10 TV Episodes That Should Have Jumped the Shark (But Didn't)

Community may have been Donald Glover’s big break, but Atlanta was where he proved he had the chops to write, run and act in something much bigger, blending comedy and drama in narratives and roles that are weighty and considerably more three-dimensional. The show follows Earn (Glover) and Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry), a music manager and rapper, who face trials and tribulations traversing the Atlanta (Georgia) hip-hop scene.

The show’s brilliance has always been its use of somewhat episodic, standalone stories that are less monster-of-the-week and more short dramatic works in their own right. And while season four episode eight, “The Goof Who Sat by the Door” is very much that, it was also a major risk to take with a big show at such a critical time.

Goof sidesteps Atlanta’s main narrative concerns, totally disregarding the series' plotline for a documentary-style episode starring none of the show's usual characters, about the fictional Tom Washington (Eric Berryman), a Black man appointed CEO of Disney who wants to make "the Blackest movie of all time".

Arriving just two episodes from the end of the show, this was a very late move into uncharted territory, and could have bombed the whole thing, leaving the series on a sour note. But the element of surprise was its greatest weapon, capitalising on an already committed audience to serve up something challenging and unusual, and it won nigh-endless praise for doing so.