the new USA show MR. ROBOT: the rise of Rami Malek and the inexplicable solidness of Christian Slater

try to take over the world?

but where are we going to get a mini-pack of red vines and two tons of ball bearings at this time of night?

this is shot so beautifully. worth it for that alone.

this is getting harder to watch because of the tyler durden problem. otherwise, a+ still.

Jesus fuck, this episode. Gah.

just watched it. aw, mannnnnn

incredible episode. just brutal, though.

preview for next ep seems to give further indication mr robot is not a hallucination - scenes w just him and no other character

can't wait to see fuck

that came out wrong

you know what i mean

do i ever

<3 this show. there's been a need for more decent hacker lore like this.

also their website is cute: http://www.whoismrrobot.com/

'420' is the only unlisted command i could find, and i wonder if there are other easter eggs.

jesus fuck

that opening ;_;

nervous to watch

last week was broots

this one was kinda ehh, obviously a stopgap episode. I really hated the scene of Elliott visualizing people's flaws as literal signs.

of all the Big Talky Scenes the only ones that really landed for me were Colby being gross and Elliott's confession at the end

between the colby blowjob threat thing and what wellick ends up doing, I can't believe this show gets away with what it does sometimes on basic cable

not to mention using that fka twigs song in that situation is...an interesting and fucked up transgressive choice

the plotting has been bizarre thanks to that month timejump. Why has the malicious Allsafe hacker guy just been sitting on his hands? Why do they still care about the Dark Army if the window for their op closed long ago?

This is the best thing on TV right now which isn't at all what I was expecting when I initially read about it. Malek is excellent and another thing I love about it is the location shooting, some of the best realness since The Sopranos there.

wellick thing was unbearable & kinda depressing territory for this show

Yeah -- unpleasant, and also made no sense except I guess to show how unhinged he is. Clearly not part of a well-thought-of scheme. My wife's comment was, "I hope they start adding some dudes to the body count."

well-thought-out, I mean.

i think it worked as a logical and repellent progression of wellick's obvious psychopathy; i mean he was (and maybe still is) paying a homeless man to take beatings as an outlet for his impotent corporate rage.

BUT. it's thoroughly ugly not only because it's an act of sickening misogyny but because his stated motivation - gaining a high but not that high corporate gig - is so penny-ante compared to whatever everyone else on the show, good, bad or in-between, is seeking. which might be the point? idk.

the american psycho thread is good
the "elliott is falling apart" thread is good
the "we're different types o' gals but we're gonna change the world" thread is a little off but it's interesting
the whole Evil Corp (I cringe every time) / corporate lawsuit thread is occasionally eh but generally pretty good
all the gangster shit has been good
everything involving one-on-one with christian slater has been the overwhelming low point of the program and i'm including the cialis ads

so that's not a bad twist

it was good, and heartbreaking

yeah i think it's about addiction

so that's not a bad twist

Exactly what I just said. We just watched this episode, and as it was all falling apart/coming together at the end I was dreading some cheap reveal, but it stuck the landing. Recontextualizes everything, but not in some "it was all a dream" way.

http://www.vulture.com/2015/08/mr-robot-twist-omg.html

But among all the surprises in the episode, one stood out as the most surprising, and that was the sense that the show might actually be able to pull this off.

hm, i think they did! it also explains the hacker chick's manic pixie dreamgirl attitude as more sensible given the new relationships of the characters.
so elliot himself is a hacked program of sorts? that's where they're going here?

i agree that this is smarter than it originally seemed, maybe moreso than anything I've watched since breaking bad (which Esmail is visually cribbing from).
Has anyone seen his feature film 'Comet'? Should I try it?

happy with this twist and loved the camera-shake moment

After we watched this week's episode, I told my gf about the theory that Mr. Robot was another personality of Elliot and she wasn't buying it so we put on another random old episode to kinda watch it in the background with that theory in mind. And I didn't see anything that refuted it. But the more interesting thing to me was seeing the scenes with Elliot and <REDACTED> and realizing how much more sense those scenes make in the context of the newly-revealed twist. This is clearly a show I'm going to have to rewatch as they've been doing a lot of shit on the sly that I know I've overlooked on my first viewing.

I still think/hope Mr. Robot is a real person, his stepfather or something

heavy spoilers of course
http://www.vulture.com/2015/08/mr-robot-ends-and-elliot-begins.html

so there it is

tbh I'm sure some will think, ultimately, that the twist was predictable or w/e but I think it's more in the execution, and it's been wonderfully executed bc you care (imo) more about the characters and their emotional truths more than you do the mechanics of the plot, and that's the truest sign of great or near-great art.

I doubt it'll happen bc the Emmys are dumb as shit but really hope rami malek gets a best actor in a drama nom. frankie shaw as shayla def deserves supporting as well. (carly chaikin as darlene has enough scenes to be up for best actress in a drama but isn't quite as good as shaw

yeah i thought this was really well done, & ended up being something different from the obvious & pretty-ominous-seeming comparison it seemed headed toward (nb i think the music cue was kind of unforgivable but that's different). like we were credibly inside his delusion & there's a sort of formal accuracy to the sense in which that's a thin membrane we repeatedly cross over.

hadn't realised there was another episode next week, hyped.

i was probably as anti-durden as anyone but i think they basically made this work.
still would've preferred an earlier giveaway as it's a bit anticlimactic

Yeah been wondering if it is 10 episodes or longer. & is this it? Is it likely to be able to come back for more?

Just saw something that could have been developed into another story arc but probably not going to be explored in that way any further than it has been.
10 does seem neat.

10 eps so next week is the last - show was renewed for season 2 sometime during the premiere of the pilot.

1. can't believe they did the slowed down 90s cover song hacky bullshit. also the obvious nod to fight club was hacky af.
2. angela's plotline is the exact trope that they are making fun of in wet hot american summer with garafalo's plotline.

i read an interview with the guy where he says season two is where it pops off, obviously this is sensible self-protective behaviour but the reality of the new arrangement is a pretty established framework. something that i missed in this episode, not really to its detriment bc it's doing other stuff, is just the thrill of a super-tight procedural, which most episodes of this have; the first five or six, tracking the forward momentum of a plan & its obstacles, were so satisfying, & i feel like it has pretty good prospects if it's able to just plot convoluted, contemporary espionage drama for a few seasons

closing the episode w a that pixies song of all things was a p. bold nod given the reveal in the episode.

ah i see chaki just touched on that above

I hope we see more flashbacks of Elliot's dad, the real version. It seems like we will, because the inner voice version seems to imply that he was a kid with some mental health issues and he might have been more self-critical than anything, creating a dad who chastises him

i hope christian slater never returns but i doubt that's how this is gonna play

I have to say when we get the Slater reveal I was disappointed. It was well done, but I'd been hoping it wouldn't go that way and it did.

The Angela job thing was fantastic

the tyrell-putting-on-the-gloves scene successfully freaked me out ("i felt wonder" fuck)

I would be vv glad to see them shed Slater for s2