Every 'Atlanta' episode from seasons 1 and 2, ranked

Way back in 2016 — before its chaotically downbeat social surrealism became the real world's status quo — the FX comedy Atlanta began with a more or less straightforward concept. Earn Marks (creator Donald Glover), a Princeton dropout with more problems than money, talks his way into managing his cousin, Alfred "Paper Boi" Miles (Brian Tyree Henry), a drug dealer with a burgeoning rap career. Alfred's roommate, Darius (LaKeith Stanfield), is always along for the ride. Van (Zazie Beetz), Earn's sometime-girlfriend and the mother of their child, generally seems skeptical. But Atlanta quickly expanded its sitcom vision in several unexpected directions, transforming into a feverish, prophetic, brutally systemic, reality-warped depiction of modern-day America.

Read below to see EW's ranking of the series' first two seasons — all 21 disturbing/hilarious episodes — in an attempt to distinguish the merely great from the world-shakingly perfect.

21. "The Jacket" (season 1, episode 10)

Harold House Moore and Donald Glover on 'Atlanta'.

Don't make us choose! Okay, fine: Of all the show's quest narratives, Earn's hungover search for his jacket is the least compelling. The twist ending is a gut shot, though. —Darren Franich

20. "Go for Broke" (season 1, episode 3)

No offense to Migos, but their extended cameo suggests a much sillier, even Entourage-y version of Atlanta. Conversely, Earn's flailing broke-ass date with Van makes for ace cringe comedy. —D.F.

19. "Alligator Man" (season 2, episode 1)

Sure, this premiere episode heavy-handedly establishes the season's Robbin' Season conceit, but Darius' "Florida Man" conspiracy theory is one of the most original Sunshine State jokes. Plus, there's a hilarious Emmy Award-winning turn from Katt Williams. —Chancellor Agard

18. "Helen" (season 2, episode 4)

A reluctant Earn and excited Van head to the Bavarian-style town to celebrate Fastnacht, which is basically a pre-Lenten Holiday where there are games, someone who steals things for fun, and Blackface is apparently, like, a tradition. Needless to say, things don't quite go as planned for the couple and their relationship reaches the breaking point it's been building to since the pilot. Despite the inevitability of Earn and Van's falling out, this episode just really makes you wish we'd spend a bit more time with them as a couple leading up to this moment. —C.A.

17. "The Club" (season 1, episode 8)

After the experimental thrills of "B.A.N.," Atlanta returned to its regularly scheduled programming with this solid effort about Earn, Alfred, and Darius' night out at the club. What's hilarious is how almost none of them want to be there: Alfred is unimpressed by the VIP section and hates the crowd he's attracting, especially an overly enthusiastic fan who threateningly recites his lyrics at him; Earn hates going to clubs, taking shots, and chasing down a slippery owner for money; and Darius is just floating around. Of course, the night ends in violence, which evokes all-too-familiar headlines, but the show impressively avoids clichés thanks to unexpected details like a secret door, a righteous robbery, and an invisible car. —C.A.

16. "The Streisand Effect" (season 1, episode 4)

Is attention-hogging vlogger Zan (Freddie Kuguru) the most annoying Atlanta character ever? Isn't that the point? Meanwhile, Earn's rambling swords-and-puppies caper with Darius was LaKeith Stanfield's star-making moment. "The Streisand Effect" marks the first time Atlanta really tackles, like, "the corrosive effects of social media" as a plot point, which makes it feel both prescient and already a bit dated (Zan is big on Vine). —D.F.

15. "Sportin' Waves" (season 2, episode 2)

There's a stick-up, a job interview, some light mall larceny, and a dystopian tech company. Alfred's non-performance for an office full of disinterested cubicle drones is a whole Twilight Zone episode in under 30 seconds. This is about as close as season 2 ever came to centering an episode on Tracy (Khris Davis), a character whose serene unimportance wound up being a crucial (if largely understated) part of Robbin' Season's final act. Mainly, though, this rambling and overstuffed outing is historic for the Paper Boi acoustic rap cover. "White girls love that s---," deadpans Darius. —D.F.

14. "Money Bag Shawty" (season 2, episode 3)

What is authenticity? Is rival rapper Clark County (RJ Walker) an industry plant? Will anyone accept Earn's $100 bill? Atlanta's best date-night episode asks all this and more as Earn tries to enjoy his earnings with Van, suffering indignity after indignity along the way. Meanwhile, Alfred and Darius have a hilariously chilling encounter with Clark County. Of course, both stories converge at a strip club, where Earn is robbed of even more money and then his dignity, thanks to an out-of-left-field cameo from Michael Vick. —C.A.

13. "The Big Bang" (season 1, episode 1)

Atlanta's pilot loses a few points for beginning with a flash-forward and then immediately rewinding to show us how we got there, which was an overused trope in 2016, but everything else just works. The show had a pretty firm grasp of its dreamy and off-kilter tone from the beginning, and this episode is filled with so many specific details that one could consider so Atlanta: from the white radio station employee who flagrantly uses the N-word around Earn but not other Black people (which is a revealing and relatable experience), to Earn's bizarre and unexplained encounter with peanut butter sandwich-pushing wannabe prophet Ahmad White (Emmett Hunter). At one point, a disheartened Earn wonders if some people are just supposed to lose, which, after two seasons, seems to be one of the biggest questions at the heart of Atlanta. —C.A.

12. "Crabs in a Barrel" (season 2, episode 11)

Shoutout to Chekhov's golden gun! Atlanta is staunchly an episodic show that loves a digression, so much so that the second season's main arc — Earn and Alfred's reconsideration of their business relationship — wasn't immediately obvious until the final trio of episodes as Earn's various screw-ups brought things to a head. Yet, in hindsight, the show was steadily building to this climactic finale from the moment Darius explained the Robbin' Season thesis in the season 2 premiere. Thus, Earn coldly planting the forgotten golden gun on Clark County's manager as they go through airport security on the way to Europe — leveling up in Alfred's eyes — feels, well, earned. It also reminds us that Atlanta meanders with purpose. —C.A.

11. "Juneteenth" (season 1, episode 9)

Microaggressive racial tension piles high when Earn and Van play pretend-married at an interracial couple's aristocratic Juneteenth celebration. Guest stars Cassandra Freeman (later the new Aunt Viv on Bel-Air) and Rick Holmes bring that couple to memorable life. She's initially an aspirational figure for Van; he's a white guy with a palpably embarrassing (yet undeniably encyclopedic) fandom for Black culture. Gotta admit, we're still wondering what the "Forty Acres and a Moscow Mule" tastes like. —D.F.

10. "B.A.N." (season 1, episode 7)

The one full-fledged gimmick episode traps Alfred on the "Black American Network." Writer-director Donald Glover packs in the satiric delights, with faux commercials, a Caitlyn Jenner conversation, and a marvelous news segment about a Black teenager who decides he's a 35-year-old white systems engineer. The whole transgender-themed debate segment might make "B.A.N." the one episode of Atlanta that has gotten more controversial since it aired, but it's worth pointing out that, for all the uproarious stylistic tricks on display, this is also the episode where Alfred most sincerely sums up his worldview: "It's hard for me to care about this when nobody cares about me as a Black human man." "B.A.N." is also the episode where a cartoon sugary-cereal commercial turns into a horror-satiric look at police brutality. Only seven episodes in, Atlanta was already showing off the breadth of its imagination and the depth of its social investigation. —D.F.

9. "Nobody Beats the Biebs" (season 1, episode 5)

"Nobody Beats the Biebs" is Atlanta's first big swing. Earn gets Alfred a spot in a local charity basketball game, but Paper Boi ends up being upstaged by a racebent version of Justin Bieber (Austin Crute). Initially, you can't believe this is the "Baby" singer when Crute boisterously enters, but that disbelief eventually gives way to both discomforting respect because the show and Crute fully commit to this ballsy bit and make you reconsider everything you thought you understood about the show. Pitting Alfred against a Black Justin Bieber raises several compelling questions about race and celebrity — specifically how would we react to Bieber's antics if he was Black — and makes it clear that anything is possible on Atlanta. Plus, the fake Bieber song Donald Glover sings over the credits is — and I hate using this word — a bop. —C.A.

8. "FUBU" (season 2, episode 10)

Cure your '90s nostalgia with this surprisingly tense high school flashback. When young Earn (Alkoya Brunson) wears knockoff FUBU to class, the risk of social calamity spurs young Alfred (Abraham Clinkscales) to action. It's a cute-enough origin story that touches on a lot of the show's recurring themes, though it also arrived right as the whole idea of a youth-version flashback episode became a recurring trope for melancholy artcoms. But "FUBU" also becomes something much richer (and sadder) in its final moments, which taps into underlying layers of sadness beneath the jersey caper. —D.F.

7. "Barbershop" (season 2, episode 5)

In which Alfred tries and tries and tries to just get a dang haircut from Bibby (Robert S. Powell), a chatty barber whose side hustles have side hustles. Anecdotally, this could be the most controversial of Atlanta's narrative experiments. It's unquestionably a love-it-or-hate-it shaggy-dog tale, which we love for Bibby's con-man serenity and Alfred's slowly burning patience. (When you consider how quickly all the main actors on Atlanta became in-demand stars, it's remarkable to note how many episodes turn the leads into confused observers for eccentric guest stars.) —D.F.

6. "North of the Border" (season 2, episode 9)

The show's escalating gothic absurdity apexes when a squad of naked dancing fratboy pledges ruin "Laffy Taffy" forever. But coming after a brilliant run of breakaway adventures, this campus caper devastatingly refocused on the cousin's peculiar dynamic, at once warmly supportive and brutally transactional. "North of the Border" is the best example of "normal" Atlanta, that barely-glimpsed sitcom where a rapper, his cousin-manager, and their loopy-savant best pal get into kooky scrapes. So there's an Entourage-goes-to-campus straightforwardness to the setup (the only lodging Earn can find is in a fan's dorm room) even as the details immediately bend in cheekily nightmarish directions. If you had to pick one short scene that summons Atlanta's whole tone-clashing wonder — patient, goofy, nightmarish, sexy, confounding — consider the moment when Violet (Jerusha Cavazos) cozies up to Alfred on her bed and tells him about a dream she recently had, where she was a crocodile and he was a doomed crane. Predictably, no one ever explains the footprint on the ceiling. —D.F.

5. "Value" (season 1, episode 6)

After establishing Earn, Darius, and Alfred's dynamic in the first five episodes, Atlanta finally turned its attention to Zazie Beetz's Van in Donald Glover's merciless directorial debut, which illuminates the sometimes single mom's frustrations. We begin with Van meeting her bougie friend Jayde (Aubin Wise) for dinner. Their friendship feels lived in from the moment Van arrives, and it's a complicated one because it's clear there's love here even as their passive-aggressive comments turn into aggressive critiques. They eventually make up over a blunt; however, that has disastrous consequences for Van when she wakes up the next morning and remembers it's drug test day at school. Cue a hilariously humiliating quest for drug-free urine, which also showcases Van's resourcefulness and suggests how she manages to keep things together without help from Earn. If "Value" had ended with Van's firing, it would've earned top marks for proving that any of the show's characters could hold an entire episode by themselves; however, the half-hour's wild, confounding, and indelible closing shot of a Black kid in white face is what pushes this story over the edge into legendary. —C.A.

4. "Streets on Lock" (season 1, episode 2)

While Paper Boi experiences the joys and agonies of post-shooting fame, Earn endures long hours in county lockup. The bureaucratic nightmare is a great showcase for Donald Glover's exhausted deadpan, which was mildly shocking so soon after his jaunty Community days. Less flashy than the pilot, "Streets on Lock" was the first vivid demonstration of Atlanta's peculiar tone of resonant absurdity. The people in lockup around Earn could practically be a sitcom ensemble — until things turn shockingly violent. And Brian Tyree Henry immediately pinpoints Alfred's baffled reaction to his own celebrity: Treasure the look on his face when he tries, and hilariously fails, to convince Paper Boi-loving kids that guns aren't cool. —D.F.

3. "Woods" (season 2, episode 8)

Atlanta has always felt like a liminal space and that feeling was never more present than in this Alfred-centric banger. Written by Stefani Robinson and boasting Brian Tyree Henry's best performance on the show, this mournful installment begins with Alfred having a waking dream about his mother, who is shown bustling about his messy home in the background, on the anniversary of her death. Rather than wallow in the sadness of the occasion or make it the point of the episode, though, the script simply allows it to color what transpires, and Henry makes you feel Alfred's grief as he spends the day with his Insta-famous not-girlfriend Sierra (Angela Wildflower) without it ever becoming text. Unfortunately, though, some fans recognize the rapper while he's walking home alone and mug him. Alfred narrowly escapes with his life and embarks on a harrowing yet transformative journey through the woods — and symbolically his dark and knotty mind — that forces him to untangle his conflicted feelings about fame. Green can be a warm color in nature, but here director Hiro Murai makes the vibrant trees feel threatening and overbearing as Alfred moves through them in his light blue sweatshirt, only intensifying the creepiness. Given how often violence breaks out on the show and Alfred's encounter with a man experiencing homelessness — who may or may not be there — you definitely worry Alfred won't make it out of here alive. Thankfully, he does, and he emerges from this ordeal changed. —C.A.

2. "Champagne Papi" (season 2, episode 7)

No Atlanta party is ever just fun. So, when Van spends New Year's at Drake's house, the weed-gummy farce turns mind-bending: think Waiting for Godot but for "Hotline Bling." Season 2's hot streak seemed to invent new shows every week, and you could imagine six seasons with Van's riotous girlfriend ensemble (including pre-stardom Danielle Deadwyler, as hilarious here as she was heartbreaking in Station Eleven and 2022's Till). Like a lot of the show's best episodes, "Champagne Papi" is not-so-secretly about (deep breath) the postmodern commodification of the self, which the deftly hilarious script by Ibra Ake cleverly explores. "I need a photo with Drake because my Instagram's weak as f---," Van says — a mission statement that later got sampled by Drake himself for "In My Feelings." The whole party swirls around Drake's apparent absence, so it's appropriate that this raucous night-out extravaganza also features Darius paraphrasing Bostrom's simulation theory. All directed with a woozy after-hours flair by Amy Seimetz. —D.F.

1. "Teddy Perkins" (season 2, episode 6)

This Emmy-nominated episode showcases all of Atlanta's strengths, from its unpredictably twisty quests to its daring and non-didactic exploration of familiar topics, and the fact that any of its main characters could anchor an entire episode solo. Here, Darius' deceptively simple mission to pick up a rainbow-keyed piano from the eponymous Teddy Perkins (Donald Glover in whiteface) pushes the series headfirst into horror, as the reclusive and disturbed former child star takes Darius on a tour of his dark mansion. Under Murai's direction, every shot feels menacing and meaningful. The jokes in Glover's script manage to both cut and heighten the tension on the way to a shockingly violent and sad ending. With its consideration of Blackness, fame, and the relationship between pain and art, this stylistically distinctive episode feels like a piece of not only the series but Glover's entire career. —C.A.

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