YMMV / Atlanta

• Adorkable: Surprisingly for a show of such surreal atmosphere , there are some examples.
  • Earnest sits between Jerk with a Heart of Gold and The Stoic most of the time, but the few times he does show genuine emotion (such as his cheering for Alfred after he finally gets the money they were owed) makes it easy to remember Donald Glover is still the same actor who played Troy Barns.
  • Darius's bizarre perception of the world (and sometimes rather lax safety standards) can make him seem off-putting at first glance, but a few scenes (such as his talk about Bostrom's Simulation with Candice in "Champagne Papi") makes it clear he's a very thoughtful and soft-spoken soul who enjoys sharing with his thoughts with anyone willing to listen.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Antoine Smalls (a.k.a. Harrison Booth), the trans-racial character in "B.A.N.", seems like a mean-spirited caricature of transgender people, but people who claim to be "trans-racial" actually do exist.
• Award Snub: An example that’s both downplayed, but still noticeable. Despite being one of the most acclaimed programs of the year and garnering an impressive number of nominations, Atlanta’s second season lost every category it was nominated for at the Emmy Award's main ceremony, with The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Barry dominating that year. While both Maisel and Barry's wins are very deserving, many fans were disappointed that such an acclaimed season went home empty-handed.
  • Lakeith Stanfield’s work as Darius has yet to be nominated, despite him being just as acclaimed as his nominated cast members.
• Bizarro Episode:
  • It's a pretty off-beat show to begin with, but "B.A.N." is strange even by the show's standards. It lacks any sort of plot and is essentially just a series of satirical sketches, with parody commercials and segments of a Show Within a Show entitled Montague that satirize issues relating to gender and race identity.
  • "Teddy Perkins" is a spectacle of weirdness from beginning to end, as Darius spends all episode with a psychotic Michael Jackson Expy (played by Glover himself, unrecognizable under a shitload of prosthetic white-guy makeup).
  • "Three Slaps", the opening episode of season 3 is a Dream Episode about a young boy who acts up in school and eventually ends up with a white lesbian couple as foster parents, who are abusive and after murdering a social worker, eventually drive out into the countryside to commit familicide with the other adoptive kids in tow. While all the children get away safely, said boy returns home to his biological mother with a better outlook on his home life. Sadly the real-life story of the 2018 Hart Family murders that served as inspiration for the episode did not end as happily.
• Crosses the Line Twice: When Alfred goes to talk to troll Zan at his job (as a pizza deliverer), there is a child in the backseat. He at first assumes it is Zan's son, only to learn that it is actually Zan's Vine partner. The child says his profanity-laced catchphrase, is sent in to deliver the pizza (to spread the word about their Vine series)... and gets robbed. Alfred gets out of the car and walks away, to the sound of the kid pounding the door and yelling "Give me the pizza back! I know where you live!"
  • In "New Jazz": Amsterdam teens snatching a baby from a stroller? Not funny. Using said baby as a football in a game of keep away from the screaming mother? Darkly hilarious.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Notice how many of the tropes on this page are about Teddy Perkins. He was only in a single episode. He made that big of an impact on the audience in that little time.
  • Willie for being hilariously cantankerous, having more depth than you’d expect, and for embracing his role as “the alligator man”. Katt Williams even won an Emmy for his performance.
    • Willie’s alligator itself could count due to having such a hysterical and anticlimactic appearance.
• Epileptic Trees: Everything regarding the title character in the episode "Teddy Perkins." There are a few main questions: Which celebrities are Teddy and his brother Benny supposed to be? Are Teddy and Benny really two halves of a whole? Are they just a representation of Donald Glover and his feelings about celebrity? Especially since Teddy is played by Glover in white-face.
  • For that matter. who is the figure referred to as Benny? Is it, as Teddy claims, really his brother, who he's tortured all these years out of jealousy? Or is Teddy really Benny, and the figure just a random stranger used as a scapegoat for Teddy's self-loathing? Or is perhaps either one of them the other's abusive father, behind a mask? Nothing is ever confirmed.
• Jerkass Woobie: Paper Boi isn’t the most likable guy around, but it’s really hard to not feel bad for him during “Woods”. Not only is he mourning his deceased mother, but he ends up going through a truly nightmarish and deadly experience. But against all odds, he manages to come out of it as a better man.
  • Earn himself. His life has been in a tailspin for years (beginning with his academic career crashing when a white girl falsely accused him of breaking into her room), and he's working hard at representing Alfred in the music business with no real experience, resulting in various humiliations for him. A lot of potential sympathy is canceled out by Earn being a selfish asshole who takes Van for granted and blames most of his failures on others.
  • Teddy Perkins is a nightmarish individual, but it’s made clear that he’s suffered quite a bit of abuse, and that has clearly taken a huge toll on his psyche. It’s no excuse for the things he’s done, but it’s clear that his actions are the result of immense suffering.
• Minority Show Ghetto: It's successfully dodged this. Despite having a black cast and writing team (in addition to being pretty weird) it's gathered excellent ratings, critical acclaim, and a large amount of awards.
• Nightmare Fuel: Plenty of examples, despite ostensibly being a comedy.
  • The aforementioned "Teddy Perkins," is darker than any episode that's come before it. From the titular character's creepy face and expressions, his bizarre behavior, and the story behind it all that is gradually told throughout the episode, there's few moments of levity to be found, and a lot of unease. It culminates in Darius about to be killed by Teddy, only for Teddy to be killed by his brother in a murder/suicide that puts a violent end to the story of the effects of abuse and trauma that the episode tells.
  • The entirety of "Three Slaps", often called less of an episode of Atlanta and more of a psychological horror short film by reviewers. The opening alone is haunting, two men, one white and one black, are alone in a boat, before they start discussing how the black man felt pulled in by the water as a young boy. The white man starts saying that it was because he was being pulled - by the drowned black town that used to be there. He goes on to deliver a truly haunting monologue about the cold nothingness of white identity, before turning around to show that he has no face, before dark hands pull the black man deep into the water. It gets worse from there, showing it was a dream sequence of a little boy who gets put into a foster home with two abusive women that feed him raw chicken, treat him like a slave, and then murders the CPS officer who checks in on them, and then commits a murder-suicide on themselves and the children - the latter of which thankfully come out unharmed. The entire story is made even worse by the fact that it's based on the true story of Devonte Hart and his foster parents. At one point, the boy even attempts to get help from the police, who not only jokes that he almost shot him, but dismisses his concerns and sends him back to the abusive foster parents.
  • The entirety of "Tarrare", especially if you look at it from Candice's perspective. She and her friends encounter Van in Paris and the four women end up going on an adventure. The premise sounds innocuous enough at first glance, but it's obvious from the beginning that something is very wrong with Van, who has completely changed her appearance and is speaking in a French accent. Candice grows increasingly concerned and unnerved as the episode goes on, and all of her attempts to get through to Van are met with hostility until the very end, when Candice asks about Lottie. At this, Van completely breaks down, and it becomes even more apparent (to both Candice and the audience) that she is suffering through a serious mental health crisis. Fortunately, this crosses into heartwarming territory when the two women have a heart-to-heart conversation and Candice offers Van her sympathy and support.
• Retroactive Recognition: Priah Ferguson, who you might recognize from Stranger Things, shows up as a little girl in the Season 1 episode "Streets on Lock".
• Tear Jerker: The climax and denouement of "Teddy Perkins." Darius, held at gunpoint by the eponymous character, quietly pleads with him to see reason, and offers sympathy for the circumstances of his abusive childhood. Then he has to watch Benny kill Teddy and then himself, horrified and helpless. The episode ends with him driving away, visibly disturbed by what's happened.
  • Somehow, even though it's ostensibly an example of Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking, seeing the piano Darius really wanted get tied up and taken away as evidence is just a final punch in the gut that this was truly All for Nothing.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Moving Atlanta from Atlanta to Europe for the third season (traveling between countries for Albert's tour) was divisive.
  • Also from the third season, the anthology episodes unrelated (or only alluding to) the main narrative. Some critics and fans called them a distraction from the characters they tuned in to see.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Van gets her own focus episodes in season 2, but in terms of the overall season, she’s absent for more than half of it. Granted, underusing the character was probably a better option than shoehorning her into plots just for the sake of giving her more screen time. And despite being Out of Focus that year, Zazie Beetz still manages to get nominated for supporting actress at the Emmys. This even gets lampshaded in season 3 where Van herself says she "feels aimless".
  • The Plot of “Alligator Man” might have hit harder if Paper Boi had gone to deal with his dad rather than Earn.
  • The third season was critiqued for how keeping the entire main cast Out of Focus. Van is absent for an entire six episodes (the most of the main cast and the majority of the ten episodes), Lakeith Stanfield and Brian Tyree Henry are both absent for four; Donald Glover is absent for three.
• Unexpected Character: Nobody expected Liam Neeson to cameo As Himself in Season 3. Ditto for Alexander Skarsgård.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Earn comes across as less interesting compared to the scene-stealing Paper Boi and Darius. Even the show seemed to catch onto this, as Earn winds up becoming noticeably Out of Focus as season 2 goes on. Interestingly enough, Donald Glover’s most critically acclaimed performance on the show wasn’t even as Earn, but as Teddy Perkins in his one-time appearance.
• The Woobie: We know very little about Benny. Based on theories, he could be completely innocent or he could have a darker history than we know. What we do know is that he’s been greatly abused by Teddy to the point that he’s driven to pull a murder-suicide.
  • The normally unflappable Darius is left shaken and terrified by his experience with Teddy Perkins, which all amounts to nothing. Kind of hard not to feel bad for him.
  • Thomas Washington, a black animator made CEO of Disney due to a clerical error who attempted to make A Goofy Movie the "blackest movie ever made", both to represent his culture and make his son proud, only to undergo Sanity Slippage due to a mixture of Executive Meddling and pressure from dealing with such high expectations, and is heavily implied to have killed himself upon realizing that Disney had cut out much of the film without his knowledge.
• Win Back the Crowd: Season 3 received mixed reviews from fans and critics, mainly due to its off-kilter anthology storylines, having the principal cast be Out of Focus, and having the more subtle and nuanced political and social statements of the earlier seasons be much more explicit and one-sided. The episode Rich Wigga Poor Wigga was under substantial criticism, as it was received as a poor commentary on racial identity in America and did nothing to really contribute to the show's overall themes or plotlines. Season 4 was called a return to form for the series, as it went back to its more surreal roots, focused on the main characters, and had acclaimed episodes such as Crank dat Killer and The Goof Who Sat by the Door.

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