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.

Mr Robot - 'eps1.3_da3m0ns.mp4', 'eps1.4_3xpl0its.wmv' and 'eps1.5_br4ve-trave1er.asf'

The effortless cool of Christian Slater masks a lot, but not all, of Mr Robot's
extremely dickish tendencies. If he is imaginary, then like Tyler Durden he's
the Elliot that Elliot wants to be, without actually being a better version.

I'm still watching Mr Robot, and it's still good, so why aren't I reviewing it?

In part, it's because it's so dense. I know that my usual semi-recap approach would miss things, and so be necessarily incomplete. Also, I'm running behind - again, the denseness of the narrative and the unsettling visual style make it hard to binge - which always makes it feel more apt to review a season at a time.

That doesn't mean that I have nothing to say about the show, however. It's one of the most unique things on television at present, and there's a lot to talk about. This not-a-review loosely covers episodes 5, 6 and 7; 'Daemons', 'Exploits' and 'Brave Travelers', to abandon the archly stylised file-name titles for ease of recall.

'Daemons' revolves around Elliot's assumption of tactical authority within fsociety, and the collapse resulting from eliminating his drug supply to protect Shayla from her dealer/boyfriend/abuser. Much of the episode takes the form of Elliot's internal narrative, as hallucinations and delirium take hold, but honestly when is that not the case? I'm still pretty sure that Mr Robot is only in Elliot's mind, and at least half-convinced that everyone else is as well. As Elliot hallucinates proposing to Angela with a key, the 'real' Angela has a soul-searching night on the tiles with Shayla, culminating with a drunken make-out session. Real, or part of Elliot's fantasy? It seems to affect Angela and drive her to upload the hacker's disc at E-Sure, but contains such obvious elements of male fantasy that the question remains. Elliot certainly thinks he's insane enough, periodically noting that his running narration is effectively talking to imaginary people.

'Exploits' follows the Steel Mountain job, and reveals the dark heart of fsociety as Elliot brutally manipulates low-level employees to gain access to the facility, and f-society plan to fake a text from a manager's pregnant wife to get her out of the way. This leads Elliot to a confrontation with Tyrell, who literally views people as insects and dismisses Elliot's infiltration as meaningless. This is proved to be true, as despite his success, the Dark Army decline to come through on the Chinese backups and the whole plan is blown (as would any other have been.) Tyrell is on an upswing, however, as he and his wife launch a social assault on the new CTO and his wife which is essentially a colder and more ruthless implementation of the same methods fsociety have used.

'Exploits' is also notable for several scenes which cast doubts on my theories of Mr Robot's Durdenity, as he speaks to Darleen and the other hackers on their own. Of course, if it's all in Elliot's head, no big change.

Shot from low down, everything in the frame looks huge, making Angela
look like a child in the principle's office. This kind of visual storytelling is
bread and butter for this show.

The sudden kidnapping of Shayla launches into 'Brave Traveler', as Vera blackmails Elliot into hacking him out of prison in 24 hours. This impossible task brings Darleen face to face with someone she can't shout down and forces Elliot to launch a series of desperate social hacks on the fly. Mr Robot warns him that it's a zero-sum game; the best case scenario is that only Shayla ends up dead. He's right, and despite a tour de force effort by Elliot and Vera's escape along with the rest of the prison population, it turns out that Shayla was already dead. This is a gut punch for Elliot, and the audience, and the scene drags out the reveal to maximise the effect. Did we ever believe that Elliot could be an island? We don't now. He may not make any big reaction, but Malek sells the abject pain of the discovery.

Meanwhile, Tyrell's scheming hits a roadblock as the CTO shoots him down cold, and Angela seeks justice for those killed by Evil Corp's negligence in what are practically separate plots. There is a brief meeting of roads as Angela talks to Elliot for guidance and innocently asks after Shayla, but for now they are almost unrelated stories. This disconnection, however, is par for the course with Mr Robot, a series that is pathologically reluctant to use a two-shot when a series of alternating, awkwardly framed singles could better convey the distance between two people talking face to face.

Mr Robot has no grand landscapes or baroque architectures, no special effects to speak of, but it is still visually stunning. Using unconventional framing and blocking to heighten the sense not just of separation, but of a person or people out of alignment with the world, the camera emphasises the core themes of the outsider, of power relationships, and of missed or crossed communications. When Angela comes to Elliot they speak on the sidewalk - because his apartment is full of gangsters - and the camera frames each in turn, almost never together, as well as putting each one low in the corner of their shot. It sometimes feels that the camera is almost an intruder; perhaps the us that Elliot is talking to when he narrates.

Well written, well acted and brilliantly composed, Mr Robot is a genuine original.

Mr Robot - 'eps1.2_d3bug.mkv'

The fact that no-one reacts to this reaffirms that we're in a Tyler Durden
situation.

After he recovers from his fall, Elliot swears off fsociety, even when Mr Robot shows up at AllSafe. Determining to live a 'bug free' life, free from exploitable eccentricities, Elliot accepts an invitation to a staff dinner and asks Shayla to accompany him as his girlfriend. Unfortunately, there is still one bug, an an fsociety data dump reveals that Evil Corp deliberately concealed the risk of Leukemia from their toxic waste dumping; the effect which killed his father.

Elsewhere, executive douche Tyrell Wellick learns he is being overlooked for CTO and pays a homeless man to let him beat him up. He seduces his boss's secretary in order to install surveillance software on his phone, and engages in a weirdly passionless B&D relationship with his pregnant wife. Given the nature of the show, of course, this could all be supposition on Elliot's part.

The main progression this week comes from Ollie and Angela, as the hacker pushes Ollie to install his worm on the AllSafe servers. Ollie comes clean to Angela about his affair, but her real concern is that the hacker now has access to her bank records and her father's bank records, leading her to be the one pushing to acquiesce to the demands.

Ultimately, Elliot returns to fsociety to lay out his plan, and it is clear that they are all waiting on him.

Mr Robot has pretty much shot its first bolt now. It's still got some legs, but it needs to step up its game to cover the fact that its big, conceptual hoorah has hoorahed.

Mr Robot - 'eps1.1_ones-and-zer0es.mpeg'

"Are you me?"

Elliot's life is in somewhat of a spin. American Psycho-looking executive nerd Tyrell Wellick offers him a job at Evil Corp, hinting that they will be dropping AllSafe and consequently crippling the company by going in-house with their cyber security. Elliot refuses, but is not sold on fociety either after they threaten to dump Evil Corp data if the CTO they framed isn't released and Mr Robot explains his next plan is to blow up a gas pipeline and destroy Evil Corp's off-site tape backups in the process, with potentially huge collateral casualties. He is also somewhat put off by Darlene, one of the fsociety hackers, breaking into his apartment, using his shower and treating him like a confidant.

Darlene is... well, so much in this series is odd.

Elliot rejects the explosive plan, and begins to see Evil Corp goons following him everywhere. He seeks escape in morphine, but he dealer/sort-of-girlfriend Shayla is out of the anti-addiction meds he takes alongside it, which draws them both into the orbit of specialty dealer Fernando Vera, who drugs and rapes Shayla before warning Elliot away from her and explaining that he draws power from his own self-loathing. Although Shayla is willing to accept a certain level of degradation to protect her revenue stream, Elliot can not stand by and uses hacked information about Vera to have him arrested.

Angela is upset that Elliot is avoiding her. Her boyfriend Ollie assures her it's all fine before nipping off to meet up with his other girlfriend and leaving Angela in the presence of a webcam hacker by a peeping tom rapper who harrangued Ollie into buying an infected CD.

Huh.

All unaware of this, Elliot returns to Coney Island to confront Mr Robot. To Robot, everyone and eveything is a one or a zero - act or don't act. He refuses to listen to Elliot's not-psychotic plan to take out the backups until Elliot agrees to talk about his father, who died of Leukemia and at the end refused to talk to his son because Elliot broke a promise not to tell anyone that he was sick. Mr Robot comments that this was a breach of a sacred covenant and pushes Elliot off the pier.

'eps1.1_ones-and-zer0es.mpeg' (I love these episode names, but they're a bugger to type out) deepens the uncertainty surrounding Elliot's sanity. I'm now convinced - largely by the way that Mr Robot stands directly between Elliot and the other members of fsociety when talking to the latter, such that they would be looking at Elliot if, say, Mr Robot were a figment of his imagination - that Mr Robot is a figment of Elliot's imagination. This makes the push off the pier more disturbing yet, especially in light of Vera's philosophy. If Mr Robot is a side of Elliot that gives him strength to act and yet hates himself enough to jump off a pier onto a rocky, debris-strewn beach, then Elliot too draws his strength from self-loathing. The Tyler Durden theory would also explain why Darlene seems to know Elliot better than he knows her, and why everyone else at fsociety either applauds him or ignores him.

The episode is also about false binaries: Mr Robot insists that everything comes down to act or don't act, but this reductionism is critiqued both explicitly and implicitly. Elliot rails against false choices as the driving force of capitalism, but also confronts choices that are no choice at all - leaving Shayla in Vera's grasp was never an option, whatever her stated wishes and regardless of the impact on Elliot's drug supply - and choices that are more than binary - Elliot returns to fsociety when he comes up with a third option, one that does not involve killing anyone. Perhaps we should call that option 'think'?

Mr Robot - 'eps1.0_hellofriend.mov'

This series makes the most of a protagonist who looks like literally no-one else on our screens.

Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) is a cyber security technician who moonlights as a hacktivist, exposing malfeasance almost more as a compulsion to reveal the ugliness of the world than because it's right or necessary. He is also a delusional schizophrenic with social anxiety, and this is important. He has very few friends: his boss likes him and he also works with his childhood friend Angela (Portia Doubleday), and he hooks up with his dealer Shayla (Frankie Shaw) from time to time, largely it seems because he only meets her while already high.

Elliot is drawn into a wider world when the enigmatic hobo Mr Robot (Christian Slater) invites him to become part of fsociety, a hacker collective working on a nebulous project aimed at destroying the credit information held by the massive conglomerate E Corp. The largest client at Allsafe, Elliot's place of work, E Corp stands for the megaelite conspiracy controlling the world. Can it be brought down? Can Elliot trust Mr Robot? Or even his own senses?

Mr Robot is a cyber-aware conspiracy thriller, sort of like Person of Interest on a budget, but in a lot of ways its selling point is not the conspiracy of 'the top 1% of the top 1%' or the hacking, but the vexed question of Elliot's reliabilty as a narrator. His voice over hangs a lampshade on this, opening up by admitting that he is talking to himself. Moreover, he tells us that he has conditioned himself to see and hear any mention of E Corp as 'Evil Corp', and throughout the show that is what people call it; what we see, what we hear is filtered through Elliot, a self-described delusional schizo whose worldview refuses to accept that anything can exist that is unequivocally good (he finds a cafe with great wifi and immediately looks for the porn servers its connection is supporting.) No-one else ever substantially interacts with Mr Robot and the rest of his crew, and they are explicitly invisible online, almost as if they didn't exist.

The show is thus also an effective psychological thriller, and so hangs hard on Malek's core performance. Fortunately, it's a doozy. Malek plays the anxiety and alienness of the outsider to the hilt, and it helps that he looks like no-one else on TV, with the traces of Brendan Fraser about the eyes countered by the lantern jaw and odd haircut (or am I just not with it on that one?) The support playing is also good, although the other characters are intentionally ciphers, viewed only through Elliot's distorted gaze.

With aspects of PoI, The Matrix and Fight Club vying for screen time, the show could become cluttered, but the opener keeps it tight and together and I'm interested to see where we go from here.