I liked this third episode more than the two startup episodes from last week as it delivered more shape to the season by delivering Elliot’s eventual surrender to his condition in an earned fashion while also deepening the rabbit hole Angela’s now plummeting down with regards to E Corp and Phillip Price. Unfortunately, the task proves to be more hard than he imagined. It continues to astonish that the show is unafraid to name brand names, or to hack in actual lines of code.
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Several theories have been running up and down the mill for the past few days, one of which indicates that Elliot may actually be Leon (Joey Badass), one of the new friends that Elliot gains in the second season of the series. But how long can he hold out against the increasingly aggressive Mr. Robot? “He obviously grapples with what kind of a father he had, and the one he envisioned versus the one that existed”. The show’s underground movement “f society” has flavors of Anonymous and #Gamergate, Occupy, and Brexit, both copying and anticipating a festering resentment. Perhaps because it’s an election year, it feels more divisive than ever with little middle ground in sight. After he comes to, barfing up the Adderall he took, to Mr. Robot shouting at him, he desperately scrapes the pills out of his own puke to take them again. “Wisely, creator Sam Esmail starts the season with what we all want to know” what is Elliot, and in turn Mr. Robot (Christian Slater), up to now?
How Elliot will process that guilt will be seen throughout the season.
Robinson plays Ray, an affable, loquacious dog-owner who blows up Elliot’s flawless loop with a simple request to help with “computer stuff”.
“Gideon wouldn’t be in this position if it weren’t for Elliot”.
Tune in tonight, Wednesday, July 20 at at 10/9c on USA Network for the third episode of Mr. Robot Season 2 and for the digital after show at 11PM ET. Elliot, being Elliot, reworks this colorful simile into computing terms: “Maybe it’s not about avoiding the crash, but about setting a break point to find the flaw in the code, fix it, and carry on until we hit the next flaw”, he monologues. Don’t get me wrong, I’m beyond excited for this second season to play out, but there’s a definite need for a bit of a narrative rebuild after all that went down at the end of season one. For the viewing public, the horror of a zero bank balance, or lost documents that prove home ownership, or every electronic device in the house tweaking out simultaneously impart far more fear than visions of flying dragons.
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“Elliot is determined to beat Mr. Robot and regain control of his mind, but the task proves hard”. But the show remains an artfully constructed receptacle for our cyber-paranoia, whether directed at the government, or capitalism, or technology, or most pressingly, one’s ability to betray oneself, with hallucinations or selective memory or – worst of all – a self-serving notion of the right thing to do.
