This Is The Scariest TV Episode Ever Made
I’ve got a bit of an ask here today, but bear with me and I promise it’ll be worth your while. I’m something of a TV connoisseur, which is a nice way of saying I watch a lot of television. I grew up in the age of cable, and television is always going to be critically linked to who I am as a person. As a horror fan, I’m naturally drawn toward horror shows and TV movies. However, I’m just as inclined, and even more thrilled, whenever something decidedly not horror suddenly gets very, very scary. Remember the slasher episode of The Facts of Life? I do, and I think about it daily.
Then, in 2016, showrunner Donald Glover (Childish Gambino) premiered Atlanta on FX. The series was a modest success, running for four seasons of surrealist comedy before concluding in 2022. It’s a hard series to conceptualize, though it largely follows the plight of Earn Marks (Donald Glover), an aspiring musician. You wouldn’t think Atlanta would boast one of the scariest episodes of TV ever, but it does.
The series is now streaming in full on Hulu, and you can learn more below:
Per Hulu: Young rapper Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles and his manager cousin, Earn Marks, try to build their music careers in Atlanta with the support of their best friends, Darius and Van.
Glover’s show has always been explicitly unconventional. Anyone who’s a fan will know Glover often rejects the serialized television template. Multi-episode arcs are irregular, and surrealism creeps into every frame, bolstering Atlanta’s ostensible place as another network rags-to-riches story when it’s really anything but. Several episodes are straight-up horror episodes, though the best of the bunch is undoubtedly “Teddy Perkins.”
“Teddy Perkins” is the sixth episode of Atlanta’s second season. Helmed by Emmy-award winning director Hiro Murai, “Teddy Perkins” was one of the show’s earliest forays into horror, and it’s largely considered one of the best of the series as a result. Darius Epps (LaKeith Stanfield) wants to pick up a piano from Theodore “Teddy” Perkins (Donald Glover), a photosensitive recluse. He drives to his mansion and… I won’t spoil the rest. But it’s scary. Glover is fantastic. It’s one of the best episodes of television ever. Even famed filmmaker Steven Soderbergh remarked that “Teddy Perkins” is the “most beautifully photographed half hour of TV” he’d ever seen.
It’s standalone enough to give you a feel for Atlanta’s wavelength. If you like what you see in “Teddy Perkins,” why not give the entire series a go? It’s now streaming on Hulu, and if you check it out, let me know what you think over on Twitter @Chadiscollins and whether you agree it’s one of the scariest TV episodes.
Categorized: News
