S03.E05: Cancer Attack

[PrincessPurrsALot]

Quote

Sometimes shows just be over my head acting fake deep. Where's the poop jokes? 

Original air date 2022.04.14

[bobbyjoe]

This episode to me was perfection and exactly why I love this show.  Brian Tyree Henry does comic frustration better than almost anybody, and the scenes with Wiley (the kid with the guitar) were hilariously weird.  It just felt like everybody was at the top of their game.  This is one I'd put up there with some of the classic episodes from seasons 1 and 2.

[aghst]

Why didn’t they dial the number to see if anyone would pick up?

Al had songs from way back.  How did he transfer them to newer iPhones  if Conspiracy Jones wouldn’t let him back up to iCloud?  Would be a huge PITA without using cloud backups.  They could have phone device backups on a computer but these guys don’t seem like the types to mess with it, as few people do these days, connecting their mobile devices to a personal computer.

Because that phone that Socks tossed into the dumpster before he got on the tour bus was a recent iPhone.  Nobody on the bus saw him do it?

Earn stopping the cancer attack was funny.  Do they do Make a Wish in Hungary?  Thought it was a US thing.

They can wrestle up a chain saw but not a backup phone?

Of course it’s completely in character for Darius to prevent Alfred from using features like Find My iPhone, which could have made for fun tracking and confrontations.

 

[AngieBee1]

Quote

Why didn’t they dial the number to see if anyone would pick up?

I can only assume that they tried that when Paper Boi and Darius was first looking for it and Socks has it turned off.
 

Quote

Al had songs from way back.  How did he transfer them to newer iPhones  if Conspiracy Jones wouldn’t let him back up to iCloud?  Would be a huge PITA without using cloud backups.  They could have phone device backups on a computer but these guys don’t seem like the types to mess with it, as few people do these days, connecting their mobile devices to a personal computer.

Up until my latest phone that I got sometime last year, I was like Darius and Al. I never had my phone synced to the Cloud. When I bought my phone/s I would never use my real name when creating a Gmail account and never actually used the account I created so when I would inevitably break my phone I would lose everything sans the things that got saved to my storage card in the phone because I could never remember my Gmail login and I didn't have my phone set to sync anyway. I would routinely copy things from my phone to my desktop in case something happened to it or if I was running low on storage. So I rolled with Paper Boi's explanation. Location? Off. Find My Phone? Off. I never used any of those features.

[aghst]

No iPhone has ever had a removable memory card.

So if you have say pirated MP3s or even videos, you have to sync it to iPhone with a PC or Mac if you're not using cloud backups.

They referenced all iOS features, iCloud, Find My iPhone, etc. so he seems to have an iPhone.

The phone Socks tossed into the dumpster looked like an iPhone.

The Ringer Prestige podcast speculated that to Socks, he has a financial interest in Paper Boi tour keep going in Europe because if PB wants to go back to Atlanta to record new music, then it's not good for Socks.

[possibilities]

5 hours ago, aghst said:

Why didn’t they dial the number to see if anyone would pick up?

 

They did. They said it went to voice mail. They could have done it again, I guess. But they did do it.

[UnknownK]

Wiley must have been in on it since he knew about those unreleased early tracks that were on it.

[After7Only]

3 hours ago, UnknownK said:

Wiley must have been in on it since he knew about those unreleased early tracks that were on it.

I took it as Wiley was some type of alternate world Paper Boi

[JenE4]

That was perfection! I love all of the little detail misdirects that made me think I could guess where it was going. Alas, I could not. Wiley claims to not have a phone and yet texted his “uncle” to bring a guitar—aha, proof he has it! Darius talking about the place being haunted and having secret rooms—Wiley is a ghost and/or someone is lurking in secret passages stealing phones! It was so absurd, which all of the best Atlanta episodes are. I agree with @After7Only that somehow Wiley and Al had some type of cosmic connection—it’s not merely empathy but you’re a part of me.

So the “cancer attack” is Socks. This man is just a chaos agent—stealing the phone himself just to have the opportunity to freak the heck out on people. He did the same thing in The Old Man and the Tree, getting everyone all riled up that the woman Darius was talking to was racist. Is he doing this because he’s “secretly racist” or something? The way he started to say the N word but then stopped himself when he remembered that he was in front of Black people, plus he said the “White Liam Neeson,” who already is white, but it seemed like an odd slip because he’s hyper-focused that he’s around Black people.

I just went back and watched the Tree scenes that had Socks in it because I couldn’t remember him having any type of “job” on this tour. I couldn’t remember because he actually had NOTHING to do with this tour. He told Darius he should meet Paper Boi because he did 4 stops with Rihanna—as what, who knows. Then he did all this presumably to get Will, the guy they did know connected to this tour all discombobulated with his fiancé. He went down with Darius to get Earn to tell him they had to go because things were getting crazy (ie Al was cutting down the tree), had a quick introduction to Earn. And then while Earn and Darius went to go get Al to leave, Socks was waiting in the front seat of the car they escaped into. Their laughs turned to silence when they saw Socks, parallel to the quiet ride out with Socks in this episode. Talk about a “cancer attack”—somehow Socks just worked his way into the entourage and is destroying them from the inside, and they’re totally oblivious that this guy doesn’t belong and shouldn’t be trusted. They were ready to accuse a little boy with cancer without it even crossing their mind for a second that they don’t actually know Socks and maybe he took it. He didn’t even want to do anything with it other than another opportunity to cause a commotion for absolutely no reason than to make himself feel like a hero or get to yell at people. I guess the yelling/accusations is what he’s really after, because he very easily could have said he found the phone somewhere and have been the hero. I thought it was funny that they used the term “cancer attack” as if cancer suddenly “flares up” as opposed to a slow, steady growth. But that’s exactly what Socks has done these past two episodes—just causing a “cancer attack” flaring up out of nowhere, then it’s over leaving destruction behind—the loss of a relationship and now Al losing his musical voice and vision.

Edited April 16, 2022 by JenE4

[meep.meep]

I think they ran the reparations episode between this one and The Old Man and the Tree to make people forget how Socks joined the group.  He is not really part of the Paper Boi entourage, even Van has more reason to be there than he does. All he does is make things worse.

[Mr. R0b0t]

BTH was amazing in this episode and I need a Wiley album stat.

[Marley]

I hate this episode and thought it was so stupid. I think I’m done with this show. Maybe one more episode.

[AntFTW]

I’ve watched this episode at least 3 times. It is so hilarious!

[tennisgurl]

Best episode of the season so far, it felt like classic Atlanta. They kept throwing out red herrings making me think one thing was going to happen and then going in a totally different direction. You think its going to be tied into some sort of ghost story, or that maybe the kid was faking cancer, or that Wiley was obviously the one who stole the phone, but instead they went into a totally different direction. The true cancer attack was Socks all along, a parasite that is draining the group after quietly latching himself to them, eating them slowly but surely from the inside. He was the one who led the attack on the supposedly racist woman at the party in The Old Man and the Tree, in a way that screams "trying too hard to the point of covering things up" then, in a similar way, he led the attack to find who stole the phone, taking things WAY too far, covering up for what he knew was actually going on, and even almost dropped the n word, the guy is just trying so hard to fit in with the rest of the entourage, it ends up feeling really shady. Not sure what his endgame is, or if he even has one beyond fitting in with Paper Boi and finding ways to get in his good graces, but he is clearly not a good person to have around. 

I definitely think that Wiley is some alternate universe Paper Boi, that's why he knows so much about him, their lives are on parallel journeys. Its been a theme of the show a few times, the strange connections between seemingly different people. There is some kind of cosmic connection there, going beyond the empathy that was discussed. 

It was a weird, surreal episode, but one that still felt grounded in reality, and was also really funny. The idea of the kid having a "cancer attack" is hilarious and I loved Earn's "that was strange" reaction to Wiley and his completely baffled commentary on the whole situation.

Edited April 18, 2022 by tennisgurl

[cmfran]

This ep seemed like a waste. I love this show, but it's starting to feel like the 4 year break affected the writing. We're 5 eps into this season, and nothing has really happened. I realize it's not a plot-driven show, but why even bother with the core cast if you're not going to use them?