The Big Bang

"**The Big Bang**" is the first episode of the first season of *Atlanta*. It is the first episode of the series overall. It was released on September 6, 2016 on FX.

## Premise

Paper Boi? Who the hell is that? I swear everybody want to be a rapper now-a-days smh. Song is bumpin tho.

## Plot

Rapper Alfred "Paper Boi" Miles gets in an argument with a man who smashes his car's mirror, and his cousin Earnest "Earn" Marks attempts to stop it before it becomes violent, which becomes futile when the man insults Al's latest mixtape. As Al's spacey friend Darius experiences extreme déjà vu and Earn tries to stop a man from egging the confrontation on, Al takes out a gun, puts it to the man's chest, and after a moment of silence, fires.

Earlier that morning, Earn wakes up next to his daughter Lottie's mother and part-time lover, Vanessa "Van" Keifer. As Van gets dressed, she asks Earn to watch Lottie tonight as she is going out on a date. At his job as an airport credit card salesman, Earn's coworker shows him a music video made by Al, and he realizes his cousin is a semi-successful rapper. Al declines Earn's request to work as his manager, feeling Earn is too collected and passive, as well as Earn not talking to him since Al's mother's funeral. Al privately tells Earn's father Raleigh that he feels as though he doesn't know Earn anymore, and they both feel that he has been different since something that happened to him in Princeton. Raleigh vouches for him regardless, saying that Earn gets what he needs to do done, no matter what.

Wanting to show Al his value as a manager, Earn goes to see his white acquaintance Dave, who works at a local radio station. Dave turns him down, stating the station's head would not be interested because of Al's relative obscurity. He gets into the building anyway with the help of a friendly janitor, and slides Al's mixtape under the head's office door. On the bus home with Lottie, he is approached by a suited man, and laments his multiple failures. The man tells him that to be victorious, he has to stop seeing failure and let the universe guide him, advice that Earn rejects. The man makes a sandwich out of Nutella and forcefully tries to get Earn to bite it. The bus stops, and the man gets off with his dog and wanders into the nearby woods, leaving the Nutella behind. Earn almost sends Van a text saying that he loves her, something he was hesitant to say that morning. He is interrupted by a call from Al, who is happily listening to his own music on the radio, Earn's scheme having worked. He tells Earn to meet with him as soon as possible, and Earn drops Lottie at his parents' house (something Van had told him not to do) and goes to him.

He meets Al and Darius in a parking lot and accepts Al's offer of weed, something he claimed he no longer indulged in. Dave approaches them and lambasts Earn for his unprofessional methods, and Earn smugly tells him to retell Al a story he had told him early in which he used a racial slur. Dave tells it again with the slur removed and awkwardly leaves. Earn tells Al that he likes his song, but Al admits he hates it and turns it off. A man smashes the car's mirror and Earn stops Al from getting his gun out of the glove compartment, telling him "don't mess with the money." To his horror, he finds the holster empty and runs after him.

Back from her date, Van picks up Lottie and sees the story about the shooting on the nightly news, which states the man had only been wounded and Earn and Al have been arrested. Van furiously remarks upon Earn's idiocy.

## Trivia

* This episode aired as the first half of the one-hour series premiere of *Atlanta*, followed by "Streets on Lock."