Atlanta Robbin’ Season Recap: When Keeping It Real Gets You Chased Into The Woods

***Atlanta is back for season two, ROBBIN SEASON, and we couldn’t be more excited. While not a traditional recap for us, Nicole and William get together each week to talk out the great, the innovative, and the utterly bizarre of the latest episode. All the spoilers ahead.*** Nicole: It’s not that I don’t want to talk about the episode, but I think it’s maybe more–or at least equally–important to talk about and continue the conversation the episode was having about “realness.” William: This goes back to Darius during the Champagne Papi episode too, where he was diagnosing that realness is a construct like most other things. Here we have different versions of what real is or what makes something real. And while Paper Boi’s version of real on the surface seems the most authentic, it doesn’t do him any favors in the long run.

Nicole: See what struck me was that Alfred’s “real” wasn’t authentic. It was static. It was real for him when he was broke or when he was struggling, but not when he’s neither of those things. Real, in the Atlanta universe and in reality, is dynamic. Yet, he refuses to acknowledge that or act in accordance with his new reality. His girlfriend/wannabe business partner may be on the other extreme of that, but she has adapted to her “Instagram fame.” She knows what she can leverage that for. She understands that being a commodity isn’t necessarily an authentic act and has obviously made peace with it; I’m sure the trips to the spa (and the resulting selfies)…