Atlanta has inspired a slew of questions and raised eyebrows this season from disappointed and perplexed viewers—namely, why did the showrunners pay two white men with looming racial controversies (one of whom is facing abuse allegations) to poke fun at themselves in a toothless manner with the goal of absolving or at least making light of their offenses? (Their cameos certainly didn’t serve any narrative).
Atlanta’s preoccupation with examining whiteness and white people this season seems to be the main grievance amongst fans and an obvious disparity between Seasons 2 and 3, in addition to its overall disjointedness. Still, my biggest gripe with the series of late has been the treatment of Van, who Glover promised would be more of a focal point at the season’s SXSW premiere.
While the show hasn’t shown too much interest in any of the main cast members over its previous nine episodes, the neglect of Van felt more obvious, as the show kept hinting that something notable was occurring in her life while keeping viewers at arm’s length. When Van first arrived in Europe, ostensibly wanting an escape from unemployed single motherhood, it appeared as though we were about to watch her embark on some sort of Eat Pray Love-esque mission to rediscover herself. But she merely followed the guys around with little to say, slept with Earn once, and giggled at all his questions about her mental state before disappearing into the night. In a less narratively lopsided season, this would read more as foreshadowing and less like abandonment.
Now that the finale is here, it seems that Glover was maybe just referencing this episode in particular as Van’s big, main-character moment. It also happens to be the first writing credit from Stefani Robinson this season, who contributed the hilarious “Barbershop” and heart-wrenching “Woods” to Robbin’ Season. It’s not a surprise that Robinson infuses Van with the most humanity and humor we’ve seen from her in a tight 30 minutes. Zazie Beetz is given the opportunity to really shine as a performer, beyond Van’s usual dry delivery, making us laugh hysterically before punching us in the gut.
It turns out that Van’s solo adventures are a lot more zany and downright deranged than we were meant to believe in Episode 2, when she seemed to be operating from a more grounded, spiritual place. In “Tarrare,” she’s spotted by an old friend named Candace (Adriyan Rae), along with her friends Shanice (Shanice Castro) and Xosha (Xosha Roquemore), running around France dressed like a Halloween-costume version of a Godard character with a three-foot-long baguette in her backpack. She’s also donning a heavy French accent, which I’m not cultured enough to rate. But her voice is noticeably several octaves higher than usual.
Candace is understandably concerned about Van, especially when she sees her phone blowing up with text messages, but doesn’t immediately ask about her whereabouts or her creepy Amélie transformation. Instead she, Shanice and Xosha follow Van around as she visits one of her boyfriends, the actor Alexander Skarsgaard, and plants drugs in his hotel room as a part of a game they play—at least according to her. When they have an argument later in the episode, Van spits on his mustache, and he proceeds to jerk off aggressively in a bathroom. It’s not the funniest cameo, but I did enjoy hearing the actor say “ASHANTAAYYY” while dancing around to “Rock Wit U.”
After leaving a crack pipe on his bed and informing the concierge that he’s overdosed, Van takes the women on mopeds to an apartment complex that Shanice says “feels like Candyman.” (Shanice and Xosha provide some hilarious commentary throughout this madcap adventure). There, Van unlocks a safe to find an empty cooler and blames a man named Emilio. The women assume Van is trying to retrieve drugs, but the actual contraband is a lot more jarring.
As the women are about to leave, they’re chased off the premises by a menacing group of guys who emerge from the complex. They abandon their mopeds and go to a museum where Van asks to speak to a tour guide named Emilio. What ensues between them is a delightfully stupid exchange in which she demands that Emilio give her the package while almost beating him to death with her baguette. She informs us that it’s basically as dense as a brick from being left out for days in the sun. After bloodying Emilio’s face to farcical music, he tells her it’s in a vase.
The women grab the package and head off to a dinner party Van invited them to. Shanice and Xosha are fully intrigued by Van’s shenanigans, but Candace is wholly perturbed by her behavior at this point. So, she follows Van down to a kitchen where she makes out with the chef and hands him the package. As Candace and Van move to a corner to talk, we see him pull out human hands from the bag and prepare to place them on a skillet.
Candace finally calls Van out on her new persona and asks her what she’s doing with her life. When she asks about Lottie, Van tells her that she’s going to bring her to live with her in France, to which Candace responds earnestly and with one eyebrow raised to the ceiling, “To eat hands?”
Something in Van snaps, as she begins screaming, throwing plates, and asking for Lottie. A character experiencing a mental breakdown while a cannibalistic feast plays out in the background is not something you expect to see on even a prestige sitcom. But the final act of this episode made me long for more cannibalism comedy in mainstream media. Meanwhile, Shanice and Xosha are seated at the dinner where everyone is instructed to put a napkin over their head. They unknowingly eat a fried finger before pulling off their napkins and fleeing the party.
Van and Candace finally get to have a heart-to-heart on a park bench after her panic attack. No longer speaking in a French accent, Van reveals that she almost killed herself driving in Atlanta after a dark feeling came over, and she closed her eyes and ended up in the opposite lane. She thought a vacation in Europe and some Amelie cosplay would make her feel better, but she still doesn’t know who she is at the end of the day.
Xosha Roquemore as Xosha, Adriyan Rae as Candice, and Zazie Beetz as Van in Atlanta's Season 3 finale "Tarrare"
Roger Do Minh/FXBeetz delivers an impressive, heartbreaking monologue that feels like it should’ve taken place in the middle of the season, closer to when we had last seen her, as opposed to the finale. This also may be why they added a post-credits scene that features Earn receiving a mysterious bag and pulling out a portrait of Tobias Segal, a recurring guest star this season, to tie everything together.
The episode ends with an eerie zoom into his face. Whether this is foreshadowing that we’ll see him in Season 4 or that he was some significant motif throughout the season other than a random dude, who knows. Either way, it’s clear that the hype around “Teddy Perkins” has contributed to this show’s unnecessary interest in horror.
While tonight’s finale felt like a strange way to close out the season, it’s a relief to end on a well-done, compelling piece of work re-centering the show’s central players, regardless of whether it makes sense. It’s likely that most fans will walk away from this season wishing Stefani Robinson was more involved.
