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

that is totally a thing in the world, people who are suddenly aware of and obsessed with seinfeld

idgi but I am an old

craig robinson playing a regular dude instead of an avatar of ridiculous comedy is a nice change of pace

I'm waiting for the reveal that Robinson is fbi

https://0x41.no/mr-robot-s02e01-easter-egg/

ways this seasons premiere evidences the series has jumped it;

Black dude from the office showing up - no ones asking for you here man

Sonics youths bull in the heather - as if

both of those things are gd imo

bonus lol if you are comic book guying someone who works in an office listening to SY

The dialogue in this episode was definitely OTT portentous, and his buddy who just discovered Seinfeld disappears immediately after Craig Robinson shows up, for whatever reason.
Not sure you can drive a whole season of this show on a single mystery, especially not one as potentially inconsequential as "where is Tyrell Wellick?"

Also way to just off the most sympathetic character right away, what is this, GoT

Yeah the boss being killed was brutal :( He was the one guy in the show who really didnt deserve any of this shit.

TBH I wasnt feeling this new season much, but I'm willing to give it some time. S1 needed some patience too really.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/18/12213340/mr-robot-digital-aftershow-hosted-by-the-verge-starts-this-week

Every week after the show, Emily Yoshida, Russell Brandom, and I will be breaking down the episode, looking at the tech and hacks involved, talking to guests from the cast and crew, and taking questions and feedback from fans on Twitter and (of course) our very own Mr. Robot IRC channel.

obviously I will be joining the irc channel via a vanity domain

my reaction to this show reminds me of nothing more than how I reacted to Pump Up the Volume (waddup C Slate) which also took punk rock themes and presented them in a super cartoonishly corny way. I am aware that this is what ilx likes but I couldn't stomach PUTV and I can't hang with this either.

I feel like you have confused this show and the excellent movie Hackers

The dialogue in this episode was definitely OTT portentous, and his buddy who just discovered Seinfeld disappears immediately after Craig Robinson shows up, for whatever reason.
Not sure you can drive a whole season of this show on a single mystery, especially not one as potentially inconsequential as "where is Tyrell Wellick?"
--El Tomboto

something tells me wellick will ultimately end up being the reddest of red herrings. there's only so much you can do with him now that he's fully unhinged before it becomes one note

he's in a village in northern europe with no internet access imo

or possibly trying to work with eastern europe hacker groups

i watched the first season a week ago and now im caught up on the new episodes. outside of some episodes of Mad Men and maybe True Detective (both ultimately better shows imo), I don't think I've seen a tv show really lean so heavily on evoking a particular mood and for the most part do it really well. in the case of Mr. Robot I guess it's the dread-laden ennui of the protagonist, someone who finds himself adrift from the world at large and therefore sees its full contingency clearly. cyber-gnosticism. (or "techgnosis" in erik davis's phrase.) long takes! unorthodox framing! deep rumbles on the soundtrack!

are we talking True Detective season one or two in your rankings, here?

one

*whispers* season two wasn't even remotely as bad as the internet made people think it was *runs away laughing maniacally*

sry what were we talking about? right. stoked for tomorrow's episode!

oh agreed, it was...
tomorrow is the day, robot fans!

depressed fbi agent who is a walking advertisement for the lonely human talking to amazon's computer voice... good stuff

Not quite sure that was a ringing endorsement of Amazon's product

not at all! very realistic, though

when you're not sure how to go forward, you go backward. *cue flashback

I'm trying real hard to dig this season but it kind of seems to have dissolved into self-parody. It seems more like an SNL skit than itself.

I'm not sure how Craig Robinson's character is going to play out, but he'll be somehow as damaged as Elliott, I would guess.

Which parts seem parodic? There have been some over-the-top bits but nothing as out there/inexplicable as some of the things that drove people away earlier in this thread. I know that filling in backstory can very easily tarnish things, but extrapolating on the few characters in f society that we saw actually in action in the first season doesn't seem any weirder than Elliott's journey through his own past (and out the window)

refresh my memory -- the exec that Angela is working with, was he the one we saw meeting with White Rose at the end of the last season?

Yes, he's the CEO of Evil Corp

if this theory's right it's pretty corny http://www.vulture.com/2016/07/mr-robot-theory.html

Relevant glitching

https://twitter.com/archillect/status/755092285889675264

don't think I agree w/ the psych ward theory tbh

(then again I didn't think the truth of mr robot's identity was what it was in the first season so my guessing track record is tarnished)

The hospital theory should get a good test when his sister visits him. IMO, Ray is a counselor with a side hustle involving bitcoin (pharmaceutical reseller!) and the dog is a therapy dog. Maybe his sister checked him in? Seems obvious Mr. Robot knows Wellick's phone number but Elliott of course doesn't, so that's how the phone call happens.

Which means at some point Ray is probably going to connect the dots and figure out not only can Elliott solve his hacker issues, Elliott can lead him to the most wanted man on earth, if only he can talk to Mr. Robot through Elliott. Ray strikes me as a very bad, bad man.

Why does sad FBI agent fixate on her name on a file printout if that information was supposedly already leaked (and who cares about the names of FBI agents? They print them on business cards for crying out loud)?

Can we find out who killed Rome, please?

I'm enjoying it. The first season was a slick, enjoyable but predicatable thriller, this one appears to be something stranger, less plot-driven and more interesting so far. Dark, compelling and very stylish.

2 stylish

aronofsky-hard-on post-trainspotting max-prestige stylization overload imo

also something that made me laugh thinking abt ep iii yday was realising that, after the ambiguity of the first season, we are now in the position of slater appearing as a figment of elliott's imagination in the tradition of TV ghosts or supernatural sidekicks, ie someone leans over & he is suddenly present in a puff of smoke, his face talks to elliott thru the clouds, is reflected in pools of water, he rises from the back seats of empty cars, the season finale includes frequent cutaways to slater's yapping taunts materialized in the still water of a toilet bowl

aronofsky-hard-on post-trainspotting max-prestige stylization overload imo

― schlump

Nah it's more restrained and well done than that, imo also.

i guess i just think it's more 'like' that, tho, now; that the first season had so many kind of slightly formless incredibly satisfying 'present'-feeling sections of just people bopping around ny, montages of subway riding or mundane clerical activity or whatever. now it's a tighter form of montage invariably set to music & quite often in that like exact requiem-for-a-dream quick-cut ratio. i am complaining about it & i still think it's okay, & i think sometimes it seems to overshoot & then redeems itself - the scene where elliott's kidnapped, but then is vomiting, say - but it being consumed by weird vague fight club shit & almost parodic monotonous delivery over deadpan cityscapes would be a rly sad derail from where it was last year, i think, great as a procedural, novel as something thoughtful that wasn't contingent on devices like flashing ACCESS DENIED screens, & with a guy who was sort of zeitgeistishly affectless

I get the sense that this show is slowly starting to fall victim to that anxious critical tic whereby ideas presented in the show as text (rather than subtext) are vaguely dismissed as shallow or sophomoric without any actual engagement of said ideas by the critic--as if they are aesthetically unappealing and thus dismissable in an aesthetic medium?

But tbf I frequently watch this show with only the vaguest idea of what's going on. I just like the long takes and monologues.

I also like the frequent kubrickian device of banal conversations with a minimum of 5 seconds between every response.

It is rather Kubrickian all round actually, as has surely been pointed out before.

So far minus a few cool moments I have found the show suddenly excruciatingly boring, and the unending pointless arguments between him and ghost dad are excruciating

I meant to say exceedingly, then excruciating

Exactly. Show seems to be going nowhere slow.

And does anyone really care about Angela? How many more scenes of her sitting mute and listening to the e Corp old man do we have to sit through?

yep the most fascinating aspect of this show is its adulation imo

"going nowhere slowly" is kinda why i'm still loving s2. i've actually really enjoyed angela this season, watching her remaining scruples wash away, and like all good tragic characters, it's something she's completely aware of. certainly better than her wet fish 1st season.

Idk it feels one dimensional to me. Also I don't the entire exchange where the woman tells the prostitution anecdote it rang false