Atlanta - Streets on Lock

Following the parking lot shooting which was alluded to in both the opening and closing scenes of the Atlanta's first episode (but not actually shown in either episode so far), "Streets on Lock" picks up events the following day as Alfred (Brian Tyree Henry) is processed and released to discover the overblown story of what happened has earned the aspiring rapper new street cred while Earn (Donald Glover) stews in holding, with a bizarre cast of characters, while waiting to be processed. Although to be fair, the folks Paper Boi runs into on the street aren't necessarily any less colorful (or any more sane).

"Streets on Lock" is a slow moving episode whose main purpose seems to be to point out that there are a lot of crazy fucking people in the world, both in an out of the prison system (which as portrayed here is something akin to the most bizarre DMV of all time). Earn does make it out of holding before learning if one of his new "friends" makes good on his threat to stab everyone in the holding area, but Vanessa (Zazie Beetz) is far from happy with the situation. While the entire incident may have increased Paper Boi's profile, it seems to have only put Earn on thinner ice with the mother of his child.