"Champagne Papi" is the seventh episode of the second season of Atlanta. It is the seventeenth episode of the series overall. It was released on April 12, 2018 on FX.
Premise[]
Yeah girl, we gonna party tonight! But if you don't post about it, did it really happen?
Plot[]
Vanessa Keifer's social media-obsessed friend Candice films her and Van as they prepare to go to a New Year's Eve party hosted by Drake. Also with them are their friends Tammi and Nadine, the former of whom reminds Van to not focus on her daughter tonight and instead have fun. As they discuss the most effective form of birth control and Candice's relations with DJ, Drake's tour barber and the man who got them into the party, Van watches an Instagram story of Earnest Marks getting his hair cut by another woman. She states that she needs to get a picture with Drake to improve the quality of her Instagram page, and her friends advise her to delete the picture of Earn she has posted. Candice toasts shots to "partying with my girls!" and they clink glasses and down their drinks.
The women arrive in a destitute parking lot and wander around, looking for the shuttle as a man approaches them holding a box of pizza, claiming to be a deliveryman that needs to get the food to Drake. Candice spots the shuttle and reads an access code to the driver, and he lets them into the back with several other women. As Van scrolls through Instagram and sees other women taking pictures with Drake at the party, the woman next to her cries and says it is because she is so happy that she gets to meet Drake. The van driver makes an unsettling comment about taking the women home with him, then grins "just kidding" and drives them to the mansion the party is being hosted at. The crying girl is found to have a fake invitation, and she is ejected from the property screaming. Inside, they see actor Devyonne Johnson with his white partner, Sabrina, the former of whom Tammi is obsessed with and the latter she disapproves of. Candice meets up with DJ, who Van asks for Drake's location, DJ claiming he is "floating around somewhere." He gives them weed gummies and they all take them, the inexperienced Nadine doing so hesitantly.
As Nadine starts to react badly to the drug, Tammi leaves her with Van to go find Johnson and Van scrolls annoyed through her phone, insisting it is not about Earn when Nadine asks. As Van gets a drink, a disoriented Nadine calls the police claiming that she is dying, but Van takes her phone and hangs up before she can give an address. She has Nadine lay down and stare at a photo of Drake while she goes to get her some water. She bumps into a friendly man named Brandon, who gives her a bottle of water and they go back to Nadine, who has wandered off. Van finds her phone dead and Brandon takes her downstairs to Drake's studio to charge it. She asks how he knows Drake, and he claims Drake's nutrionist is his cousin. Now suspicious, she asks how he knew where the studio was, and he explains that he got there early and spent the evening wandering around alone. She steps out to the bathroom and Brandon waits outside the door, asking if she needs anything, and she sends him away to get food. She texts her friends and asks if they've seen Nadine, but Candice is busy with DJ and Tammi is stalking Johnson and Sabrina. She ditches Brandon when he leaves, then stumbles into Drake's wardrobe and puts one of his jackets on.
Nadine is outside with Darius, sitting over a reflecting pool. Darius claims that nothing is real when she asks, explaining Nick Bostrom's Simulation Argument: there is a high probability that they are all inside a simulation run by a more advanced version of humans from the future, and that their actions are all controlled by someone or something else. Nadine requests that Darius help her stop thinking and asks if the woman dancing in a pool nearby is real, Darius stating that she is "real fake," Nadine responding that "I knew it." As Van explores Drake's bathroom and prepares to take a selfie, she gets a group text from Candice, who is leaving with DJ for T-Pain's party. Tammi, who has been stalking Johnson all night, confronts Sabrina and claims she is using Johnson as a "black man accessory." Sabrina retorts that she was with him when he was just a struggling community theater actor, but Tammi shoots back that Sabrina has all the advantadges to be a good woman, and the pairing of white women and black men is much more common than black women with white men. Confounded, Sabrina insists that she just loves Johnson, and Tammi shouts back "bitch, I love him too!" just as Johnson returns. He awkwardly says "sorry" to Tammi as they both leave.
Van finds a room with an old man speaking Spanish and trying to get the TV to work. He claims to be Drake's grandfather and tells her that Drake is not there, but Van only comprehends the former. Van notices a calendar on the wall with the back of half of December marked as "EURO TOUR" and realizes that Drake is not there. She finds that the photos taken with Drake were actually with various cardboard cutouts of him, the women running it charging twenty dollars a photo on the guarantee that it will get anyone thousands of Instagram followers. When an annoyed Van confirms that all the photos of Drake on Instagram have been faked, one of the women points out "you thought you was gonna have a meaningful convo with Drake or some shit?" They offer her shoes for an extra ten dollars and Van leaves, the women deriding her as not "real."
She finds Nadine and Darius outside, who is there because he knows Drake's chef, finding that Earn is not with him when she asks. As she tells Darius to knock it off with his existentialist rhetoric, she asks Nadine if she is okay, who tells her that Darius helped her figure out that "I am nothing" and that "it's a simulation, Van. It's all fake." Van agrees with her and tells her Drake is not there, so she should just enjoy herself. Tammi tells them that the party is ending and the four walk home. Still wearing Drake's jacket, Van turns to Darius and murmurs "Drake's Mexican," to which he nods as a Spanish remix of "Hotline Bling" starts to play.
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