"Atlanta is like a rapper obsessed with his own brilliance," says Wesley Morris. "You want to see if the show can top itself because that self-regard is part of the hook. But loving this show means worrying that it might be devoured by its own genius, that it’s too great to last, that, eventually, conceit will cannibalize concept. This second batch of episodes was more obviously, aggressively ambitious. The show became cinema (one ominous aerial shot of a vegetal forest canopy made me want vinaigrette) and appeared to have on its mind the ideas in Get Out, the moods of Moonlight, the hypnotic ambiguities of David Lynch. Some of that reach toward movie-ness nudged the show into self-conscious precocity, the equivalent of skipping a grade."
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TOPICS: Atlanta, FX, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Donald Glover, Hiro Murai, LaKeith Stanfield, Stevie Wonder