The pilot episode of Atlanta makes it seem like a regular show about a rapper and his agent. However, there is something unusual about that first episode, too, but a viewer is unable to put their finger on it.

Earn, portrayed by Donald Glover, is the central character.He is trying to manage his cousin Alfred, played by Brian Tyree Henry, who is a local rapper. But there is also LaKeith Stanfield as Darius, a strange character. There is not much other than Darius that is strange in that first episode. It’s almost as if the showrunners are teasing the strangeness yet to come. This strangeness of the show expands from the second episode all the way to the end.

It is very difficult to say what Atlanta is about. On the surface, it’s about black culture. Though that is not all. It is also about friendship, family, love, racial prejudice, inadequacy, shame, complicated relationships and the human spirit but, above all, it is about the strangeness of the human experience.

From the second episode onwards, one might feel as if the show has taken a complete detour and lost the plot promised by the first episode. Immediately, the story of the rapper and his manager recedes to the background and the viewer is thrown into personal situations of various characters. There is a rather disjointed narrative of personal stories and psychological states. It is almost like a mystical journey of enjoyable but slightly uncomfortable weirdness.

There are episodes that pop up and are strange in their structure. For instance, an episode titled Black American Network is made up almost entirely of hyper realistic but fictionalised advertisements, the sort that make one do a double-take. The episode runs like one’s watching broadcast television and tuned into a channel called the Black American Network). In the middle is a short news piece styled like a documentary that went viral on Instagram some time back. It is an interview of a black teenager who says he identifies as an older white man. He goes on to say that he enjoys playing golf and feels out of place among black people. He also has something racist to say at the end. Bizarre sequences such as this are the essence of the show. The genius of it is that the kind of bizarre it is, is new each time.

Atlanta is one of a kind. It imitates the frustrating brutality of the human race but pairs it with surrealism and magical realism.

Atlanta’s strangeness is not without meaning. Each strange episode makes the viewer think about what they just saw and question the things they take for granted or have willful blindness about. In the final season, there is an episode titled, The Goof who Sat by the Door. This is the second episode that plays like a production of the fictionalised channel within the Atlanta universe, the Black American Network. The episode entails the story of an accidental first black CEO of Disney. Despite its apparent ridiculousness, there is something believable about it. It is as if one is forced to believe that if something like this happened, this is the way it would go. It is the sensitivity with which the story of the black CEO is told and the nuances added to it that make it believable despite its intermittent bursts of ridiculousness. By the end of it, one can see that even if this story is fiction, it is an ode to many such stories that have actually happened.

In that sense, Atlanta is one of a kind. It imitates the frustrating brutality of the human race but pairs it with surrealism and magical realism. There are sequences that have nothing to do with reality; an episode where Earn is forced to wait to meet D’Angelo, a successful black artist, in a prison-like room with a guard for what seems like days. Then, when he finally gets to meet the person after squeezing through a tunnel. However, the person he meets isn’t the one he was looking to meet at all. Yet the process proves cathartic to Earn. The episode is a surreal take on the elusiveness of black artists who become successful.

Another episode is about fame and fortune and what it does to black artists.It is titled Teddy Perkins. It is clearly a take on the weird life of Michael Jackson. In this episode, Darius goes to Teddy Perkins’s mansion to buy a piano that the artist has put up for sale. The episode takes the viewers through the very bizarre internal world of the Michael Jackson archetype, the rich and famous black person who has had a complete and deluded change of identity, so much so that he is barely recognisable as human, completely oblivious to his own community and unapproachable. With heavy prosthetics, Donald Glover plays the character even better than his regular character, Earn.

Going by the first episode,Atlantawould appear to be a linear show. Watch any other episode and it would seem that each episode is an independent piece.

If you are unsure about whether it’s your cup of tea, start with Teddy Perkins or The Goof Who Sat by The Door. You might find yourself watching the whole show.

The author writes on culture and identity in Pakistan. He can be reached at uneeb.nas@gmail.com