Why Most People Don't Understand Donald Glover’s Atlanta - Real Fake Dreams

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Donald Glover’s show, “Atlanta,” is full of surreal imagery and dream sequences.
The series finale is literally called, “It was all a dream” - centering around Darius repeatedly waking up from dreams. As Darius says in the episode, "maybe i’ve been in a dream this whole time."
So logically, between all of the surreal imagery and dream sequences, it makes sense that many fans and articles have tried to figure out which of these surreal moments in "Atlanta" were “real” and which were “just a dream.” But questioning what is real or fake is actually not the question that the show wants its audience to think about. As a writer for "Atlanta" said on social media, people have to stop watching the show like it's a puzzle meant to be solved.
So why shouldn’t the viewer care about what is or isn’t real within the show?
Donald Glover (Earn) talked about this directly in an interview preceding Season 4 of Atlanta:
“A lot of things this season we’re kinda asking “what is real?”
The show doesn’t want its viewers to think about the simple question - was what we watched just a dream? But rather, uses surrealism and dream sequences to try and get at a larger question - is anything real? It’s the subtle but important distinction between ‘was that real’ and ‘what is real’?
"Atlanta" is produced by FX Networks and stars Donald Glover as Earn Marks, Zazie Beetz as Vanessa "Van" Keefer, as Al Alfred "Paper Boi" Miles, and LaKeith Stanfield as Darius. Stephen Glover as co-executive producer and directly by Hiro Murai.
Image credit: Aaron Kathman