I didn't go to anything prestigious, but I chose the state school because I wanted to go to the football games. I didn't think about my living situation or how I'd react to being away from home or how interested I was in the campus culture or whether I'd want to meet anybody new; I just picked the school because I wanted to get cheap tickets to football.


Unlike Earn I was a slacker ass student but I definitely had potential; I was 1 point away from an ACT score that'd have earned me a full ride so I ran off with a bunch of grants and low-interest loans. But college just wasn't for me, I hated the culture I was surrounded by and the friends I kept mostly stayed making the situation feel weird, like I was missing something or didn't get something fundamental about the experience. Wound up meeting some trapper dude that lived near a fraternity party house and rather than go to class, I just turned that semester into the only period of my life I ever professionally sold drugs then moved back home to city college (and that's a whole other story).


But I'm thinking what probably happened with Earn is something somewhat similar (though obviously more to do with race than the general anxiety I dealt with); he went to Princeton because of one or two Big Ideas he had about what that experience would be like, quickly found that it was something else entirely (you see how quickly he bucks back at white-laced spaces like Craig's house last season or the marketing start-up in episode 2) and decided he'd rather try to cut corners or straight up fuck up than play that game. And it's dogged him ever since to the point he's looking for any shortcut he can find to put him in the position he saw going to Princeton putting him in in the first place.


I'd also read a comment in some season preview article that said one of the more interesting things about Atlanta is how its characters exist in that weird middle ground of high-poverty where you mostly feel comfortable with your station in life whether because it's all you've ever known or you're familiar enough with the idea of happiness that you can manufacture it moment to moment. But these characters let themselves get trapped by those moments of happiness and constantly forget or put off how dire their situation is in the grand scheme of things; Van's episode last season was a perfect example of that mindset I'm all too familiar with, of fucking up right when you're on the cusp of leading a normal adult life because somehow your mind convinces you you might not have been worth that regular life anyway. It's definitely refreshing to see in a non-David Simon, comedic setting, but the laughter doesn't necessarily hide the pain.


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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
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