Up Next

Television

‘Atlanta’ recap: We are not the same

Earn and Van are out of place again

Up Next From Culture

    atl_108_0152
    Cassandra Freeman as Monique Allen, Rick Holmes as Craig Allen, Donald Glover as Earnest Marks, Zazie Beetz as Van. Guy D'Alema/FX
    By @KofieYeboah

    Did you ever go somewhere with your parents when you were younger and think that it’s just going to be a normal day out? Then all of a sudden your mom or dad pulls you over before you go in and says something along the lines of:

    “If you embarrass me out here, I’m going to embarrass you when we get home.”

    In Tuesday night’s episode of Atlanta, Earn was the kid and Van was playing the role of a parent trying to keep everything in check when the two went to Monique’s house to celebrate Juneteenth and potentially ask for some kind of help. However, the longer the party lasted, the more the roles seemed to shift, but I’ll get to that later.

    Let’s talk about the dynamic of the party in general. We saw that Earn didn’t like the club last week, but this somehow seemed like even less of a fun time.

    This Juneteenth celebration was above Earn and Van’s pay grade, and way out of their comfort zones. It’s safe to say that they were probably the most broke guests at the party.

    First off, the creepiness of the wait staff was the first sign. Why they black, though?

    Then we have the hilarious drink names.

    https://twitter.com/IraHobbsJr/status/791098841722265600

    I don’t know about y’all, but there ain’t no way I’m drinking something called “plantation master poison.” I already felt bad for Earn because he didn’t ask for this. He didn’t want to be there.

    And slave ships as food holders? Nope, I’d be long gone.

    https://twitter.com/CallaBeauty/status/791101073259896832

    Then, there’s the host’s white husband, Craig, trying to outblack Earn? I don’t know what’s going on here.

    Awkward spoken word? Yup.

    As if the spoken word wasn’t bad enough, Craig told his wife’s 95-year-old grandmother that she was cooking the collard greens … wrong.

    Don’t you ever tell somebody’s grandmother how to do their cooking. They’ve been at this whole cooking game for a long time. I hope he didn’t say this at Thanksgiving or Christmas, because that would have been the ultimate form of food disrespect.

    I like how he tried to test Earn’s blackness by asking where he’s from in Africa.

    Monique wasn’t that much better, either. She admitted that she was in her marriage for money.

    screen-shot-2016-10-26-at-11-24-32-am

    Also, we started to figure out how Monique really feels about the people outside of her environment when she stated that every family has a thug in it.

    And Craig’s face when she said that …

     

    Earn had every right to snap on both of them.

     

     

    Go ahead, Earn. He also seemed to have gotten the attention of Van for standing up to Monique and Craig, who were really out of line with some of their comments.

    The season finale is next week? Oh, man, I’m ready. Are you?

    Kofie Yeboah asks for Sweet Tea at every restaurant and recites approximately 2.5 Spongebob lines per hour.

    This Story Tagged: Atlanta Television Donald Glover