it is season three.
“Tree” is written by Taofik Kolade, previously responsible for fellow “surreal, creepy party” episode “Helen”. Kolade’s affinity for writing stories about hauntings shines here as he and Hiro Murai create an environment that feels both artificial and very well lived in, one that splits the four characters up and sends them on their own paths. Van and Darius just kind of do whatever, (although Darius runs into significantly more trouble) Earn is pulled aside by his investor contact so they can talk managing an up-and-coming talent, and Al is sent right to the party’s host for a stranger night than all three of his companions combined. Unlike “Biebs”, everyone is balanced pretty well, and their stories weave and intersect nicely, the majority of them ending in a way that feels satisfactory.
The problem? The structure is just…off. The fact that the stories actually touch instead of “let’s all go off into completely separate environments and do different things” certainly helps, but the content within and time allotted to each range from funny, to awesome, to…uhhhh…
Just as with “Biebs”, Earn is the weak link in the chain. The talent he’s been introduced to (played by Sheyi Cole, who I thought did a pretty great job in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe) is a strange, spacey stick figure of a man who wants to start some kind of artist’s commune, or something—really, he just wants to take as much money from the investor as possible because of the white guilt (a major theme throughout this episode) that he sees in him. He gives Earn a choice. He can join in on the scheme by signing on as his manager, look the other way entirely, or flat out tell the investor. Here, Earn is given a less urgent version of the decision he made in the airport at the end of season two—something that will really fuck over the other person the decision affects. He chooses to sign on after the artist encourages him.
We’ve come a long, long way from Earn in season one—instead of scrounging together a way to get into a radio station and slip Al’s music under a door, he’s doing pretty well for himself. And yet he takes the deal anyway, because who couldn’t use more money? Graduation is very much a flex album, and so it feels as though season three will be a flex season, a place for the characters to puff their chests out and do whatever they want. But it’s a side of Earn I don’t want to see. Sure, the investor turns out to be a complete asshole, (“her mum can rot in North Korea for all I care”) but he still chooses the path of avarice, something that Al points out is traditionally white. He gives into his temptation instead of rejecting it, and who knows? Maybe this’ll set him up on a path that leads to him becoming both sides of the fishermen he sees in his dreams—the one inflicted with the white curse, and the one dragged down into the water, drowning in blackness while the wealth and decomposition turn his skin paper-white.
Earn isn’t the only one becoming a different version of who he already was. In both this episode and “Sinterklaas”, Al is incredibly comfortable with his new status as top dog, a hard contrast to the deep doubt and conflict he felt all throughout Robbin’ Season. Whereas that season was about the idea of being “real” and honest to your principles, Al feels exceedingly fake throughout the majority of this episode. Case in point: when he sits down with rich benefactor Fernando, he gets asked if he believes in God. Despite the cross dangling from his neck, Al thinks about it for a moment before delivering a halfhearted “I mean, yeah.” Like how Robbin’ Season subverted season one’s general tone, it feels like season three has been subverting Robbin’ Season’s major theme—even with episode one, because dreams are, in fact, fake reflections of reality.
It’s with Al’s story that the episode is most interesting, where Daniel Fathers gives a wildly entertaining performance as Fernando, showing the way inordinate wealth makes rambling crazies out of people, crazies who ramble about all-night sex marathons with black ghosts. (And while that ghost certainly did not become white, he sure did c…no…no, I think I won’t tell this joke.) And as fake as Al seems throughout this episode, he feels as though he comes back to himself when, just like the snarky nightclub owner from season one, he’s shorted on an earned sum of money and confronts the debtor over it. Except he can’t get to Fernando—so he instead opts to try and cut down the ancient tree that sits in the middle of his yard. (“Do you like trees?” Fernando asks as a form of introduction. “Fuck yeah, I like trees!”) This tree, being that it’s referenced in the title and is quite literally the centerpiece of the episode’s setting, is supposed to be something. I feel like it’s meant to be the idea that come with being Al and Fernando: power. It’s Fernando’s wealth and Al’s fame, decaying and hollow but still everlasting and endless. And when Al comes back to the R-rated hardass he know he can be, he tries to cut it down, but he doesn’t finish. How could he?
Providing the other portion of the comedy in this episode is Darius’ predicament, where he accidentally amasses a cult of the Guilty White (so basically the Guilty Remnant) when he bumps into an Asian woman believing she’s trying to hit on him, as that is her pre-conceived notion of what black men do. (A small part of me wonders if this is Glover self-commentating on his blatant fetishization of Asian women on his earlier albums.) This gets overheard by a white guy with terrible, terrible hair, and soon he’s recounting how the woman said “some real 12 Years a Slave shit” to poor, defenseless Darius while those around him weep in horror. “It’s not that big a deal, why is she crying?” Darius asks, his words falling on deaf ears. Was it just a tiny bit blatant for Atlanta? Perhaps, but sometimes what people need when they’re doing something embarrassing is to have a mirror held to their faces. At least, that’s what I thought until some…guy…just sits down and explains this to us. Great. Thanks.
There’s some stuff with Van that we really don’t get enough of, despite an interaction between her and Earn that I daresay horrified me a little, both because of how lost Van seems and the way Earn compulsively starts to talk to her like she’s Al, something she has to point out to him. While Al is fully engrossed in his identity of “the rapper,” Earn has fallen into the role of “the manager,” and now the mother of his daughter is just another person to tend to the needs of in a purely commercial way, even if he does love her.
Despite how much I (surprisingly) found that I had to say about Earn’s storyline, it and little bits of Darius’ and Van’s were a bit lacking in substance. But damn if “The Old Man and the Tree” wasn’t still entertaining and definitely had “this went up on rewatch” energy about it. At one point, Al growls to Earn that “if this was Atlanta…” in regards to getting his earned money, and that’s the problem. Europe most definitely isn’t Atlanta, and without it, Al and Earn are starting to lose their ways, to sink deeper into the worst aspects of their occupations, becoming faker, greedier. Atlanta has a problem right now, and if Al and Earn can’t pull it up by the roots, it’s only going to get worse, and no amount of fast food, funny paintings, surprise pool pushings, or “ectoplasm” will help get them back.
Rating: 8/10 (B+)
I’ll directly acknowledge and analyze the time jump between this and Robbin’ Season when the show feels like directly acknowledging it.
We’re never getting a Yeezus season. Atlanta’s going to end with season four. Aaaand that means we’re ending on 808s and Heartbreak. I…yeah, no. No. Please no. Please, Donald. Please.
So, uh, where’d Al get the chainsaw?
Darius and Al on Earn’s white voice: “That’s just how you sound.”
“That’s a...real-ass tree right there, man.” I only just got what Al thought he meant.
“And then she’s like ‘all lives matter, that’s the problem.’”
“I’m gonna check it out.” “Yeah, you do that!”
“I took so much Nando’s, though!”