Budapest was the next stop for Atlanta’s season three European tour. Alfred (“Al”), played by Brian Tyree Henry (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, If Beale Street Could Talk), Earn, played by the show’s creator Donald Glover (Solo: A Star Wars Story, Community), and Darius, played by LaKeith Stanfield (Sorry to Bother You, Knives Out), all experienced an unexpectedly frustrating night in the old and supposedly haunted venue.
Earn buzzes around in preparation for the show. As Paper Boi’s manager, he takes on a very active role in ensuring that everything is in order for Al’s performance. Al, Darius, and Socks, played by Hugh Coles (The Hybrid), hang out before the show. Darius has acquired a blueprint for the building with four or five rooms that are not on file. He intends to explore them. Al meets with a little boy who has cancer before the show and gives him a liquor bottle when he has to leave. Al prepares to go on stage, but there is a random guy on stage shouting and exciting the crowd. We later find out this is Wiley, played by Samuel Blenkin (Dracula, Peaky Blinders).
After a successful show, Al cannot find his phone. After deducing that it was with him in the room he waited in before the show, Earn reluctantly tracks down the sick boy. He supposedly has had a cancer attack, which sounds fake. In front of a crowd, Earn pats down the little boy being wheeled away in an ambulance to a chorus of boos — brilliant dark humor. The group then concludes that Wiley could be responsible. After speaking to the event organizer Folk, played by Sean Gilder (King Arthur, The Fall), they discover Wiley’s identity and attempt to get him to return to the venue. During this call, Socks goes mad with rage and threatens to kill Wiley, who hangs up.
Luckily for Socks, Wiley does indeed show up, enticed by the prospect of meeting Paper Boi. Earn instructs Socks to wait outside during their meeting. Folk defends Wiley but Earn, Al and Darius are less convinced of his innocence. Darius is repeatedly told to stop talking about his wish for them to explore the hidden rooms. Earn accuses Wiley of stealing the phone and asks for it back. Wiley denies having it but directly quotes Al’s number and speaks cryptic phrases that only mean something to Al. Convinced Wiley has the phone, they perform some good cop bad cop routine, again unsuccessfully.
Al asks everyone else to leave the room and discloses why this phone means so much to him. He could not rap or make any music for months until he heard a melody recorded on his phone. For him, it represents his way back into music. Wiley then plays him a tragic but stunning song on the guitar, which potentially indicates how he now feels estranged from Paper Boi, with whom he had felt such a special connection as a fan of his earliest work. Wiley then gets up and says he doesn’t have the phone one last time. Al lets him leave. As they get onto the tour bus at a loss, Socks discards the golden cased phone. His motives are not entirely clear and do not get an explanation as he remains uncaught.
“Cancer Attack” was wonderfully original and contained compelling interactions between adored familiar characters and the fascinating Wiley. Wiley’s unpredictability, combined with his ability to stay one step ahead of Earn, resulted in an utterly captivating performance, not to mention the song. Socks’ motives are so unclear that it is frustrating not to know precisely why he stole the phone. It could be suggested that he deliberately caused the controversy to demonstrate his commitment to his new crew by acting all sorts of angry at the injustice. That seems to make the most sense but remains hypothetical. Atlanta loves breaking rules, which must be respected, but a lack of explanation damages what was otherwise a brilliant twist.
Rating: 7.5/10