A Review of Atlanta Season 3 Ep 6 "White Fashion"
Where's my Black Panther 2 tickets?
I just finished watching the newest episode of Atlanta and man was it good. There was so much to take in that I don’t even know where to begin. The main themes of this episode focused on the failure of black social activism and the success of gentrification.
We get introduced to the episode’s parodies of Black Lives Matter through an incident where a European fashion brand creates a racist jersey featuring a raccoon, the phrase central park, and the number 5. Obviously this is seen as a reference to the Central Park 5, who were black boys falsely accused of rape and assault in the 90s and the subject of a Netflix series.
The fashion brand looks to apologize for the incident by working with a popular black celebrity to show how sorry they are. This of course leads to Paper Boi getting involved as he’s currently on tour in Europe. Paper Boi goes in trying to score some free clothes and shoes despite Earn tellin him he’s basically being used.
While this is happening, Darius goes on another adventure. This time it’s with the same woman from the party episode who assumed Darius was trying to hit on her because he’s black and “black guys love asian women.” She returns to accompany Darius on his quest for some Joloff rice.
As soon as they find a spot that sells some, she immediately searches for ways to appropriate and gentrify it. She’s trying to shazam the music playing inside, trying to get the owner's business card. It’s just shameless colonizer behavior (Even though she’s Asian.)
Eventually, she buys a Nigerian restaurant and turns it into a bastardized, inferior version based out of a food truck (Cheesy jollof rice anyone?) Meanwhile, Paper Boi has to hop up on stage and defend the fashion brand and say they aren’t racist. He joins a committee of other black activists and influencers formed by the brand to help the black community but what do they do?
They help themselves instead by trying to get tickets to Black Panther 2, which stars Larenz Tate and Whoopi Goldberg, and expenses paid trips to countries I’ve never heard of. This portion of the episode is my absolute favorite. As someone who’s a part of black twitter, it’s hilarious seeing these obvious parodies of grifters-I mean activists like Deray and Shaun King.
The episode isn’t even obvious with who the characters are meant to parody. It gives you just enough so you can figure it out yourself. I didn’t even realize who the lightskin influencer was supposed to be until Paper Boi asked if he was really black. Deray’s parody in this episode is named Khalil. He’s a bit more obvious than the Shaun King parody due to him presumably being gay like Deray and having a sweater/vest that he seems to wear no matter what.
Despite this he drops some of the episode’s best lines. When Paper Boi gets upset that the brand didn’t follow through with his plan to teach black people to reinvest in their own communities, Khalil tells him it wouldn’t make sense for the brand to tell people not to buy their products and to reinvest it in themselves because, “Why would they invest in their own demise?”
Another great one is “If I had a sandwhich for every nigga who thought he could something, I’d be Jimmy Johns.” This episode really made me remember how good Atlanta really is. It just hit me the other day that this show premiered right when I became a sophomore in college and it’s third and current season is airing 6 years later.
I forgot how great the show was and for a minute I compared it to Dave. Dave is a great show in its own right but it could absolutely NOT pull off all the things Atlanta has done this season for obvious reasons I don’t need to spell out. It sucks that the cast has become so big and popular since Season 1 that the show is ending next season but I cannot wait for it.
The theme of this whole season has been about the “black fairy tale.” Ern and the gang head to Europe thinking that things are gonna be better because they think there’s no racism over there but this is just a fantasy. Meanwhile back in America fantasy is becoming real life for black people.
The show’s alternate version of Hart family incident gets a happy ending where the kids survive and black people are getting reparations from suing the descnedants of slave masters who owned their ancestors. Maybe in the show or off-screen between seasons, the main characters are gonna realize what they’re missing out on and say “I can't wait to get back home.”
Season 4 is going to be a rude awakening for them. All of these cool things they missed out on are gonna be gone by the time they get back. Things will either go back to normal for them or become even worse. I’m curious what next week’s episode will be about. It’s gonna be another “black fantasy” episode but I wonder what it has to do with funerals.
That’s it for me; I’ve rambled on long enough.