With less than a week to go, audiences are eagerly awaiting the arrival of Community alum Donald Glover’s new FX series, Atlanta. Serving as the show’s creator, executive producer, writer and star, Glover — also known as Childish Gambino — has been teasing fans for months about his so-called Twin Peaks “for rappers.” Everything from surreal teasers and trailers featuring footage played in reverse, to Glover’s suggestion that Atlanta will remind “white people” they “don’t know everything about black culture,” the anticipation is palpable.
The latest promo, titled “Inhale Atlanta,” offers viewers a split-screen montage of scenes, songs and sounds that doesn’t seem to follow a straightforward narrative path. Instead, the nearly four-minute trailer revolves around an unseen character’s quote, “Life itself is but a series of close calls. I mean how would you even know you were alive unless you nearly died?” While these words are performed, the split-screen trades shots of Glover lying in bed with his headphones on, staring into the barrel of a pistol sitting on his nightstand.
As serious as this may seem, however, most of “Inhale Atlanta” promises the audience a much larger hodgepodge of things that — unlike Community before it — won’t be so easy to ascertain. In any case, Atlanta premieres Tuesday, September 6 on FX.
