While the first episode felt more like an inside joke, this episode the show returns to a more familiar format. Except, and that is the whole premise of this season, the characters are evolving in a somewhat different environment: Europe.
It is different yet recognizable. European-ness is used primarily as an exotic backdrop. Obviously since this is an American show for Americans watching American TV. It is not really an exploration of European identity or racial relations in Europe; or one would could have hoped, black identity in the US versus elsewhere. This season, it feels more like window dressing for the show's core themes. Which remain largely the same: black identity and the experience of being black. As I write that, I am unsure if I could have formulated that as "the black experience". Which is incidentally also a theme of the show: white guilt.
What is relatively ambitious is that the show completely sheds any concept of plot and focuses mainly on the characters emotional responses to these very peculiar self-contained scenarios. It does not mean that there is no plot or story in the narrowest definition. Yet, the plot of each episode and the story at large it supposedly tells is insignificant. It does not really matter what happens or what are the consequences. The actual reason why they are in Europe is barely mentioned or acknowledged (to a certain extent it is implicit, they're there for Paper Boi's European Tour). There are no real link between these stories. It is more a succession of vignettes of slices of life. Slice of life of a semi-famous rapper of course, whos is on tour in a recognizable yet strange land.
In this Amsterdam episode, we follow two plots. One goes through an exaggerated confrontation with Zwarte Piet and the other with a ridiculous religious wake of sorts. The episode's strength is not necessarily the social commentary rather than the ability to balance seriousness and genuine emotion with over the top goofy gags. You end up with something that is equally brilliantly funny, profound, disturbing, and mesmerizing.
It is an episode where there is nothing really to see here. Yet, I had a good time watching it. Nothing noteworthy happened, yet I do not feel like I wasted my time.