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

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

I kinda think that'll happen

Possibly just have him in flashback?
I wonder if the window thing was actually fatal the first time? & if that was the traumatic point. But may have the wrong defenestree, so may have to rewatch that bit.

The childhood shop and the burnt one, were they coincidentally the same premises? Or was I reading that wrong? Forgot what was on the hoarding at the end of the sequence.

I got the impression Elliot was self-harming and he threw himself out the window in the past. He had a lot of emotional probs and his dad wasn't actually mean?

I might have misread it, though.

i got a little lost with slater talking about "my secret"

he's ghost dad

is that the secret

thats boring

i could see slater disappearing because elliot is doing "better" ... then elliot relapses or something and he reappears in a "remember me?" type manner

I was trying to remember if Elliott had pushed his real Dad out of the window or vice versa.
Also has he really hurt himself?

well, he threw himself off the boardwalk

right it was father pushed him when he was 8 years old, not sure how that relates to the childhood scene. Can'tyt tell offhand how old that kid is.

Right & the last hoarding, as in shop title over door, on the shop is a Bank Of E thing. & I'm not sure how rapidly after the scene we see the repair shop becomes a to let place.

It's unclear whether his father ever actually pushed him! Maybe his real father did, but the Mr. Robot hallucination version says he never pushed him, it was all his own doing. Which is definitely true for the boardwalk incident.

seeing elliot like 'take on' the injuries after mr robot disappeared was a nice touch

you know what this show is reminding me of, in terms of geek appeal / world building / self aware directorial eye and character perspective / mostly aces casting / punching outside of its weight class is Daredevil
i get the distinct sense that both shows are also doing their first seasons just to set the table and they're gonna elevate above very good to excellent in season two.
at least i hope so

https://hackertarget.com/hacker-tools-mr-robot//

just rewatched the latest one - the last scene killed me on second viewing.

"I wanted to save the world."

yeah fuck

also loved that the mr robot store was in north jersey (a bergen-something storefront replaces the original in the time lapse), after all so many catastrophic personal disintegrations begin in northern new jersey

least surprising sloth post yet

wow rude

clearly referring to the insinuation that northern NJ is conducive to catastrophic personal disintegrations, NOT saying you are known for any catastrophic personal disintegrations

lol i was jk, also tbf i have had several catastrophic personal disintegrations in north jersey (and elsewhere)

evan are u watching this show btw because you totally should be

I just clicked the thread so far, haven't seen it. Avoided reading it too closely in case of spoilers, but yeah I might give it a shot if I can access it on demand somehow.

yea its on demand if you have cable, also you can get it online on USA's website if you have a comcast/cablevision/whatev login

ah, ok!