Atlanta episode 2.08 "Woods"

I really hemmed and hawed about which episode to cover; more often than not, each one had a ‘special episode’ feel. Atlanta had main characters and an overarching story, to be sure, but the show almost feels more like a cohesive body of artwork than a narrative- and I love that about it.

Some episodes were completely isolated one-offs with no regular characters, like a racially charged Black Mirror. Others were bottle episodes, following familiar characters through events completely unrelated to the main story. And yet Atlanta feels laser focused, because the show isn’t about Earn’s fatherhood or Alfred’s rapping career so much as it’s about capturing an emotional reality that is largely abstract. The main characters are individuals with depth and intrigue, but they’re also archetypes in Donald Glover’s trippy contemporary parable.

At first, I was determined to write about “Teddy Perkins”, a Darius bottle episode that was kind of a thriller? Yet also had some of the funniest lines of the whole show (“Yo Paper Boi! I threw some extra fries in there!”/“Take ‘em out.”/ “Just don’t eat ‘em, damn!”). Atlanta is meta as a whole with its consistently self-deprecating episode descriptions (“Season 1 was better”, “Emmy bait fr”), but this episode’s end credit of “Teddy Perkins as himself”, when it was actually Donald Glover in white face, was when I was officially hooked on the show.

But “Woods”, an Alfred bottle episode, is one that’s really stuck with me after finishing the whole show. It’s a master class in writing, and an impactful depiction of both Alfred as an individual and what he represents. The tl;dr of “Woods” is that Alfred, having stormed off after a fight with his girl, gets jumped in a dead-end street and flees into the woods, where he gets lost and scared well into the night.

I think it’s very significant that we tend to see Alfred in situations where he’s frightened and/or vulnerable. Beyond “Woods”, the show’s penultimate episode finds Alfred in what becomes a genuine near-death experience on his ‘safe farm’, which we can assume he purchased after being targeted by the “Crank That Killer” in a previous episode.

Having established that even the comparably unassertive Earn sometimes feels like a “big Black gorilla”, Atlanta challenges that perception by inundating us with Alfred’s humanity and vulnerability. “Woods” is a beautifully written depiction of all the chinks in the armor Alfred is forced to wear as a rapper because “that’s what rap is, making the best out of a bad situation”.

The episode opens with Alfred, asleep on the couch, waking up to a woman cleaning the house and chastising him. An incoming call from Earn disrupts the moment and reveals that there was no one there. Earn asking him if he’s “doing okay today” is all we need to see that Alfred was thinking of his mother because today is the anniversary of her death (Atlanta is wonderful at providing no more information that necessary).

Alfred tells Earn he’s fine, sidesteps Darius who has his foot in dough after learning how to make pasta in a dream, and hops in the car with Sierra, a model who he’s clarified is not his girlfriend. Alfred is even more prickly than usual for reasons we understand but Sierra doesn’t. Nonetheless, we see her make him chuckle and smile and impress him with her take-charge attitude.

But tension builds slowly as she nags Alfred to “level up” his brand. He mostly follows her around while she takes pictures with fans and demands try-on sizes from retail employees, leading her to question why he isn’t behaving the same way. She tells him that his “dope boy from the hood act won’t last long” because “nobody wants someone famous to look just like them”.

Bryan Tyree Henry in "Woods". Image courtesy of IMDb.

Things come to a head as they get pedicures together. Sierra tells Alfred that he “needs to post on Instagram more”, and that they could “attach their brands”, then snaps a picture of them together. Alfred angrily insists that she delete it, repeating that he “ain’t about that fake shit”. They fight:

SIERRA: You sitting over there, whining, acting like you better than me cause I’m trying to get paid.

ALFRED: Look, I ain’t gotta stop being me, alright? That’s something boring ass people like yo ass gotta do. I’m leaving.

SIERRA: I drove.

ALFRED: I can walk, ho.

This is all just the inciting incident that will lead to Alfred finding himself alone in the middle of nowhere, but it’s a super weighty conversation. It shows Alfred’s authenticity and desire not to abandon his community. But both sides of the conversation are a great thematic rumination, and Sierra isn’t just vain and superficial for the fuck of it. She makes some compelling points, namely: “everybody want to be a Black girl, but the Black girls ain’t making no money from it”.  

But back to Alfred, now wandering the street. At the end of a rural dead-end road, he encounters a group of teen boys, who seem to be fans. They recognize him and praise his work, but quickly start asking a different kind of question: “You alone?”, “You ain’t got no car?”

When the answers are no and no, they attack, pulling out a gun and stealing his watch. Alfred sprints into the woods, at one point falling and busting his lip, then running some more as gunshots ring out behind him. Finally, he throws himself behind a tree trunk, gasping for air.

He catches his breath- and comes face to face with a man who’s just plain weird. Alfred tries to go politely on his way as the man rambles on and on: “You want some money? Come on. Let me give you some money. You can’t go to the dance without no money, boy. Let old Wally help you out. Please! I lost my baby”.

This gets Alfred’s attention, and he turns around, with sympathy. Wally continues: “Take some chap stick. I don’t like sharing lip to lip. You got germs?”

Alfred, now feeling fucked with, stops being polite. He tells Wally to stop following him, but he doesn’t listen. Alfred stumbles through the woods for who even knows how long, with Wally following behind being generally eerie and irritating.

Bryan Tyree Henry in "Woods". Image courtesy of IMDb.

Night falls. Alfred, exhausted, sits down on a log. Wally, still here, nags him to get up and make a decision about what to do. Already at the end of his rope, Alfred starts crying when Wally says, “You’re wasting time. And the only people who got time are dead. And if you’re dead, I’m gonna take them shoes, and your wallet, and that shirt.” He reveals a gun. “Imma count to 30, and if you ain’t walked out of here by then, I’m gonna hurt you, ‘cause ain’t nobody out here but you and me, boy”.

Alfred forces himself to flee, again. Crying, he runs through the woods until suddenly, miraculously, he finds himself on the road. Dirty and bloody he gets a drink from a convenience store where he’s recognized by a young boy. A genuine fan this time.

Without the boy even asking, Alfred offers to take a picture with him, coaching him through some poses. Then he sends him on his way with a “stay safe out there”.

Bryan Tyree Henry and Christian Adam in "Woods". Image courtesy of IMDb.

This might sound like an admittance of defeat, in a sense, given his stance earlier in the episode, but it reads more like an eye opener. This scene has a warmth to it. And Alfred isn’t any less himself in this moment with his little fan. Alfred’s just been through hell, but the point isn’t that he’s broken. It’s that he now understands that, whether he likes it or not, his place in his community is different now.

It's a great full circle episode that unpacks Alfred’s past and values, as well as what his character represents in both their fictional world and our own. What’s your favorite episode of Atlanta?