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Marshall offers to have him go ahead and order his beverage, but the customer demurs.
He could return it.
ButAtlantastubbornly, admirably refuses to simplify or overexplain, particularly in this episode.
Like the season premiere,Three Slaps,this episode marks a slight detour from the usual.
(As our recapper Jordan Taliha McDonaldnoted, this is an allusion to GeorgiasLake Lanier.)
The thing about being white, it blinds you, the white fisherman explains.
Its easy to say the Black man is cursed because you have separated yourself from him.
The Black fisherman, who gets yanked into the lake, does not choose to mute his friend.
Marshall, on the other hand, absolutely elects to drown out the voices of others.
Being white not only blinds Marshall, it also allows him to turn a deaf ear.
White kids be scammin all the fucking time, Al reminds him.
What the hell you think TikTok is?
Shit, Black kids need to scam more.
Eminem, one of the most successful hip-hop artists in history, who also happens to be white.
The multiplicity of Marshall the character is reflected in all the reactions his name elicits.
He immediately starts to cry.)
Hes even wearing the same clothes.
Your daughters going to be okay, he tells Marshall reassuringly.
The curse has been lifted from her, from all of us.
The reordering of society, it seems, could give birth to a new form of white flight.
But The Big Payback saves its biggest pop-culture pull for its final scene.
For 36 minutes, this series dreams of the possibility that a new day could be born.
But it also argues that we cant get there without walking through some profound discomfort.
