Mr Robot stars the unreliable narrator of unreliable narrators, Elliot Alderson.
He hacks everyone around him, bringing down assholes and trying to protect people that
are sad or lonely.
Most of the individuals he investigates are awful and it seems like he’s looking for
a connection but constantly being let down.
Amazingly enough, even though he’s a level 99 hacker he manages to remain likable
and relatable throughout the show.
In episode 1, the slightly confrontational Mr. Robot invites him to join his virtuous
hacker group, fsociety, and Elliot likes him right off the bat.
Robot’s plan is to obliterate E Corp, the largest conglomerate in the world and get
rid of everyone’s debts.
Mr. Alderson is down for this because his father died working for E Corp and he hates
them so much he mentally rebranded them, Evil Corp.
It’s very important to note that we are in Elliot’s head and we mostly see things
from his perspective.
He seems to like us quite a bit, at one point he talks about building a perfect utopia with
all his friends and says that we’d be there.
Plenty of programs break the fourth wall but Robot is peculiar in how much Mr. Alderson
interacts with the viewer.
He asks us to look for things, begs us for help, and I was shook when he
started yelling at me for not telling him about a plot twist.
The earliest clue that something isn’t quite right in Mr. Alderson’s universe is the
one day off theory, which isn’t really a theory.
Every date in Robot world is actually off by one day, and there’s some strange fuckery
going on with time in general.
You’ll also be happy to know that 9/11 did not occur in Elliot’s world so the people
of Mr. Robot get to lead long and happy lives.
A virtuous hacker group taking down an evil corporation is a vanilla set up so there’s
also the dark army, a much more malicious hacker group, which is kinda like a cult.
Dark Army will work with you, kill you, or protect you, all depending on what their mysterious
leader WhiteRose wants at the time.
Then there’s my favorite character, the wildcard, Tyrell Wellick.
I like him because he’s always going around doing crazy shit and much like myself, cares
about Elliot.
People say he’s the Mr. Robot version of
Patrick Bateman, and it’s an easy comparison, especially since the show has music from Huey
Lewis and the news.
I also feel obligated to mention Angela, she’s my least favorite of the main cast but she’s
Elliot’s friend so I gotta be nice.
She still says some stupid shit though.
To be fair Angela's plotline does get better later on.
Last character I want to mention is the CEO of Evil Corp, Phillip Price, purely because
he’s a badass.
One of many fantastic things about Mr. Robot is that most of the doo-dads and doo hickeys
that make it great are present in the very first episode.
In my opinion, the fast paced story, dialogue, music ques, and cinematography all come together
to make it the best pilot of all time.
Each episode in season 1 is a satisfying gobble and then you get a hint of what the next satisfying
gobble will be.
In fact, season 1 is so fast paced it led people to think that they jumped the shark and
too much had happened.
In between the happenings, there are also little moments of normalcy, humor, and happiness
that make the stuff in later seasons hit much harder.
Another thing season 1 does successfully is set up both sides of the situation.
If Elliot takes down Evil Corp he will have avenged his father and freed Angela, along
with the entire world, from their debts.
However, Elliot’s boss at Allsafe is Gideon.
Allsafe provides cyber security for Evil Corp.
If Evil Corp gets taken down from a cyber attack, Allsafe will go under and boss man
will lose everything.
So it’s an interesting moment when Elliot looks into em.
In Mr. Robot, our friends lose most of the time and there are no perfect victories.
You should also know that on this show, the craziest theories are the ones that turn out
to be true.
Moving on, one may think that Robot’s plan is almost word for word from Fight Club and
it is.
But the program makes no attempt to hide that influence, and they even play a piano cover
of Where is My Mind.
I also gotta say that despite his faults Mr.Robot is a really fun character.
That’s enough for s 1 in season 2, the FBI contemplates Operation Berenstain and
the dark army goes sicko mode.
Where as the opening season had some bizarre
shit but stayed fairly grounded, S2 slows down the pace and ratchets up the strangeness.
This is where all the time travel and parallel universe theories started so you’re probably
gonna get bombarded with videos that are now outdated
and I'm sorry bout that.
Season 2 also begins Mr. Robot’s wonderful tradition of introducing awesome new characters
each go around.
First, is the lonely lollipop detective Dom Diperro, a competent investigator who works
hard on the clock and diddles her skittle off it.
Then there’s Leon played by Joey Badass, a respectable young man just trying to understand
Seinfeld.
Installment 2 also features a throwback sequence with a laugh track and it’s one of the most
bizarre things I’ve had the pleasure of watching live.
Not only that, but the network that airs the show in the USA, called USA, did throwback
commercials to maintain the aesthetic.
While we’re discussing meta shit, there’s also an E-Corp subreddit, where employees
of Evil Corp can hangout and talk about their day.
My boy Samar made an informative poll asking where the hottest girls are, he also made
one that’s more my speed asking about the best bathrooms.
The show takes place in 2015 so the posts are written to correspond with the events
of the episode, then reddit admins change the time stamp so it looks like they were
written four years ago.
Makes you wonder what else they’re changing.
Season 1 ended with several inquiries like.
What happened the night of May 9th?
Where the fuck is Tyrell?
And What is Whiterose’s plan?
I promise all these questions will be answered eventually but S 2 is more about character
development then it is about plot points, which is partially why I was blindsided by
S 3.
This may seem a tad dramatic but season 3 is fast paced and horrific.
There are multiple moments that feel like a horror movie, complete with a silence of
the lambs type type sequence.
Most of the characters have mental breakdowns cause they just can’t deal with the trauma
anymore.
Some recover, some do not.
Even those that do not break down get their shit pushed in, like when Phillip pretty much
calls Mr. Robot a bitch.
In 2014, True Detective did a neat little sequence
that was made to look like one-shot and I thought it was awesome.
But now it’s the current year, and in episode 5, Mr. Show off Sam Esmail has done a 40 minute,
episode long one shot sequence, with the last 20 minutes being a nightmarish hellscape.
And to aid in the ascethetic once again, the network held commercials, so shout out to
them for being bros.
Season 3 also marks the entrance of my favorite side character, Dark Army Operative, Irving.
He’s got the clean-up competency of Mike with the attitude of Slippin’ Jimmy and
I hear he’s got a book coming out.
Now, let’s get into the gamechanging episode 6.
The super simplified succinct summary is that the Dark Army and Mr. Robot are going to commit
a terrorist act to try to finish off Evil Corp, with Elliot desperately trying to talk Mr
Robot out of it.
Their conflicting ideologies have always been a major point of the show and this is the
ultimate sad culmination of that.
It basically boils down to Elliot refuses to kill people, Mr. Robot is fine with killing
if it’s necessary.
However, he does care about Elliot and the members of fsociety as well as most of the
innocent bystanders of the world.
The episode is mainly a 1v1 between Elliot and Mr. Robot but it feels like a monumental
battle since every major character plays a part.
It’s made more intense by the fact that most of the people on opposite sides care
about each other so there’s a lot of emotional weight.
I can’t say anything else about it without spoiling something but it’s my favorite
episode of the series, and my favorite episode of anything ever.
In fact, I’d say 5, 6, 7, are a trifecta of perfectly made television.
The season 3 finale is written with the emotional heft of a series finale and it’s really
really really satisfying.
Overall, it’s my favorite season of television.
Moving on, I would say the right word to describe season 4 is heartbreaking.
It’s set at Christmas time and it has that special kind of loneliness that only seems
to exist around the holidays.
There’s one episode that I will never re-watch cause I don’t want to feel that way ever
again.
It’s got a perfect 10 on IMDB and is currently the 2nd highest rated television episode of
all time, right below Attack on Titan, right above Breaking Bad and it deserves it.
Still not gonna watch it again though.
But the main reason I love season 4 is cause it had me conflicted.
I care about Elliot, I want him to be happy but...
Not only that but at this point Whiterose has been fleshed out so much I empathize with
their position.
Similar to Light Yagami, I don’t agree with their methods or like the satisfaction
they take in killing people but the end goal is good.
Moreover, I think whether a show watcher agrees with Elliot’s or WhiteRose’s philosophy
depends on their own world view which is awesome.
It’s also good to see a great live action antagonist with a batshit insane plan.
My favorite tv villain up until now was Gus Fring and all he wanted to do was take out
the cartel and sell drugs.
Moving away from that, there’s a heist episode where only two lines of dialogue are spoken,
one at the beginning and one at the end.
As I mentioned in another video the cinematography throughout the whole series is great, but
season 4 has my favorite shot where it looks like Mr. Robot is walking both backwards and
forwards through some sort of purgatory looking location.
I like it both because it looks fucking sweet and it’s a great micro-cosm for Fsociety.
Episode 10 is a nice little self contained story and extremely well written but let’s
talk about the season 4 twists.
Sam already knew what the ending would be when he started the series and because
of that level of planning you get reveals in season 4 that recontextualize scenes in
all the other seasons.
Other shows have twists obviously but Mr. Robot is unique in the sense that these scenes
were clearly written with the twists from Season 4 in mind.
In fact, some scenes make a lot more sense after the reveals that happen years later
and I’ve never seen that in a tv show before.
It’s without a doubt some of the craziest shit you will ever see with the biggest plot
twist taking place in the very last episode.
There’s been a little bit of fighting amongst the community as to whether the finale was
satisfying or not, all I can tell you is that I was satisfied and I think it answered everything
it needed to.
It reminds me of True Detective in the sense that all of the main questions were answered
but the yellow king and other background stuff was left by the wayside.
My main criticism of the series would be that I wanted more Tyrell.
Also, one of the sudden plot developments in season 1 always gets critiqued for being
obvious but I feel like the show expects you to figure out, which is why Elliot yells at
you for not telling him.
However, something in season 2 is played as a more genuine twist and the internet figured
it out way before the official reveal so that’s the one that I don’t like.
The dialogue throughout the show is exactly what it needed to be and I didn’t feel any
tonal problems.
But nothing’s perfect and these two lines reminded me I was watching a tv show.
Going back to positives, another thing I love about the show is that everyone gets a humanizing
I’ve focused a lot on the darkness of Mr.
Robot cause that’s what appeals to me but at times it’s also a very fun show.
There’s tons of back to the future references, The Shining shot, and they open up one episode
with the Knight Rider theme.
It’s not a huge deal but it’s also nice that the opening is different every episode and
it gives the show alot of opportunities to jump around….
There’s plenty of other strange shit, weird characters, and bizarre moments we could talk
about. But I’d like to leave some to the imagination.
In closing, Mr. Robot is a horrifying heartbreaking funny bizarre unique show that will blow your
mind until the very last second and that’s why it’s my favorite.
If you ever go into a comment section on a Robot clip you’ll see people comparing it
to Breaking Bad, probably saying it’s better or the best show since.
It’s one of those choices where you’re right either way, however Mr. Robot is more trippy
more psychological and has more twists, which is why I like it more.
Also the hacking is fun to watch and really realistic. I tested out of one computer science class in college so I
consider myself something of an expert on the subject.
And one last thing, shoutout to Keith David for his performance as Elliot’s depressed fish.
The first three seasons are available on Amazon Prime and I’m sure you’ll find some way
to get your hands on Season 4...
Exciting time in the world right now, exciting time.
Take us away Sam!