The Saddest Scene In Atlanta Season 1
Within each 30-minute episode, "Atlanta" manages to accomplish a lot. It often juggles comedic sensibilities, particularly absurdist humor, with darker themes and ideas. Sometimes, elements of horror are thrown in, as well. It's what makes "Atlanta" a unique property within the current television landscape.
And it does all of this while telling incredible stories. Some plotlines exist to just be weird and out-there, such as Earn (Donald Glover) trying to find a way to make his date with Van (Zazie Beetz) as cheap as possible. In other instances, the stories lead to profound conversations, which was the case for the infamous "Teddy Perkins" episode.
Then, there are the times when "Atlanta" taps into something profoundly sad. Of course, that's nothing new for comedies. As the years have passed, comedies have more frequently tapped into serious subject matter, and "Atlanta" is no exception. But that doesn't stop one moment from Season 1 from standing out the most with how it probably made some viewers shed a tear.
Seeing where Earn lives is heart-wrenching
Throughout "Atlanta" Season 1, it comes as no surprise that Earn talks about how poor he is so often. He gives Darius (LaKeith Stanfield) an entire speech about how he can't do things like invest his money because he needs to put food on the table now. He's frequently down to his last dollar, to the point where he's worried about how much a date will cost him. It's nothing new for a sitcom. Comedies often follow poorer characters, but their plights are often played for jokes. The same could be said for Earn's situation for much of "Atlanta," but it all comes crashing down for the Season 1 finale.
For the very final sequence, we see Earn going back "home," except in this instance, home is a storage unit. It's a devastating revelation, and it puts the episodes that came before into perspective. The entire time Earn was going on wacky adventures with Darius and Alfred (Brian Tyree Henry), he was going back to sleep in a storage unit.
A lot of other viewers felt heartbroken over seeing Earn's living situation, even after he had done all of the right things. On Reddit, u/CineMasai wrote, "The ending was bittersweet to me. He mended his relationships with arguably two of the most important people in his life and made enough money to keep them both happy; but even then, his pride led him back to the storage unit." Earn didn't stay in the storage unit much longer, getting evicted at the start of Season 2, but it's an impactful moment and a great showcase of how serious "Atlanta" can get.