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

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

yeah, that was clunky and a bit on the nose.

always knew teh backlash taeks would come for this show, hoped against all reason that they wouldnt tho

White Rose is baaaack

I'm bailing out on this after S2E3. I'd have to force myself to continue and I'm just not gonna. Totally lost interest.

if the Big Evil plot is going where I think it's going, I'm gonna nerd out a little bit

I watched the opener and I realised I just don't care any more.

Honestly this season could just as easily have started with this week's episode

When i found annoyed that they didn't bother to make sure he knew how chess was played I got disproportionally upset about it

I was hitherto enjoying the leisurely pace but this one tipped over into torpor. Something needs to happen soon. Still very atmospheric, mind.

OTM. Felt like they took two hours to fess up that 1. Slater is not leaving the show, as if that was ever in question and 2. Elliott is ready to hack again!!! about fucking time, JFC

really, really, REALLY don't give two shits what's going on with Wellick's wife. She's like a perfume ad.

also dragging out the reveal that he's an inpatient is really unhelpful

and about blacking out in the server room and smashing everything up; it's not great when your show is cribbing character backstories from the same fakebook as Halt And Catch Fire.

glad to see at least the AV Club is on the case re: peculiar (or is it?!?) spelling of "Operation Berenstain"
http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/game-chess-almost-destroys-everything-mr-robot-240248

I love perfume ads

/still don't think he's hospitalized just sayin/

b.d. wong bringing it

Watched Comet w/o knowing it was related to Mr. Robot. Worth watching for Emmy Rossum and Justin Long, by far the best acting I've seen from either of them.

ok all the recaps were headlined like "oh good the show is back on track" and all I got was more dumb stuff about the Lady Wellick, a tease of Elliott going hacking again (with no payoff) and then two cliffhangers that aren't actually (let me guess, Dom and Elliott both survive - and we still won't know what is going on!) At least last season you had the illusion of understanding the fundamentals of the plot. I don't know what the S2 story even is at this point. Is it about something? Is there a theme?

"Look what we can get away with"

I'm really not sure what y'all are missing here lol the plot is not fuckin rocket science? then again this show's pleasures have never been about plot for me anyway. also yo where the heck is hoos to revel in this show's lunacy with me

the first 10 minutes of this one was so gleefully batshit

Yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the "Too Many Cooks" style theme song (apparently written by the dudes who actually wrote the Full House theme song)

I miss Gideon, was nice to see him even as a sitcom police officer murdered by Alf.

I haven't been able to watch until now and I'd either forgotten your second sentence or thought it was hyperbole but... wow!

The theme song definitely sounded like Family Matters

omg they have motd enabled on the computer Angela is learning the hack on

Oh wait maybe that's part of the OpenWRT text :/

Second season is gradually devolving into a complete waste of an amazing cast.

Beijing shootout: waved away in one scene. Who killed Jerome: nobody cares. Why is Elliott dragged out of the hospital into a cellar? No reason. What were the stakes in Angela's big hack? Nonexistent. Whose hotel room are they squatting in? Minor details.

Not as bad as true detective season 2 but I am really starting to worry that this sentence ends with yet.

The hotel room was explained by Darlene stealing the skeleton key from the housekeeper - it's an open hotel room.

I imagine that they took Elliott out of the hospital into a cellar because they wanted to torture him, not kill him.

The stakes of Angela's hack--admittedly unsure about this one from the hacker perspective. I guess they need to know what the FBI has on fsociety. For me, the stakes were high because I care about Angela as a character and I don't want her to go to jail/get fired from E Corp/get murdered like Gideon

Who killed Jerome? It's looking like the dark army...Whiterose is getting nervous and murdering everyone, it seems.

The Beijing shootout thing did bother me a bit, but there have been clues that Dom has trouble relating to people, showing empathy (as shown in the bodega scene from this episode) and since the FBI scenes are filmed from her POV, sad things like her co-workers dying in front of her might not phase her?

Idk. I have faith in Esmail and besides one bum episode a couple weeks ago, I think the season has been solid. They really need to integrate Elliott with the rest of the characters though.

They took Elliot because he regained consciousness and could rat them out!

I just feel no tension during this show anymore. Angela is not going to get caught. Dom is not going to get shot. Elliott is not going to wind up in a wheelchair. Truxton Spangler or whatever is not going to get kidnapped. Whiterose is not going to get outed. Christian Slater is not going to fade away.

God, I miss Rubicon.