‘Atlanta’ Recap: An Active Shooter Meets a Bad Rapper
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A review of this week’s Atlanta, “Crank Dat Killer,” coming up just as soon as I have a safe farm…
It feels strange to describe an episode like this, built around an active shooter situation, as a relatively light one for Atlanta, yet dammit if “Crank Dat Killer” doesn’t feel exactly that. Yes, Al spends a good chunk of the episode running for his life, and Earn and Darius’ new acquaintance Shoe Man suffers a violent and graphic on-camera death. But “Crank Dat Killer” once again demonstrates the series’ complete mastery of tone, in a way that makes the threat to Al seem real at the same time that the entire sequence is way more slapstick than thriller.
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This shouldn’t be surprising from Atlanta, especially since the episode once again has Stephen Glover on script and Hiro Murai as the director. As they demonstrated in this season’s premiere, Glover and Murai understand how elastic the series’ reality can be, in ways that allow it to be horrifying and ridiculous at the same time.
As has been the case for most of this season, “Crank Dat Killer” starts off with separate plots that converge by the end. In one, Al learns of the titular serial murderer, who targets anyone who has made a YouTube video where they do the famous dance from Soulja Boy’s 2007 hit “Crank That.” (Soulja Boy himself briefly cameos, as he is preparing to bug out of his mansion until the danger goes away.) Al, who recorded a little-seen dance video 15 years ago, starts feeling paranoid. The show has always taken great advantage of Brian Tyree Henry’s superhumanly expressive face, but usually in scenes where Paper Boi is feeling disgusted about the current state of events. (And we get a beautiful one of these near the end of the episode.) Here, he is jumping at shadows, constantly trying to calm himself down, and failing. Eventually, Al heads to a local shopping mall in an attempt to hide among the crowd.
In the other main story, Darius and Earn attempt to buy limited edition Nike Miracle sneakers, but are frustrated by how sneaker resellers have cornered the market. As always, though, Darius knows of a hook-up, and soon they are sitting in a back of the van in the parking lot of the same mall where Al is, negotiating with the mysterious Shoe Man (Terence Rosemore). Shoe Man does not want their money, however, but the opportunity to watch Darius and Earn kiss. The subplot walks a very narrow tightrope, making Earn’s reluctance to do so play not as homophobia, but as annoyance that he’s being asked to perform for this guy rather than being allowed to just pay for what he wants(*). And it stays on balance.
(*) As Al notes in the episode’s opening scene, he’s rich now, and Earn is doing very well for himself as Al’s manager. One of the themes of this season has been about how little the money and/or celebrity have contributed to either of their happiness. Shoe Man seems to have figured this out already, telling Earn, “I don’t need money, man. Everybody got money.”
Technically, there is a third story of sorts, involving a brand-new character: Roberto (Adrian Mauro), an aspiring rapper who works at the mall’s food court while fantasizing about a chance to get discovered like when Big Sean rapped for Kanye at a Detroit radio station. We are introduced to Roberto while he is in a car with his wife and adorable daughter. Given the lurking menace of the Crank Dat Killer and this series’ willingness to go to incredibly dark places, the potential of Roberto becoming collateral damage feels uncomfortably real. Instead, it’s Shoe Man who catches a bullet when the shooter chases Al through the parking lot. Roberto does not escape unscathed, as Al shoves him through the glass window of a store while an oblivious Roberto is trying to spit a few bars for him. But if it’s a dream-crushing indignity, and perhaps a physically painful one, at least Roberto survives it, and perhaps he’ll finally acquiesce to his wife’s desire for him to seek a more stable career path.
As for the actual open-shooter sequence, part of what keeps it from breaking the tone of the show is that we immediately see multiple shoppers draw their own weapons and attempt to be the proverbial Good Guy With a Gun. It turns potential tragedy into farce, and even Shoe Man’s bloody murder plays as a darkly comic punchline because of the timing of it, happening just as Darius and a reluctant Earn are finally sharing a brief smooch.
And the whole thing works because of the dual punchlines to the whole story. One is that the shooter was not the Crank Dat Killer, but someone Al beefed with in high school. The other is that Al’s life is saved by Some Guy Named Doug (Wisdom Allah), a kind and generous local rapper who makes terrible music. Al can’t help but liking Doug, but he has also spent a long time ducking any requests to record on one of Doug’s tracks. Once he is driven away from danger, Al’s gratefulness quickly turns to dismay when he realizes he now has to collaborate with Some Guy, and the story concludes with Al playing the awful track for Earn and Darius. (Darius, as always, attempts to see the goodness in something, and quickly begins doing a full-body dry-heave set to this music.)
As is so often the case with Atlanta, these are elements that should not work together. The violence should completely undercut the attempts at humor, just as the jokes should water down the peril Al finds himself in. Yet as is so often also the case with this great show, all of it fits together perfectly.
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