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

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!

I feel it is most appropriate to pirate this show

i stole my copy of abbie hoffman's steal this book iirc and told the guy at the register as i left
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PaoLy7PHwk

sam esmail w/ some vague insinuations about how things will develop (no real spoilers):

Honestly, the thing about how I wanted to end this season was that I wanted to set up the larger story of Elliot’s journey. So that’s where we’re ending. A lot of things happen in these episodes that are going to give people who are following the show a lot to process and a lot to rethink and a lot to figure out. I think what I wanted ultimately was the experience coming into season 2 to be, “Okay, now I’ve got everything.” In the feature-screenwriting world, this [season 1] was the Act 1. This is our setup, essentially, to sort of inform you, “Here’s what the series is going to be about.”

Usually television shows maybe do that in the first couple episodes. We essentially took the whole season to do that, and now, going into season 2, you’ll know — you’ll know what relationship we’re going to be focused on, and what ultimately the dynamic of the series moving forward will be. So that’s where I want audiences to be by the end of the season.

on E06 and annoyingly i can't stop watching it

its biggest problem is the almost total dezoning of humor from its repertoire. it's OK to be ridiculously self-serious as long as you've got some jokes (even kubrick knew that, most of the time). i want to say that its other problem is the weird flat airlessness of the direction and editing - scenes just sort of end; long establishing shots lead to slow-ass dialog with long, pregnant pauses - but it's like 90s indie film catnip for me, i can't resist it. the cinematography feels fincherish but the mood is more like "clean, shaven"

its new york locations
which are v credible & sort of temporally accurate & meaningful vibewise

otm. like the scene where elliot takes his neglected dog about 5 feet from the front door of his tenement and points to a little square of non-paved sidewalk as the preferred destination for the dog to "deuce it out". shiver.

the hacking stuff has been alright but i could not resist a guffaw when beardy glutton announces portentously that he's "downloaded the PDFs"

yeah the humorlessness of the show really puts me off it. also it would be so much better with the narration taken out.

i always thought there was a kinda cool harmony in the wire between things the show was ~about~, these being rich & deep & intellectual, & its mode, which was something on a less lofty plain, pretty often vaguely resembling the overheard mcguyver extracts in simpsons episodes, like daniels being such a classic steely boss perpetually on the brink of taking someone off the case, just more in line with the guttural appeal of super familiar genre. the flatness/90sness/sincerity/teenage cool of the voiceover is like ... one of the things about the show that isn't unique & isn't as distinctive or absorbing, BUT: i think it's pretty satisfying? the occasional stretches of super trite anti-9-to-5-ism aren't fresh, are kinda matrixy, fight-clubby, but i think they probably mesh with or contribute to our general magnetic draw toward the space he's in.

the voiceovers are desperately needed as a glimmer of humanity in its unrelentingly nasty gallery of heels (also the drug dealer turned cowgirl waitress is U&K to this) (fsociety is too boring to even talk about) but too often for me they'll veer into portentous watchmen territory. it's major turn-off, but like i say, i can't stop watching. i guess it's rami malek? slater's not in it that much. pretty sweet gig for the ol' dog, he turns up to set, slaters it up for a while and peaces out. at this point he's like a cross between owen wilson and william shatner.