Things Get a Little Weird for ‘Mr. Robot’ (TV REVIEW)

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This week’s Mr. Robot was a lesson in the human side of the titular character that plagues us with his omnipresence. After leaving Elliot in a precarious situation with Ray last week, we returned to a vague reality in which Elliot was living in the late 80’s/early 90s with his grossly violent family. The whole homage is so over the top that it’s kind of masterful. Drawing on the sitcoms of our childhoods intertwined with Elliot’s own damage psyche, it become this hyper awareness of how fucked up his brain can really get.

With the help of a Full House-like opening, a live studio audience, and even Alf, Elliot eventually works out the truth, placing him back in harm’s way and in his body. From the sounds of his breathing he has a punctured lung, and Ray is just getting started. Since Elliot really only gets about 20 minutes of screen time (compared to his usual starring role) it was interesting to see how he and Robot interact when he’s not explicitly fighting him off. Truly Robot is a crutch, the father figure he always wanted that morphed into his own insecurities and eventual dissociative personality traits. Elliot’s insistence on sending him away would be his way of knowing that he doesn’t need that crutch anymore. In turn Robot’s humanity shined through because that’s what Elliot needed in that moment. He couldn’t reach out to us, the other half of his crutch, so instead he focused on what is known. It was kind of a wonderful moment, bloodied bruised, broken Elliot and all.

Angela continues to disappoint with her inability to lie and get minor tasks done. Her covert operation on the FBI floor of Evil Corp was hard to watch. It’s like she wants to get caught, which would make sense considering her reticence to help and discovery of Darlene’s fuck-boy sometimes boyfriend being the same man who gave ol’ Oli the disk that started this whole mess. Angela is the least likely person to hold it together when shit hits the fan, and yet here she is, trying to infiltrate the FBI while barely able to hold a conversation with a horny agent hitting on her. “Say something you idiot!” we scream at the television as she holds 30 second pauses in between each response. How is he still talking to her? How does he not see that’s she’s literally sweating bullets and trying to formulate a believable lie? The whole thing is absurd until Dom finally steps into the picture to rain on Angela’s parade. It’s like she’s the only one paying attention to anything these days.

We got a quick shot of Wellick in Elliot’s fever dream. Tied up in the back of a car, but for the most part unharmed. Does this mean Wellick is being held somewhere? Or rather, is he tied in to Elliot’s game and unable to escape? For the most part it could be meaningless, but the fact that Robot steps up and kills him is reminiscent of Rome’s untimely demise. This is also worrisome because for the first time Elliot knows that living stuck inside his head while Robot took over wouldn’t be as bad as he thought. Trapped forever in the nothingness leaves him the freedom to create everything he ever wanted and more. That would be tempting for everyone.

We’re leading up to the Dark Army taking back what they believe is theirs, i.e., a power that seems to have been lost during fsociety’s attack. Ideally it will take the series in a completely new direction, but so far the teetering between monotony and constant action is working.

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