Atlanta Season 3 Episode 1 Review: “Three Slaps” Explained

Atlanta season 3 episode 1 review: a premiere that refuses to play it safe

After a long wait, Atlanta finally touched down on FX with a season opener that slaps, three times over, which fits an episode titled “Three Slaps.” Season three was meant to start filming in spring 2020, and the pandemic shut production down; filming resumed on April 2, 2021 and wrapped in August 2021, and FX confirmed the March 24, 2022 premiere date in December 2021. Viewers had waited about four years since the second season, and the show answered by handing them a story that looks nothing like the first two.

The season is set largely in Europe, where Earn (Donald Glover), Paper Boi, Darius and Van are on a tour. None of that is visible here. The premiere is Stephen Glover’s script, directed by Hiro Murai, and it runs like a short horror film about a child. The usual cast appears only in the closing moments, when the episode reveals its frame, and that choice sets the tone for a season that keeps interrupting itself with stories of this kind.

It is an intense hour. As season openers go, it belongs near the top of any list, with scattered moments of levity serving as a salve against a larger and darker issue that is still present in the country today.

The lake and the opening monologue

The episode opens on a beautiful shot of two men in a boat on a lake at night, with a single light for company. Gentility is not on the table. One of the men, who is white, waxes philosophical about how the water they are drifting on was built over a town, a town made up of Black residents. The setting is Lake Lanier in Georgia. The image sets up one of the episode’s main themes: some people are born lucky, some carry guilt about that luck, and the water keeps the evidence under the surface.

The monologue also sets the mood for what follows. The black water laps against the boat, the delivery is quiet, and the audience is told, without being told, that the story that follows is rooted in something real.

Loquareeous and the three slaps

The story proper starts in a school during Black History Month. Loquareeous is enthusiastic to the point of excess, and he is called into a principal’s office because he is acting out. In truth he is making his aggression and sadness physical, by dancing on a desk. His parents are summoned, his mother is furious to be there, and his grandfather answers the situation with three slaps, in front of a guidance counselor who is a legally employed witness to childhood trauma.

The punishment looks militant, even abusive. The story treats it as part of a harsh reality: the family was not handed anything easily, and the boy’s parents see discipline as protection. When welfare services come to the door, Loquareeous swears he did not tell on anyone. His mother, furious, asks child services to take him away, and the episode never settles whether this is meant as a teachable moment or as plain cruelty. The poor kid ends up in state custody.

The foster home

He is placed with a white couple, Amber and Gayle, who run a household of other Black children as if they were collectors. They grow their own food, make kombucha, force the children to work in the garden without pay, and send them to the farmer’s market with sandwich boards. They also decide not to pronounce his name and call him Larry. The bills are not being paid, and dinner is raw chicken and a few vegetables.

The episode has a clear target: the white-savior fantasy, which is shown here as a form of control with a better alibi. Loquareeous wants normal things, a hamburger and some peace of mind, and when he tries to get arrested by running toward a police officer, the couple defuse the situation by offering the officer tea. Because everyone present is white, everything is fine. The scene is funny and horrifying in equal measure.

A caseworker arrives after a complaint from the neighbors, and the house’s conditions are unmistakable: a sick child with no medicine, a philosophy of letting nature take its course, and a dinner of fried chicken that is basically a food-poisoning risk. That night Loquareeous dreams of his mother’s head in a pickle jar and the family dog Popcorn in a grotesque image alongside his grandfather. The house is a horror show, and the dreams make perfect sense.

The trip, the lake and the escape

The family then sets off on a trip toward the Grand Canyon. In the rain the children share an unspoken shorthand for how unstable their guardians are, and the audience can sense it too: crazy has no color and no scent, but it can be tasted in the air. The van stops at night, and what looks like release is something much darker.

The episode builds to the lake, set to songs by Jessica Pratt that are beautiful and mournful, and it stages the ending as a decision by the adults that the children never made. Loquareeous, a clever kid, saves himself and takes one last act of defiance on the way out. He then walks all night to get back home, hungry and tired, where his mother greets him with the cold reception that somehow reads as warm. The punishment of the opening scene, the episode seems to say, is love of a kind the foster home could never offer.

The real story behind the episode

The episode is inspired by the 2018 deaths of the Hart family in California, a case that drew attention partly because of a widely shared photograph of Devonte Hart, a Black boy who had been adopted by a white couple, hugging a police officer. Devonte’s image appears in the episode’s imagery, including a scene where Loquareeous holds a free-hugs sign at the market and runs to a cop. The ending departs from the real events, which makes it easier to watch and does not make it less pointed.

Once the story ends, the show pulls back and reveals that all of it was Earn’s dream. He wakes in a European hotel bed with a white woman beside him. The line the episode lands on is simple: welcome to Europe, new surroundings make for new thought processes, and the season is just getting started.

The dream frame is a neat device. It recasts the story as the anxiety of a Black man in a new country, carrying history in his head even when the surroundings change. Whether Earn is processing the lake, the child or the mood of the trip, the episode lets the viewer decide, and that openness is what makes it linger.

Atlanta season 3 episode 1 at a glance

• Title: “Three Slaps,” the season 3 premiere and the 22nd episode of the series.
• Air date: March 24, 2022, on FX.
• Writer: Stephen Glover. Director: Hiro Murai.
• Season 3 runs for ten episodes, with the finale on May 19, 2022.
• The main cast, Donald Glover, Brian Tyree Henry, LaKeith Stanfield and Zazie Beetz, does not drive this episode.

Verdict: a tough watch, and required viewing

“Three Slaps” was worth four years of waiting. It is the kind of opener that announces a show willing to tell any story it wants, whatever the expectations, and it makes its case with total control of tone. The humor, the horror and the sorrow share the same scenes.

What lifts the episode above a standard issue drama is the control of tone. A scene in which a police officer is offered tea sits a few minutes from a nightmare image, and neither undercuts the other. That blend is Atlanta’s signature, pushed here to an extreme that few shows would attempt in a season opener.

It is also a difficult watch, as it should be. The episode deals with abuse, neglect and death, and it does so in the context of a real case. Viewers should be ready for that, and for a conclusion that offers escape and comfort in the same breath.

As an introduction to Atlanta in Europe, it does something unusual: it asks for patience, then pays it back. Fans of the first two seasons may wonder where Earn and Al are, and the final shot answers that. The rest of the season carries on in the same spirit.

Sources

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