Mr Robot - 'View Source', 'White Rose', 'Mirroring' and 'Zero Day'

"Find someone to be your honest self with. Bullshit."

Okay; a final wrap up on Season 1 of Mr Robot. Once more, I'm eschewing the evocative titling of the episodes for ease of typing.

'View Source' brings Elliot to the brink as he reflects on his meeting with Shayla, and the fact that she hooked up with Vera in order to supply him. Was this a business move or the first step in a friendship between broken soulmates? We'll never know now, but it provides that extra spice to Elliot's feeling of responsibility for her death. He finds himself wishing people were easier to read, and wondering if actually anyone would want that, and ultimately admits to his psychologist, although released from his sessions, that he hacks into people's lives in order to understand them.

Elsewhere, Angela cuts a deal to invalidate the evidence against Terry Colby in exchange for the ammunition to successfully sue EvilCorp over the Washington Township spill. Although still shot small and vulnerable, Angela finds her force here, rebuffing Colby's indecent propositions and calling his bluff; she knows that he needs this as much as she does. Meanwhile, Tyrell invites his successful rival's wife to the roof for revenge sex and murders her, seemingly on impulse. Tyrell has always been an odd balance of rigorous self-control and something dark and subterranean at his core. The morlock is out of the box here, both in the killing itself and his less-than collected flight afterwards.

Wait. What?

In 'Whiterose', Darlene arranges a meet with the eponymous head of the Dark Army. To Elliot's surprise, it's him going to the meeting, not Mr Robot. Whiterose turns out to be a time-obsessed... I'm not sure what to say here. Is White Rose transgender? A crossdresser? Something more complicated? Actually, that's probably a more complex question than this appearance has time to answer.

Anyway, that's White Rose, and most importantly Elliot learns why the Dark Army backed out. Elliot fatally underestimated his boss, Gideon, who as well as being a genuinely good human being is a bit of a sly old fox, setting the server they need for their hack as a honey pot to trap future hack attempts. Get rid of the honey pot and the hack is on, forcing Elliot to directly betray his boss.

Angela goes to her ballet session - yeah, that's apparently how she keeps that figure - where she hooks up with her old buddy Darlene and... WHAT! Yeah; Angela and Darlene are like besties or something, and we soon learn why. Before that, Tyrell continues to unravel. The cops show up at his house and his wife Joanna buys time by breaking her own waters with a fork. Brutal, but for the first time in two episodes no supporting female characters are fridged, so there's that.

Darlene, excited that they're going to pull off the hack of all time, admits her love for Elliot, but is horrified when he tries to kiss her. "Did you forget again?" she asks. "Did you forget who I am?" And he did, but remembers that she is his sister. With raging paranoia he berates and assault us, his imaginary friend, before trying to find out who he really is and realising that he is a ghost (in informational terms, rather than like Bruce Willis in the Sixth Sense.) All he finds are childhood photographs of his family, including his father. Mr Robot.

I really like these two. As much as I'm enjoying Mr Robot itself, I'd watch
the hell out of their PI spin off.

In 'Mirroring', Mr Robot - aka Elliot's dad - takes him on a journey of discovery to explain who he is. While Tyrell is getting fired from his job and put on final probation with his family (the baby survives, thankfully,) Elliot and his father return to their family home, where dad once pushed Elliot out of a window; or maybe Elliot jumped. Anyway, now Elliot pushes dad out of a window. Darlene goes to Angela - who has quick ESafe and been offered a potential job at EvilCorp, who admire gumption and have already made enough on the interest from their panic fund to cover whatever the class action suit makes them pay out - for help finding Elliot and they follow his trail to the house, and then to the local cemetery. Here, Dad promises Elliot that he will never leave him again, only for Angela and Darlene to ask who Elliot is talking to.

Oh-ho! we the audience crow, for we knew it, didn't we. And at once Elliot rounds on us again. "Did you know?" he demands of his imaginary so-called friend.  "You're going to make me say it, aren't you?" he accuses, and then does. "I am Mr Robot."

Darlene takes him home and goes to fill his prescription, but then Tyrell shows up and demands to know what's what, demanding in on the revolution.

Oooh.

Which leads to 'Zero Day', where Elliot wakes from a heartwarming flashback of his dad teaching him that crime is wrong, but less wrong than being a dick, to find him self in Tyrell's SUV two days after the end of 'Mirroring', with the world's financial sectors going to hell around him. Where is Tyrell? What actually happened? Elliot doesn't know and for once, neither do we, although we learn that the hack was launched without the rest of fsociety, that Tyrell has vanished and that Angela works for EvilCorp's PR department now, beginning with watching a senior VP blow his brains out on television. The CEO is unfazed, assuring her that the might of EvilCorp will prevail.

Whiel fsociety burn the drives then throw a party to celebrate (and nadger the forensics of their HQ) and the world gets high on the end of debt, Gideon struggles vainly to plan for tomorrow and Elliot is browbeaten by Mr Robot and hallucinations of his mother and younger self into accepting his part i all of this. Go home, watch the beautiful chaos you've created.

And there's a knock at the door.

After the credits, White Rose - as a man - goes to a party at the CEO's house. The CEO claims to know who did this.

So, that was Season 1 of Mr Robot, a series that is like nothing on Earth. It's a little fridge-happy and so far the female characters have been pretty peripheral, but there's a lot of promise for Angela, Darlene and Joanna Wellick to take a strong role in Season 2. It's a series short on out and out villains, with the Wellicks and the other EvilCorp executives flawed and human, selfish but not actually evil in an absolute sense; no worse than Krista the psychologist's boyfriend who cheated on his wife and abused his dog, then turned around in the last episode and made Elliot out to be some agent of darkness who ruined his life from nothing. The grittily realistic hacking and depiction of a cyber-obsessed world where every thought is tweeted or consigned to a blog and every transaction is in some sense virtual make for compelling viewing. The awkward framing and uncomfortable silences of the series were as eloquent as the dialogue, and the performances are universally excellent, with each character's expressions and body-language spot on.

Roll on Season 2.