Critics reviews

With "Atlanta's" second season, Glover and crew are examining a very different life of crime from "The Sopranos" or "Breaking Bad" or "The Wire"; it shows us how easily "wrongdoing" slips under our skin and becomes a part of us. Few other shows are so capably transporting — not to a time or a city but a way of being, a way of living, that is only now being translated to screen.

Atlanta‘s surge in confidence brings to mind Louie, which evolved from a brilliant sketch-like show to a series of loose, surreal interludes that bridged the gap between television, cinema, stand-up comedy, and social media. . . . The series resembles an American film, with hues that wouldn't look out place in a production shot by Sean Williams Price, and with an understanding of silence that's as musical in its way as Paper Boi's beats.

Few shows are as good at building to dizzying heights of weirdness without clueing you in that anything out of the ordinary is happening. Fewer still have such an astute grasp of how mobile devices and internet connections have allowed everyone of every social class, race, and ethnicity to compulsively document their lives.

Whether they've managed to get free or not, Glover and [Vince] Staples have set off their own little eruptions of subversion and subtlety, of rap that isn't rap, of comedy that's violent. Options for those who have no options—a paradox, which is the point.

Atlanta, which ended its excellent first season on FX Tuesday night, has been rightly and frequently praised for its authentic, naturalistic portrayal of black culture in the titular city... But it succeeded at something else equally important: portraying economic struggle and the role that perception plays in achieving a certain status.

Even though the programs' artistic lineage is obvious, Atlanta and Better Things take Louis C.K.'s refinements to a new level, merge them with worldviews that you rarely see represented on TV, and tell their stories with such economy and grace that you might feel as if a new language were being worked out before your eyes.