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

yeah, even as this show's no. 1 stan on ILX and basically everywhere i can get ppl to listen to me, i agree he could use a better steadying hand. the season was shot in sequence as a 12-hour movie bc esmail was directing it all, but he could've had a head writer/story ed. making sure everything hung together tightly w/o compromising that visual aspect of it, imo

while mentioning malek though i would like to say the sum total of his performance is one of my favorite performances of all time.

he is great

i ilke the cinematography

i love the music

i like the ostensible story

i hate the story as executed

the dialogue is middling

things that should be handled subtly are handled clumsily

I agree w/ all of that. Dom getting ready for work at 4am to "The Highwaymen" is one of my favorite soundtrack cues in a very long time.

Yep, even as a general fan of this season I have to admit this episode was dire. Boring and prestentious. I'm half expecting some bollocks twist like the whole thing has been Elliot's dream or Angela is a figment of his imagination now. Plus I've realised I really don't like Dom.

Didn't realise Esmail has directed the whole season! That's a hell of a workload.

I liked the ridiculous adventure game thing

white rose's domain is magic realism

also an extended white rose scene was appreciated, need more b.d. wong

the use of the back to the future soundtrack music (something is a clue, there) also let me learn this:

there's a lindsey buckingham song (the one linked above) on the bttf soundtrack that, as far as i can tell, has never been released on any other album

i noticed the BttF music too. but my god this episode was so dull and self indulgent, i don't even want to contemplate what it could be about.

when is this show going to have some goddamn robots

EMMY AWARD WINNING LEAD ACTOR RAMI MALEK

forgot to note that here last night

would've been fine with matthew rhys too but fuck yeah!

I dunno he's perfect for the role and all, but I'm not sure it's one that requires much acting range. Rhys would've been a worthier winner imo.

*eyes bulge, look around*

Very... Slow... Voiceover.

lol fuck this show

sure, but ask it for consent before doing that

as proof that i do not defend EVERYTHING on this show, i thought the reveal re: joanna's plotline was dumb and unnecessary, and made clear that while she is not without her interesting attributes, her psychopathy is ultimately one-note and the series really doesn't need her thread. i would wager that esmail wanted to keep the character around because he liked writing her and just got stumped by what to actually /do/ with her.

aside from that i think the finale was fine tbqh and i'm excited to see what's next. malek's acting - particularly the opening scene where he was playing mr robot rather than elliot - was on fire.

the dom-darlene conversational faceoff was fantastic, and dom's partner going all meta only to prompt dom actually saying "we're not so different you and i" was almost as astute an audience-troll as using "where is my mind" in the episode where mr. robot's falsehood was revealed

There's only so much cliche I can take being defended as "meta commentary" or "audience trolling." Let's just call it what it is - lazy writing. Dom's speech about how she *is* Darlene, Elliot's rant about how reality isn't real (maaaaan), "this isn't some TV show," the useless Joanna plot that used up, what, a full episode of screentime? The details really bother me, too, because they're so half-assed - a brilliantly evil conglomerate like Ecorp dumping all their paper docs into one facility, especially one that's not airgapped in some way? Romero getting offed by a stray bullet? That neverending sub-Lynchian garbage sequence with Angela last week? (OK, I get it, I just hate this show now and should stop.)

lol its perfectly fine to hate & rant!

i'm only defending the "this isn't burn notice" thing as meta because he literally made a joke about burn notice on a usa show.

dismissing romero's killing as a random thing jagged at me too but like, i can /deal/ with that?

imo "this isn't burn notice" should have been followed by someone peeling out in a hyundai

what do you guys think of the ending scene with our f society-in-exile duo working at fry's?

the idea they could magically undo stuff is silly as a hook but I liked it, especially Trenton looking incredibly out of place in uniform

I'm watching the finale. wow, esmail.

Sarah Bunting probably has the best rundown of the second season of anybody: http://previously.tv/mr-robot/mr-robot-did-what-needed-to-be-done/

It still sucked, though.

Yeah, I'm definitely someone who values plotting, and Esmail has said over and over that he doesn't care about plot - he's interested in characters, reactions, choices... The thing is, I don't really love the characters of Mr. Robot that much, and some of the plots have been interesting, and exciting. Plus, if it's a show about characters, why is it so obsessed with getting all of the tech details right? Esmail brought up Lindelof on The Watch, so that pretty much seals it for me. I think I'm out.

And yet... That last scene, with Trenton, Mobly, and Leon will probably keep me watching. They are the only characters in the show who act like actual human beings, which is crazy because so far they've been mostly treated as just extras in service of the supposedly-fascinating (but most tedious and one-note) main characters of the show. Hopefully they get this show moving again next season.

If he repeats the stunt where he directs the whole season as a 12 hour tone poem I can't see how it could possibly get any better

i guess i'm not a lindelof expert since i never watched Lost but The Leftovers is so, so good i'm always tempted to defend him. but maybe that's a scenario where the contract the show makes with its audience really plays into lindelof's strengths?

agree though that "character" seems like a poor M.O. for this last season of mr robot. i'm not sure any of these characters have enough consistency or personality to really count as developed. i mean, would any of them doing anything really be a surprise? i feel like we barely know them at all after two seasons.

Show had some promising characters, then killed them. Meta-whatever's fine, except there's no substance to comment on in this thing. I don't like to pop up on a thread just to be a dick, but this show is insultingly bad.

how was this season of Suits, I only caught a couple episodes

The dude on Suits will never not be Owen Wilson's pilot

Plus, if it's a show about characters, why is it so obsessed with getting all of the tech details right?

Even that kind of went out the window this season. I have some coder friends who were very offended/amused by the FBI hacking sequence.

Also, not something I expected them to pick up on, but pacemakers have a tendency to explode when thrown into incinerators, which is a cool real-life detail they missed out on incorporating!

The attention to detail died with Gideon imo

the dom-darlene conversational faceoff was fantastic

― if young slothrop don't trust ya i'm gon' rhyme ya (slothroprhymes), Thursday, September 22, 2016 3:53 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

seriously baffled by this. came here to complain about how that dialogue is everything wrong with the writing in this show. just lazy, cliche ridden, try-hard, emotionally empty etc. and delivered with such conviction.

agreed

xp fwiw i was referring to how carly chaikin and grace gummer (gummer's body language is particularly notable imo) acted in that scene rather than the dialogue - which was, like, fine, nothing to write home about - but if the words killed it for you i can get that

esmail has said that he plans to continue directing every episode and leave more of the writing to his staff, which could v well help address the reasonable complaints about the plotting

then again, i really do not - and never have - watch this show for plot. it makes me feel stuff other shows, aside from the leftovers, do not. which is v specific to me, of course. it also prob means that next season this'll become my stan-ery thread no one else posts in, but, jordan shrug

still wondering what hoos thought about this season lol

That's good news about Esmail relinquishing the writing reins somewhat. It seems like he could very easily wind up following in Nolan's footsteps if he doesn't focus on his obvious strengths rather than trying to do everything himself.

xp fwiw i was referring to how carly chaikin and grace gummer (gummer's body language is particularly notable imo) acted in that scene rather than the dialogue - which was, like, fine, nothing to write home about - but if the words killed it for you i can get that

― if young slothrop don't trust ya i'm gon' rhyme ya (slothroprhymes), Wednesday, September 28, 2016 1:19 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, i'm consistently impressed how the acting and direction can salvage such terrible writing. and the music cue and direction after the faceoff for the big reveal was excellent, i'll grant.

idk i didn't think s2 was as bad as everyone itt but it did drag. New one was a good start I thought.

they gave bobby cannavale a slightly different role than he plays in everything else!

It took me a minute to recognize him.

I watched the s3 premiere despite feeling like s2 strayed very quickly into the kind of flounder-y, shaggy dog territory that's a huge red flag wrt high-concept shows like this. It was okay, but this is starting to feel a bit like Homeland to me (a show with good enough acting that I could ignore the declining quality, until the point where I could no longer ignore the declining quality).

no way am I getting suckered back into this

I couldn't get past the fourth or fifth episode of Season 2. I waited too long to return to it, so I'd forgotten a lot. Every episode I had to go to Wikipedia to read the episode summary and try to figure out what I'd just seen. Finally gave up.

They're no longer bleeping the 'fuck's (while absurdly allowing every other swear ever invented). It's edgier than ever.

I'm getting annoyed all over again just thinking about how insulting the s2 finale was

anyone watching this that can vouch for it being worth it? couldn't get through much of the s3 premiere

Second episode was very good I thought. It could all turn to shit of course but so far this season seems to be a return to form.

The second episode montage framework kinda redeemed the show for me, it's overall pacing since the middle of the second season has been much too slow