Atlanta “Teddy Perkins” Review
For those who watch Donald Glover’s show Atlanta, this week’s episode “Teddy Perkins” was something crazy. An episode full of suspense that gives a nightmare-like reality, it’s an episode that is engaging and departs from the typical dark comedy and takes on societal issues that have been recurring throughout Atlanta’s two season run. Spoilers ahead if you haven’t watched it yet. This episode focuses primarily on Darius. He takes a U-Haul truck over to an Atlanta mansion to pick up a piano with colored keys that he found over some Craigslist type website. Once he gets there, he’s greeted by Teddy Perkins, who lives at the mansion. Teddy is this mysterious, reclusive, eccentric character who looks physically like Michael Jackson circa 2003 (the pale white skin with straight black hair, disfigured facial features and high pitched resemble MJ). Throughout the course of the episode, Teddy cryptically tells his life story to Darius. We find out that he and his brother Benny are musically gifted pianists who have worked with famous musicians. Darius is stuck in this dark, barely lit mansion that looks like a museum with some strange person who throughout the course of the episode is stalling the sale of the piano that Darius wants. We learn more about Benny about how he also lives in the mansion too but due to a “rare skin disorder,” he doesn’t go outside or want to see anyone.
Darius finds himself wandering throughout the whole house, from the top floor all the way down to the basement. Teddy also explains how he’s trying to make the house as a museum just like Graceland and Neverland Ranch. He leads Darius to a hidden wing of the house which he’s dedicating to his father, where he basically tells Darius about how abusive he was to him and his brother (He specifically name drops other famous people’s fathers who played a big part in their children’s success [and sometimes abuse] such as Joe Jackson, Marvin Gaye Sr., Tiger Woods’ dad, The Williams sisters’ dad and the dad of Emilio Estevez’s character from The Breakfast Club who drops him off for Saturday detention at the beginning of the film).
Eventually, Darius does retrieve the piano. However, due to a faulty elevator, he is led to the basement of the mansion where he finds Benny, who is wheelchair bound and has his face heavily bandaged. Darius realizes that he’s being held as a prisoner in the mansion and that Teddy is trying to kill both Darius and Benny. Benny writes on a small chalk board to go to the attic to get a gun. Before he does that, Darius says that he’s gonna put the piano in the U-Haul first. When he tries to put the piano in the U-Haul, Teddy has parked his car behind the truck and his blocking the back of the truck. Darius goes back inside to see Teddy watching old film reels of his younger self practicing piano as his father demands him to play over and over again, showing the abuse that he endured as an adolescent. Teddy has the gun that Darius was looking for and basically is trying to set Darius up as trying to stage a home invasion where he kills Teddy. He forces Darius to put on handcuffs and ankle cuffs. He and Darius talk about the sacrifices that were made during his childhood and how Teddy’s father should have been remorseful to how his kids turned out. They are interrupted by Benny, who comes through the elevator, picks up the shotgun and kills Teddy before he turns the gun on himself. The cops show up and in the end, the piano that Darius wanted is taken away by the cops.
As mentioned earlier, the episode is full of suspense. It reminds me of the movie Get Out (which the actor who plays Darius, Lakeith Stanfield, was in). The psychological thriller aspects, the frightening nature of being targeted reminds of me of it. It also shows how the repercussions of sacrifice which have been shown in examples of Michael Jackson and other people who had similar upbringings. So far, “Teddy Perkins” has to be the best episode of this season so far. Atlanta has taken risks in the themes and styles of episodes (just like the season 1 episode that is based on a talk show). This risk turned out to be a great one. I’d recommend it to any Atlanta fan or thriller genre fan.
