'Atlanta' Series Finale Recap, 'It Was All A Dream'

By Brian Richards | TV | November 14, 2022 |

By Brian Richards | TV | November 14, 2022 |

Previously on Atlanta: Paper Boi is spending some time relaxing all by himself at his ‘safe farm.’ And unfortunately for Paper Boi, his alone time at the farm ends up being the complete opposite of safe.

THE STORY SO FAR: Before joining Earn, Paper Boi, and Van to have a meal at the very first Black-operated sushi restaurant in Atlanta, Darius decides to spend a couple of hours enjoying a session in a sensory deprivation tank. This soon results in him trying to determine what’s reality and what’s a dream.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT THIS EPISODE?: Darius letting Earn and Paper Boi know that he’ll be joining them for sushi later, as he’s got a ‘dep date’ to go to first. (Paper Boi: “‘Dep date.’ A picnic with a deputy?” Earn: “An underground Johnny Depp film edited from all his old films?”) Earn and Paper Boi realizing that the Black-owned sushi restaurant they’re going to is located inside an abandoned Blockbuster Video store. Darius’ conversation with the customer in the pharmacy about the joys of sensory deprivation, and how Darius informs her that if he sees a thick version of Judge Judy on television, he knows that he’s dreaming in the sensory deprivation tank and not in reality.

Darius running into an old friend named London, who is driving by and offers him a ride, despite the fact that she’s smoking weed and drinking vodka concealed in a plastic water bottle. The police officer who pulls London over for tinted windows, and orders her out of the car so he can find out whether or not she’s under the influence. (The look on Darius’ face when London guzzles her entire water bottle of vodka to prove that there’s no vodka in it is hilarious.) Instead of asking London to say the alphabet, the police officer asks, “How many seasons of Homeboys In Outer Space are there?” (If you’re too young to know what Homeboys In Outer Space was, Google is your friend.) Darius recommending to London before she gets out of the car that she “act white” in order to win the cop over and not get arrested. (Of course a character played by LaKeith Stanfield will recommend that acting white is the key to success and survival.) London somehow convincing the cop that she’s not drunk, and is told that she’s free to go … only for her to wait until the cop’s back is turned, take his pistol out of the holster, and jump into the car to drive off, which leads to her hitting a young kid riding their bike, and London jumping out of the car to run away while leaving Darius to take the fall for everything.

Fortunately for Darius, this is all a dream. Unfortunately, his encounter with the white women in the tearoom who can’t stop saying “tearoom” and laughing while doing so isn’t, and him yelling at them to wake himself up only gets him kicked out. Darius visiting his brother, Chi, to see how he’s doing and catch up over a bowl of jollof rice. And the fact that they’re both amazed at the sight of Judge Judy looking rather thick on Chi’s television set is a sign that this is all yet another dream. And Darius waking up in the tank to ask the attendant how long he was asleep? Another dream, and one that has Darius sitting up in the water and screaming in frustration.

Earn, Paper Boi, and Van trying really hard to enjoy their meal at DeMarcus’ sushi place. Despite the food not being very good, the sushi place being located across the street from a Popeyes (which is where they’d all rather be instead), and Paper Boi not being impressed with their food preparation techniques, or the fact that their bathroom is located in a Rainbow store down the street. When the waiter brings out a platter of blowfish for all of them to eat, which could be poisonous, depending on how it is cut and prepared by the chef, Paper Boi has had enough and decides to leave. Earn and Van get up to follow him, only to be stopped in their tracks by DeMarcus himself. He lectures them all for refusing to stay and show their support for a Black-owned business just so they can run across the street to eat food from a white-owned restaurant like Popeyes. (Or as DeMarcus calls it, “a modern-day Coon Chicken,” and if you’re reading this, you should not at all be surprised that this country once had an actual restaurant chain called Coon Chicken Inn.) And for refusing to put as much trust into Black-owned businesses as they do into businesses that are owned by others who aren’t Black, like Popeyes.

Paper Boi apologizes, and DeMarcus wants more than just an apology: He wants them all to eat the blowfish, and has his employee lock the doors like he’s Sonny from A Bronx Tale to keep them from leaving until they eat it. Before the door is locked, Darius bursts in, floors DeMarcus with a haymaker like he’s Richard Spencer, and tells them all to get in the bright pink Maserati that he’s driving so they can all leave. They do, and after doing several donuts in the parking lot and breathing a huge sigh of relief, Darius informs them to look under their seats, and what do they all find? Some delicious food from Popeyes, which they all eat and enjoy on the way back to Paper Boi’s apartment.

Earn, Paper Boi, and Van ask Darius just where he got that pink Maserati from, and Darius tells him that he stole it from the nearby valet service. He’s not worried about getting arrested, as this is all just a dream. Earn tells him that it isn’t a dream, and this is reality, and he’s sitting with his friends. Darius responds with, “Maybe it’s just, uh, my dream. And you’re just in it. Always have been.” The only response they have to that is to go outside and take up Paper Boi’s offer to smoke his weed. Darius tells them he’ll join them in a couple of minutes, and as they’re all outside, talking and laughing with one another, Darius watches Judge Judy on Paper Boi’s television. Whether or not she’s thick, and this is really another dream that Darius is having, will forever remain a mystery, as it all cuts to black before we see what is making Darius smile as he looks at the television screen.

WHAT’S NOT SO GOOD ABOUT THIS EPISODE?: I was hoping/expecting it to be an extra-long, Super-Sized episode in order to wrap everything up, but that’s really my only complaint about it.

ANY CAMEOS FROM THE CAST OF COMMUNITY?: No, there are no cameos from any Community cast members, but we do get a cameo from legendary actress/voice artist Cree Summer, who plays the unnamed customer in the pharmacy conversing with Darius.

DID ANY PROBLEMATIC MALE CELEBRITIES SHOW UP TO MAKE LAST-MINUTE CAMEOS LIKE THEY DID LAST SEASON?: No, but if you’re looking for problematic men to show up when and where they’re not really wanted, Rihanna will gladly point you in the direction of her newest Savage X Fenty Show on Amazon Prime Video. This is where you’ll find Johnny Depp being the massive turd floating around in an otherwise gorgeous punchbowl, and ruining everyone’s thirst for it.

HOW MANY F-BOMBS WERE THERE IN THIS EPISODE?: Quite a lot, courtesy of Earn making fun of Paper Boi’s ankle injury with a variation of “Old McDonald Had A Farm” called “Old McAlfred,” and Paper Boi responding very profanely.

ON A SCALE OF 1 TO “WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST WATCH?,” HOW WEIRD AND TERRIFYING WAS THIS EPISODE?: Definitely an 8 or 9 on that scale.

ANY TIME-TRAVELING ALIENS IN THIS EPISODE?: For the very, very, very last time, Dustin, there were no time-traveling aliens in this episode.

DID YOU GET ANY FOOD FROM POPEYES AFTER WATCHING THIS EPISODE?:

TO SUM IT ALL UP: As I mentioned earlier, I was hoping/expecting that this series finale for Atlanta would be an extra-long episode to neatly wrap things up before curtain call. I thought that because it would only be a little over a half-hour like most of the show’s episodes, it wound’t give us much to discuss. Like every other time I’ve underestimated how unpredictable Atlanta can be, I was wrong. So very wrong.

As soon as the end credits for the finale appeared onscreen, theories began to form on social media on what we just watched, and what we’ve been watching for the last four seasons. People were questioning whether the final scene was just a dream, if the whole episode was a dream, or if Donald Glover and company decided to be like Newhart and St. Elsewhere, and have everything we’ve seen since the pilot be a bunch of dreams that Darius has been having in his sensory deprivation tank. Is half of the series real, and the other half just comprised of dreams that Darius has been having? Are Darius’ sensory deprivation dreams his way of staying in a dream world to avoid how painful his real life is? London implied how much of a wild and unhinged party animal he used to be back in the day, and some of that behavior as a party animal could’ve been in the form of Darius liking to drive under the influence. Maybe one of those times he drove while drunk or high or both resulted in someone else getting hurt or killed. (Hence London’s comment while running away: “I’m sorry! This is all your fault!”)

As for Darius and his brother, their conversation implies that Chi may not even be alive due to an unknown illness, and that both of their parents aren’t alive, either. (Notice how Darius says “I miss you” to the photo of him and Chi, and then asks Chi how their parents are doing, to which he gets no response, but Darius laughs as if Chi said something to him.)

Darius also looks sad and heartbroken when Chi responds, “You’re not staying?” to Darius saying that he can’t stay long due to him needing to meet up with his friends. But Chi laughs it off and tells him that he doesn’t want Darius to stay here with him, and that he wants him to go out and live his life and be with his people. This could be Chi talking to Darius the way that Miles (Michael Caine) talked to Cobb in Inception, as he tried to convince Cobb to come back to reality and to not spend so much of his time sleeping and living in dreams. Much like the ending of Inception, the final scene of “It Was All A Dream” leaves the audience wondering if what we’re seeing is really a dream, or if it’s all real, or if it doesn’t matter at all because the lead character has learned to embrace the life that they’re living, no matter what. Whether Cobb’s totem stopped spinning and fell over, whether Dottie Hinson actually dropped the ball on purpose, and now, whether or not Darius saw his own totem in the form of thick Judge Judy. These are the moments that fans have been, and will continue, discussing and analyzing for quite some time.

This is exactly the kind of response that Atlanta deserves. Not just for its series finale, but for damn near every episode. It would’ve been easy for Donald Glover and his collaborators to make a regular-degular sitcom that looks and feels like so many others, and yet, they chose to do something that looked and felt like nothing else, and became impossible to ignore. It may not have had the biggest audience, but the people who did tune in on a regular basis were given reasons to keep doing so, and to talk about what they’d just seen and heard because it was so unique. Especially as a show made by and for Black people, and which had no interest in explaining or watering down the Black experience for white viewers. How else to explain a show where Justin Bieber is Black, invisible cars are real, and white people are ordered to start paying reparations back to Black people? Much like The Matrix, you can’t really be told what Atlanta is. You have to see it for yourself, and see how innovative and clever and memorable and just downright funny it is.

That being said, Atlanta had some issues pointed out that it never really seemed or attempted to overcome. Specifically, its treatment of Black women like Van, and how they either weren’t given enough characterization and screen time compared to the Black male characters like Earn, Paper Boi, Darius, or even Tracy. Or if and when they did appear, their portrayals weren’t the most nuanced and flattering. In the Season 3 premiere, “Three Slaps,” Loquareeous is sent away by his mother to live with a white lesbian couple because she is tired of dealing with his unruly behavior, and she is made to seem hostile and uncaring towards him. The episode’s storyline is based on the murder/suicide of the Hart family, and how one of the children, Devonte Hart, appeared in a viral photo before his death that showed him tearfully hugging a police officer. And it has been pointed out that Devonte’s actual mother was anything but hostile and uncaring when her son was separated from her, and was actually determined to bring him back home.

Another example of how Atlanta fails to give three-dimensional portrayals to its Black female characters is the show’s treatment of Sheniqua in the Season 3 episode “The Big Payback,” as described in this article by Buzzfeed News contributor Shamira Ibrahim:

Glover’s depictions of Black women are a continued failure point for him, even though he has been lauded as an auteur of Black entertainment. Take “The Big Payback,” a stand-alone episode from Atlanta’s more speculative and cerebral third season. A Black woman named Sheniqua Johnson (Melissa Youngblood) demands reparations from the white male lead, Marshall Johnson (Justin Bartha), after she does some research and discovers that his ancestors once enslaved her ancestors. Sheniqua accosts Marshall with her livestreaming phone outside his house, claiming it as her own, and goes to his job with a bullhorn to humiliate him into acknowledging his debts in a public square. “Could you please just leave me alone?” he pleads. “That’s exactly what my great-great-grandmother said,” Sheniqua sneers in response before clicking the bullhorn back on to continue to spread the word of the Johnson family’s sins.

It takes the musings of a white stranger whom Marshall meets in the lobby to add rhyme and reason to Sheniqua’s vocal frustrations. “We were treating history as if it were a mystery in the past, something to investigate if we chose to,” the stranger says to Marshall. “To Sheniqua, to them, slavery is not past. … It is a cruel, unavoidable ghost that haunts in a way we can’t see.” The conversation seems to help prompt Marshall toward offering some form of reparation, but Sheniqua never vocalizes those nuances herself. The only hints of her personality and circumstances come when Marshall scrolls through her Instagram profile in a hotel bar, newly shamed over how he’s minimized the impact of white supremacy in America. Whatever interpersonal resolutions and negotiations that occur between Sheniqua and Marshall to appease her frustrations and move forward take place offscreen, leaving a closing scene where Marshall now gets his check garnished for restitution in his new job as a waiter. But viewers only ever see a bombastic Black woman, considered by the white characters as a disruption who needed to be mollified.

I’ve already touched upon how divisive and polarizing Season 3 was in the recaps for that season (Seriously, the response to Season 3 of Atlanta reminded me of how fans of The Wire responded to Season 2, and how they still insist that it wasn’t good and wasn’t important to the rest of the series), so there’s no point in repeating what’s already been said.

Atlanta may be loved and appreciated by its fans, but the complaints that have been made about how Black women are portrayed are complaints that deserved much greater acknowledgment. It no longer applies to Atlanta now that the show has ended, but it’s something for all showrunners to remember when developing their own shows with Black casts. I would say that they’ll be dragged endlessly by Black Twitter for ignoring and disrespecting Black women at their own peril, but I don’t even know if Twitter will still exist by the time New Year’s Eve arrives, thanks to Fake-Ass Tony Stark running that app into the ground at warp speed.

What I do know is that when it comes to Atlanta, there is an immense amount of talent not just in front of the cameras, but behind the cameras and in the writers’ room who have made the show as brilliant, incisive, and hilarious as it’s always been. Donald Glover, Brian Tyree Henry, LaKeith Stanfield, Zazie Beetz, director Hiro Murai, writers Stephen Glover, Stefani Robinson, Francesca Sloane, Jamal Lori, Ibra Ake, Janine Nabers, Karen Joseph Adcock, Taofik Kolade, and Jordan Temple, executive producer Paul Simms (a.k.a. the creator of NewsRadio) and Dianne McGunigle, and every other cast and crew member who contributed to the series.

Thanks to all of you for these past four seasons, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what you all do next.

Finally, I’d like to extend my condolences to the family, friends, and fans of Kirsnick Khari Bell, a.k.a. “Takeoff” from the rap group Migos (who all appeared in the Season 1 episode “Go For Broke”), who was shot and killed in Houston, Texas on November 1.

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May he rest in peace.

This recap of the Atlanta series finale has been brought to you by “Welcome To Atlanta” by Jermaine Dupri and Ludacris:

“Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)” by Eurythmics:

And “Dream Of A Lifetime” by Marvin Gaye: