Atlanta "New Jazz" Explained: Season 3 Episode 8 Review and Recap

Atlanta "New Jazz" explained: one very strange day in Amsterdam

Parents shape a person long after they stop being in the room. That idea sits under "New Jazz," the eighth episode of Atlanta's third season and the 29th of the series overall. Donald Glover wrote it, Hiro Murai directed it, and it is set in Amsterdam during the European tour that connects much of the season. It is among the show's strangest and most affecting hours.

It begins with a gift. Earn, who is covering costs and keeping an eye on everyone, gives Alfred and Darius spa passes. Al and Darius, played by Brian Tyree Henry and LaKeith Stanfield, would rather spend the afternoon smoking everything the Netherlands can offer. They bond over it, and then, as the episode puts it, they also break apart on separate paths. On the way to a weed spot, Al notices a man in a Goofy hat. Darius warns him not to turn out like that guy, tweaking.

The trouble starts with a cake. The Nepalese space cake the two share is stronger than either expects, and the effect is immediate. Al does not know what he has eaten, only that the world is bending. They talk about the band Stereolab and its song "The Flower Called Nowhere," and a flower that was in their tea is now in their bloodstream. Time slows. Al, walking the streets, begins to see life as a happier thing for everyone but himself, until he spots a rat suffering on the street. Darius, unfazed by the grotesque, keeps moving.

Lorraine and the Goofy hat

The scene that sets the plot in motion happens in Amsterdam's red-light district. Al sees a woman through a glass window, the sort of siren the neighborhood is known for, and before he can think about it a scuffle sends him into an alley. The episode makes a point that being famous changes everything. He is no longer Alfred. He is Paper Boi, and fans who have been left without a signature will take whatever they can get.

The street has more in store. A crowd of fans, angry about a missing signature, takes something else from him, and a baby is tossed in the confusion, with a woman wailing in the background. It turns out to be part of an art installation, a gag that plays as shocking for a moment and then slides into the dreamlike logic of the afternoon. The line between performance and reality has stopped holding for Al, and the episode never lets it recover.

Then he meets Lorraine, played by Ava Grey. She is critical of his hat and critical of him, and she follows him through an art museum, where she gives a running commentary on the exhibits that is both offensive and beautiful. She is a puck, a Bat-Mite figure who speaks in riddles. Her opening salvo is a warning shot: he should swap his pork-pie hat for a Goofy hat, which means becoming what he fears most, someone corny. She then asks the question that matters. Does he own his masters?

With the hat on, Al notices that many other people have the same one. Lorraine is inducting him into an exclusive club, and the name for it is New Jazz.

Cancel Club and Liam Neeson

The club turns out to be Cancel Club, which is as on the nose as it sounds. Al is the only person who does not understand the joke of the hat, and he is front and center for it. Everyone assumes he and Lorraine are sleeping together. Al insists he would never, because she is, in his view, out of her mind. At the bar, Al meets his better angel, Liam Neeson, playing himself.

Neeson talks about a past transgression, and his words are disturbing but delivered with a kind of elegance. The unsettling part is that the feelings are still there, and that he is trying to grapple with them. Neeson leaves Al with a parting thought: the best part of being white is that, given all the racist things he may have said, he does not have to learn anything he does not want to. The line lands because Al, who has spent the episode being stripped of context, understands it perfectly. Staging matters too. A red curtain in the style of David Lynch hangs behind the stage, and when Paper Boi is called up, Lorraine rescues him and leads him out into daylight.

The ending: where is Lorraine?

Outside, the drug is hitting hard and Lorraine is pressing. She tells him that growing a spine is not the worst thing to come from the experience, and that his family has made him look like a fool he cannot see. The scene goes into the territory of a Midsommar nightmare, and then it cuts to a hotel room. Earn has been keeping vigil over his cousin, who passed out on the street. Al asks only one thing: where is Lorraine?

The answer is the reveal that closes the episode: Lorraine is the name of Alfred's mother. The woman who spent the day telling him that his hat made him look ridiculous, and who asked whether he owns his masters, carries his mother's name, and a natural reading is that the whole day was Al arguing with the voice that shaped him. In the hotel room, the question gets a plain answer from Earn, who tells him he owns his masters. For a character who has never been sure of that, it is a quiet moment of relief.

Verdict: the most cinematic episode of the season

"New Jazz" is the sort of episode that makes a case for Atlanta as a series willing to risk confusion. It has a mystery, a ton of pathos and enough cinematic polish to feel like a short film. Murai's direction plays the drug haze for dread and comedy at once, and Henry delivers one of the show's finest performances as a man who cannot tell whether he is being helped or hunted.

The story works on two levels. On the surface, it is a bad trip: strange scenery, a talking guide, a very odd club. Underneath, it is about ownership of work, of image and of self. The question about the masters has an obvious reading about the music business, and a second reading about identity. Lorraine, as a manifestation of Al's mother, asks whether he has let others decide who he is. The hat, with its pointed embarrassment, stands for the compromises that fame demands.

The first act deserves credit too. Henry and Stanfield have played friends for three seasons, and the early scenes use that shorthand to make a drug trip feel like a real afternoon between people who know each other. Darius treats the weirdness as normal and Al reacts like someone seeing the world for the first time. When they separate, the audience feels the absence of the buffer Darius provides, and Al's exposure to the rest of the day is sharper for it. It is a careful bit of structure disguised as a stoner comedy.

The Neeson scene is the one likely to divide viewers. It is uncomfortable by design, and it lets a celebrity with a real controversy play a version of himself in the show's absurd universe. Whether it works depends on a viewer's patience for that kind of provocation. Taken as part of the whole, it makes the point that the club of cancelled figures is also a club that lets some members walk back in.

The craft supports the strangeness. The move from a night of clubs and neon to a morning in a hotel room, and the Lynch-style curtain behind the stage, point to a director in control of a story that looks as if it is not. With two episodes left, the season ends on the road with the cast uncertain about what comes next. "New Jazz" is an important piece of that story, and probably the best single hour to start with for someone sampling the season.

Sources

• Atlanta (TV series), Wikipedia — cast, creators, season and episode details
• List of Atlanta episodes, Wikipedia — episode titles, order and air dates