The Best Show on TV Right Now is About Living Carless in the Suburbs

The first scene of Atlanta, Donald Glover’s hilarious, magic realist new sitcom airing Tuesdays on FX, takes place in an unusual spot for a TV show: a parking lot.
This should be a common setting, as most Americans live in the suburbs. But sitcoms about 20-somethings always seem to be set in New York or L.A., depicting low-paid young people who can somehow afford giant apartments and take taxis everywhere.
Not Atlanta. The best show on TV right now is about working-class African-Americans in the Southern suburbs, and it highlights one of the country’s biggest, least-appreciated problems: living without a car in the midst of sprawl.
Earn, the show’s main character (played by Glover), doesn’t own a car. He works at the airport, one of the few major spots in Atlanta well served by the city’s limited transit system. But getting to the train is another story. Hardly anyone, especially anyone who isn’t affluent, lives right near a train station. So Earn rides the bus to the train, suffering through long, slow rides and walking on streets without sidewalks.
Read More