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

Re: Mr. Robot's confession to killing Tyrell, as soon as the words left his mouth, I shouted "YOU LIE!"

I wish Elliot had asked Mr Robot what the ALF thing was all about

Price's scene with Jack/Mary/Janet scene was very Hollywood re: bad.

guys this show is actually bad

Worst show ever, probably.

It's like some of you haven't suffered through decades of unambiguously shitty tv, I swear. Pouring yourself into a show as a creator must be the most disheartening thing ever the second you crack open the internet.

I went out with actual humans a couple times instead of watching this show live, that's something, right

this - the seething, practically mouth-foaming need for people to either a. be smarter than a show by predicting its plot surprises or b. demand that EVERY plot thread be EXPLICITLY resolved and explained with no ambiguity or minor confusion - is basically all the fault of famed entertainment weekly lost recapper jeff jensen, and lost's own continually confused writers

-the leftovers writing room, lunch break-

LINDELOF: tell me, intern, what's going on on the internet? that places scares me now after all the tweets.
INTERN: well, the message boards got tired of another show
LINDELOF: gasp! was it billions?
INTERN: no, mr robot, the one about the hacker with the synth music that made you feel uncomfortable and then cry?
LINDELOF ah yes! what do they dislike?
INTERN: uh, the plot can be ambiguous sometimes, I guess? it's really not that big a deal because it's character-driven anyway and if you think about it a little most of it falls tog-
LINDELOF: SILENCE! it's too late now. it is already doomed. add it to the LaFleur Memorial of Shows The Internet Turned On.
INTERN: yes sir
(intern leaves, lindelof eats silently for awhile)
LINDELOF: they'll never get you, leftovers, even the millennials like you now

~scene~

this - the seething, practically mouth-foaming need for people to either a. be smarter than a show by predicting its plot surprises or b. demand that EVERY plot thread be EXPLICITLY resolved and explained with no ambiguity or minor confusion - is basically all the fault of famed entertainment weekly lost recapper jeff jensen, and lost's own continually confused writers

― if young slothrop don't trust ya i'm gon' rhyme ya (slothroprhymes), Tuesday, August 23, 2016 1:26 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the twists don't make the show bad or good. the writing makes the show bad, and the direction and acting somehow makes it ok again.

i think the acting's pretty good! but most TV acting's pretty good tbh

I feel like the world-building is more interesting than the dialogue and character work, but not sufficiently interesting enough for me to watch season 2. I liked the first season though!

I'm not sure why but I find the derivative ideas in this (c.f. Palahniuk) much more annnoying than the (much more) derivative stuff in Stranger Things. This show just felt like it was more capable of transcending its influences, then whiffed it at the end of S1.

(Sorry, "transcending" is an annoying phrase. I guess I mean it leans on too many tropes and used ideas, when the writers are clearly smart enough to be generating their own.)

I think dislike of ambiguity in storytelling amongst some people precedes Lost by probably millenia, fwiw.

Perhaps it's not so much ambiguity with this show, as over-reliance on idiot plot, or using Eliot's mental health problems as a lampshade for them.

Idiot plot is not an issue with this show. Please see aforementioned example of L O S T for the platonic ideal of that trope.

'What key piece of information can character A nonsensically withhold from character B to ensure a plot that's propelled solely by a misunderstanding which would never happen in 99 out of 100 interactions between actual humans?'

idiot plot only works as a crit if you treat mr robot and elliot as separate people, and then the former hiding tyrell's fate from the latter is /sort of/ that, but "a misunderstanding that would never occur between actual humans" doesn't really cover a mentally ill brain at constant war with itself

Sorry if I was unclear, that hypothetical question was intended to have originated from the L O S T writers room.

Lost earned it's ambiguity/dumbness, at least through the first five seasons, because it was entertaining and most of the characters were likable, or at least colorfully hateable. I think the reason I haven't watched Season 2, despite really enjoying the first, is that I don't really enjoy watching the characters enough to care about decoding more mystery. (And ripping Fight Club at the end was *really* disappointing).

Ehh, I called the Slater reveal halfway through the first season. A little disappointing but pretty well telegraphed if you paid close enough attention. And I don't think encouraging the viewer to decode the mystery is as much central concern of Esmail & co. as it is just the way viewers are increasingly approaching shows like this.

Yeah, that's true, that way madness and tedious Reddit threads lie.

Yeah I think people are watching this as plot driven when it's character/mood driven.

is basically all the fault of famed entertainment weekly lost recapper jeff jensen

I didn't watch Lost and definitely didn't read the recaps.

The show sets up some things that seem interesting and then abandons them to do other, dumber things.
I'm not demanding everything be explained, I'm asking for the show to live up to its own standards of storytelling from Season 1. It's in a difficult position, sure, but don't do lame shit like the Beijing shootout and then throw it away the following episode with one interior dialogue scene. I'd rightfully pan any show that did that.

I actually appreciated the way they handled that scene. It was abrupt and shocking and almost doubly so because they cut away from it so suddenly, and framing it in a third person variant of Dom's perspective was a fantastic choice. It would've been overly-staged and yawnworthy and taken up half an episode on a different show. I think it served its purpose in showing what lengths the Dark Army is willing to go to and in contrasting Dom's realization of that fact against her superiors' insistence that it was just some freak terrorist thing.

More than most shows, it feels in this case like people are criticizing chapters of a book before they've taken in the whole story.

at least people are basing thoughts on a few episodes!

there are a few tv shows that have been critically well-received where I've seen articles implying one episode that marked a change in tone was a death knell, that maybe this show was never good, what were people thinking

Yeah, remember the days when it often took like a whole season for an eventually good show to eventually get good? And, because there were so many cooks stirring the pot on a show, there could be like half a dozen shitty episodes in a season of a show that people still dug because it was generally good?

no risk, no reward? when the reward is something culturally and artistically interesting. love to tear apart and criticize shows that actually try to do interesting things, while ignoring the stuff that gets churned out

Listen, I'll be super stoked if some of these threads come back around and all the Chekhov's herrings and red guns and dark white army roses transform into a reason I should give two shits about the Lady Wellick, but sophomore jinx seems pretty real and I'm allowed to complain about it, it's a free country, god dammit.

I just had lunch with my friend's coworkers and one was trying to say that sling tv's advertisements decrying the "old way" of subscription television are misleading as they're owned by Dish Network and they're trying to have it "both ways." Actually, he implied that was his view, but attributed it to angry people on reddit.

So yes, people can have vocalized opinions about lots of things

I will defend with my life your right to complain about Mr. Robot's sophomore slide. I just don't see it! Kinda feels like some of the criticism (not necessarily itt) is based on an initial suggestion that the show is this one thing but now it's this other thing, but it's not like it's been on for five years and has such a well-established identity that veering away from that is a betrayal. Particularly when the show in question chucked a whole lot of what we thought we knew into the gutter towards the end of its first season.

Another line of criticism seems like 'I want answers to the mysteries now!' There's a lot of threads running through this season that are going to run who knows where. Mr. & Mrs. Wellick, f'rinstance. If it ultimately crashes into a dead end by season's end, I'll complain with great vigor and gusto. For now, I'm content to sit back and let the crew slowly lay out their cards.

maybe season three is the really good one

Maybe!

I'm still inclined to give shows an extended chance if they're doing something worthwhile. The first season of Fargo really left me cold on a number of levels but I was intrigued enough to give it another shot and I'm glad I did because that second season was the bomb.

I should be more measured here and say that a fair portion of my shooting back at the complaints is me projecting frustrations with culture-related twitter/interwebs groupthink - I often feel that in the rush to not have a show or movie pull something over on them, today's audiences can prematurely shit on that piece of art, or redditize it. if the season adds up to nothing in the end then I'll have a lot of crow to eat & will rightfully eat it

just in case anyone thought sam esmail payolaed me (one of my recently moved out roommates is acquainted with him bc he's from jersey, I personally am not)

I stand by my lindelof joke tho

this show was writing checks its ass couldn't cash by the middle of s1 imo but as a collection of tropes designed to push the buttons of a putative 30-something kubrick nerd set it's pretty unparalleled

Right, it'll be interesting (I guess) when the new Star Trek starts - I think it's a 13 episode series? Even the good seasons of TNG barely had 13 good episodes (out of 26).

I'm here for the Hackers references

this show was writing checks its ass couldn't cash by the middle of s1 imo but as a collection of tropes designed to push the buttons of a putative 30-something kubrick nerd set it's pretty unparalleled
--illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand)

lol reasonable diss but I don't even like kubrick how am I loving it so much?!

imo it goes for the visual Kubrick mechanics and not the plotting side

Is it really that Kubrick-y? I mean, some of the shots are, but not the pacing, the editing, the scripting, the tone, the settings...

Sorry - what mh said

well kubrick nerds like all sorts of things

"we're all true scotsmen aren't we"

i cant quite follow the plot of this show so im more attuned than usual to the stylistic motifs (and/or crutches) and one thing this show does a lot that strikes as simply unusual for a TV show especially is the framing--i'll have to pay more attention but id wager the number of times you get a typical cut/reverse cut conversation is very small, and often its a two shot with the characters a minimized in the frame as possible (right now im thinking of the shot with angela and the old E corp dude sitting in front of a large abstract painting--itself like a minimalist Starry Night--and almost dwarfed or oppressed by it). I dont think this is a particularly kubrickian device--his framings are usually pretty classical, no? maybe you'll get an oddly low angle at times. anyway--a lot of these stylistic choices strike me as pretty interesting, at least at first, but with the plot slipping out of my grasp they start to feel one-note and repetitive. not sure how many monotone angela conversations with excessive pauses i need to sit through.

often its a two shot with the characters a minimized in the frame as possible

Yeah noticed this too, the characters are facing the the lower corner of the frame.

a bunch of reviews have pointed that out - i think it might be an esmail shooting trademark (not saying he invented it, bc obv not, but it's def not something i see often outside the show)

it's one of the show's many sub-film school tics

:)

a lot of these stylistic choices strike me as pretty interesting, at least at first, but with the plot slipping out of my grasp they start to feel one-note and repetitive.

Yes. And while my grasp of visual rhetoric is basic at best, I keep trying to figure out if the framing choices are supposed to be emphasizing / amplifying things about the characters and their circumstances. And most of the time it just seems gratuitously weird (which I'm fine with but like you said, sometimes the mood gets old)