 |
| Photo: Guy D'Alema/FX |
Of course, if anyone of out of the Atlanta crew was to have a day that started with listening to Music of My Mind and taking a U-Haul to nab a multicolored key piano and end it driving off after witnessing a murder-suicide, it would be Darius, who operates on a different mental plane than Earn or Alfred.
From the start, Atlanta has trafficked in weirdness, unexpected violence and gallows humor, but in "Teddy Perkins," all three converge, tossing in a big batch of haunted sadness and outright horror to create what is at this point the series' creepiest 30 minutes.
The episode gets its title from the husk of a man who emerges from the shadows to greet Darius. Teddy's Perkins' physical appearance-- translucent skin, unnatural facial features and flawless 27-piece wig--are unsettling enough. But as Darius' visit wears on, it becomes painfully obvious Teddy is fucked up mentally as well. We get hints of this when Teddy wholeheartedly jokes that maybe his famous brother, pianist Benny Hope, will get a great album out of his current condition (that being mute and confined to a wheelchair) and bemoans rap never grew out of its adolesence. When Darius responds sometimes people turn to rap because they just want to have fun, Teddy balks; for him, art is inseparable from pain.
However, the damage really snaps into focus when Teddy recalls with pride how he and Benny's dad would make them practice for hours everyday, and beat them when they made mistakes. He never shouts "Jamon!" but Teddy Perkins is clearly a stand-in for Michael Jackson, a man who was beaten into a world-class performer by his overbearing father then crushed by the celebrity he allowed to define his life. When your human identity is sacrificed in order to focus on a singular goal, shit can get real weird, real fast.
The creepiest and/or saddest part of Teddy's grim tour is when he takes Darius to a room with a single suited mannequin in the center. After lauding his father's methods, Teddy says he wants the whole section dedicated to infamous stage fathers like Joe Jackson, Marvin Gaye Sr. and Richard Williams. Whether Benny is even real is called into a question, at least until Darius finds him in the basement, and learns Teddy plans to kill them both with a gun from the attic. Darius, like any rational-ass human being, attempts to get the fuck out of there, but can't because Teddy's blocking his U-Haul.
"You are the sacrifice," Teddy says, now holding a shotgun as he leads Darius downstairs and shackles him to a chair. Following Teddy's logic, he'll shoot Darius--who'll be posthumously labeled an obsessed fan--and his brother, ensuring some press coverage for his pathetic gift shop and museum. Goddamn fame is a helluva drug.
Darius alludes to his own father issues, but asserts growing up means realizing your don't have to repeat your parents' mistakes. Bringing things back to music, Teddy argues Stevie Wonder's blindness
fueled his creativity; but Darius counters that while Stevie is blind, he was not blinded by his disability, and used his art to see the beauty of life. Teddy's like *buzz* wrong answer, and it's not looking good until Benny rolls out of the elevator and pumps a shot into his brother before turning the barrel on himself.
Honestly there are likely layers on layers on layers here, pop culture references beyond Michael and Stevie and shades of Sunset Boulevard I'm probably missing. So what's the main message-not-message (since Donald Glover abhors preachiness) to take away from "Teddy Jenkins?" To bring it back to the season's overall theme, Teddy and Benny's dad gifted them success but robbed them of stability and happiness. And then they spent the rest of their lives robbing themselves of it.
---Other Thoughts:
--Alfred, Tracy and Earn (though all he did was laugh along) gave some much needed levity to the episode, checking in on Darius to make sure he wasn't dead and ripping into Sammy Sosa's, shall we say, "transformation."
--The one liners tho:
- "We got Jay-Z, he's like 65."
-The nigga look like somebody left Sammy Sosa in a dryer."
- "Finish that hat for Dionne Warwick."
--The blood on the piano key felt a little heavy-handed to me. The empty mansion, old memorbilia and daddy mannequin more than made the point Teddy and Benny paid a high price for their success.
--A low key MJ allusion may have been during Teddy's angry outburst when talking about his brother's condition. According to those who knew him, Michael's voice took on a deeper tone when he was upset.
--Eating a soft-boiled ostrich egg? Definitely felt like some bizarre, gross shit a deluded rich person would do just 'cause they can.
--Darius turning the Southern Made hat with the Confederate flag logo into one that said "U Mad?" Classic.
--Looks like we'll be getting another Van-centric episode next week. Yay! Hopefully it won't be another childhood friend revealing she's absolute trash.
Comments