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

Gideon and Shayla at least had plot relative killings? Shayla was mixed up with a psycho drug dealer and Gideon getting killed kind of hammered home that people's lives are fucked up after the e-Corp crash

Leon's bit was o_O

oh my god this show fucking sucks

then don't watch it, el shakey

cold open w/android hack lulz - dumb as balls

dialing into FBI conference call on unclassified "everybody shares a dial-in code" joke line - dumb, dumb, dumb

guy threatening other guy - dumb

chief counsel of e-corp coming home like nobody saw that shit coming - dumb

angela's family friend making pithy shit talk, followed by angela's TFF karaoke - awful, dumb, dumb, awful, horrible, dumb

the writing on this has just beaten True Detective S2 for sophomore "I can do whatever I want!" stupidity

I don't give a shit what happens to a single character on this show except oh wait it's DUCK PHILLIPS!!!! maybe he can save it

Maybe this episode is just a really dumb person having a dream about what happens next?

magical taser that can cause a person to drown in pool water that's shallow enough for them to stand in - dumb

postmortem revelation that she had a heart condition because didn't you read all her emails with her doctor?!?!?!?!?!?!?

I look forward to understanding what other people get out of this, after this I can't imagine how you don't feel insulted by this preposterous, posturing, arrogant nonsense

The karaoke scene seemed a little too on the nose. Felt like a student film homage to Donnie Darko's Tears for Fears sequence.

i liked her rendition, somehow.

el tom are you mad the nsa got hacked and it was prob as dumb as this

sorry, a little salty about the point-by-point list of not buying this show

otm about duck

Oh it's way more than not buying it, I understand that I am watching fictional television entertainment, it's that it's careless and badly done and not thoughtful at all anymore.

The scene near the end where Dom's boss is yelling at her, for example, is bad on several levels: Gummer has nothing to do in the scene; the guy playing her boss is hamming it up like he's in on the joke that his lines are; btw, his lines are a joke; and THEN on top of the bad writing and direction it's also ridiculous to imagine the FBI giving half of a hummingbird's shit about its public image in the wake of a surveillance scandal.

I really wouldn't care if the show hadn't been so memorably good last year and full of nice touches. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong.

I think you're remembering it wrong. Not in terms of whether it's good or bad but it's been fairly consistent. There have always been problematic elements. I like it but I've suspected from early on that the show was wrapping a lot of immediately appealing and prestige-attracting elements around a somewhat hollow core (reminiscent of Homeland, which I loved for the acting but which I thought revealed itself to be pretty dumb and kinda junky about midway through the first season, a couple of years before the critics and award givers of the world caught on).

Again, I like it, but tbh I haven't been particularly invested since they killed off Shayla. Krista is just about the only other sympathetic character and she's barely on the show.

i think it really was better. the action now is taking place more in new places -- fbi offices, evilcorp. i just think esmail can't write for those places -- he can't imagine the inner lives of the people there, much less the way they conduct their jobs in the day to day so it becomes a flat fantasia that rings false to anyone with even a little understanding. but in the first season, when he was just writing lonely people in front of computers or arguing in motel rooms, he had a good grasp of how to make tick.

and in the first sesason he didn't have to speculate about how society would react and change, so it could take place essentially in the present. now, he's got to have an imagined response to imagined events that shook the world, and so that adds another element of unreality.

this season is definitely not as fun to watch as the last one, and i say that as its biggest stan on this borad and the creator of this thread

it is essentially the /same/ show, with the same sociopolitical and psychological concerns, the same filmmaking flourishes (which are ymmv but they havent changed, really), the same tone in the writing from both a plotting and dialogue-writing perspective, the same performances - although if you wanted to say it feels like elliot and everyone else are in two different shows that'd be fair

anyone who hates it, though, it's prob not gonna change so just don't watch! no one is forcing you. im not gonna post up in the halt and catch fire thread to say i think that show is hella overrated

Fridging Shayla, plus inevitability of the Fight Club reveal, plus feeling that female and gay characters were all disposable and/or enigmas, was what did the show in for me.

Alhthough weirdly you're all making S2 sound kind of interesting

It would have to go really, really far to be as bad as True Detective 2

Angela is the only thing that is REALLY bothering me about the show right now. I enjoyed the last episode, and was happy that Mobley asked for a lawyer rather than breaking under the molehill of evidence that Dom tried to scare him with.

But Angela. Ugh. She looks so guilty all the time. She just ignores people when they talk to her. That speech about how "I have a six-figure income at the biggest corporation in the world..." Lamest burn in history. Family friend guy should have laughed in her face.

Fairly certain, when the fsociety folk are scrambling to find leverage on the lawyer, there's a semi-closeup on the lawyer's e-mail stack and a heart condition subject e-mail either selected/highlighted or right above a selection. The post-mortem revelation is all verbal between the characters.

I'm enjoying this season, particularly the camera set-ups. Was impressed that folk caught the faux-reality as quickly as they did. Particularly the b-ball and circle of support scenes seemed ... off, but I didn't make the connection.

Yes, there was absolutely an email about living with a pacemaker. I wondered why nobody mentioned it at first until I waited ten minutes. But they did set it up.

I get what they're trying to do with Angela but I kinda think the actress might not be up to the task. I think her hardass shit is supposed to come off as sorta pathetic because Angela clearly doesn't believe what she's saying most of the time (hence the constant self-affirmations) but instead of playing on two levels (scared and out of her depth woman projecting some convincing degree of false confidence) we're getting what feels like a scared and out of her depth actress failing to convince us that she'd be able to actually muster the false confidence to navigate her new world.

you know, if e-coin is anything like bitcoin and it's usable and has legitimacy in the show's world... this crash is a ploy by Chinese speculators to drive people to e-coin to drive up demand before hacking the exchange systems, right?

Okay, so making basically no contingencies for the possible return of the occupant of the home you're squatting in...kinda idiotic. Unless Darlene was planning for that likelihood...in which case...still fairly idiotic.

― Two Kisses and Three Wet Mouths (Old Lunch), Wednesday, August 24, 2016 10:49 PM (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They had a tracking map set up that they showed on screen but no one was paying attention to it. I didn't mind that moment

Generally speaking though I agree with tombot

Still watching "Mr. Robot" but finding that the pacing in season 2 kills this show. It's taken nearly the whole season for them to move on from the finale of season 1, which makes it feel like the creators are dragging their heels to extend the life of the show. Feels less like exposition and more just like they hit pause for the first several episodes and we're resuming the plot in the last couple.

Episodes 3 and 4 were very draggy and could've easily been condensed to a single hour, but other than that I'm quite digging the pacing.

the first three episodes could have been interchangeable

last ep was actually pretty fun tho

I was trying to figure out what some random song in the taxi was and I realized they're playing most of the songs off the Back to the Future soundtrack, including the less obvious ones. I listened to that tape a lot as a kid...

https://youtu.be/uLPVI7HBQSQ

I think the scene in the room with the girl and the fish and the Commodore 64 might be where they lost me. The show hasn't earned that level of opaque weirdness. Here we are with one episode left in the season and a whole lotta dangling threads left to tie up and they're throwing more shit at the wall. I'm getting distinct L O S T vibes all of the sudden, like Esmail & co. don't quite know where this train is heading but hope that if they ply the passengers with enough free snacks they won't notice when we all plunge into the abyss.

that episode was straight-up garbage

Serious question: did anything happen in this episode? Really? Angela is seemingly realigned, Elliott may or may not have encountered XXXXXX...what else? Anything, of consequence or otherwise?

We're now up to like, what, five or six characters that they've disappeared without revealing their ultimate fate? This last episode better be a mindblowing data dump or I think I might be hopping off the bus.

What about that pointless scene w Dom talking to siri. Did I miss something or was that entirely to show she was kind of depressed? Was there a point?

I assume they've been setting her up to ultimately join F Society. I generally don't mind methodical pacing and scenes that add color but when those elements dominate they just feel like padding in lieu of actual narrative momentum.

alexa is a sad companion

What about that pointless scene w Dom talking to siri. Did I miss something or was that entirely to show she was kind of depressed? Was there a point?

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Thursday, September 15, 2016 11:25 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it was entirely to show she was depressed, which, arguably, was already shown enough in the second episode, but imo having that intensely sad an interaction with a digital assistant is like, falling into a far nastier sub-basement of depression. scene was overlong from a completely objective standpoint but idk i found it moving

Rami Malek needs a good story editor so bad

five or six characters that they've disappeared

mobley, trenton, romero (he was killed by either dark army or (redacted), who appear to be one and the same if what we saw can be believed), we didn't see what happened to cisco and darlene but i'm willing to be he dead and she isn't...i guess that is 5 lol but i'm not sure if the latter two count, bc it's more like they were not the episode's focus rather than disappeared. am i forgetting somebody?

xp you mean esmail?

also *bet he dead

The problem is that this was supposed to air as the first half of a two-hour finale--for some reason they broke it up. It left too many unanswered questions this week to the point that it seems that they're withholding information for cheap suspense.

I'm excited for next week's finale, though!

xp lol yes I meant Esmail, Malek is fine as he is

yeah, even as this show's no. 1 stan on ILX and basically everywhere i can get ppl to listen to me, i agree he could use a better steadying hand. the season was shot in sequence as a 12-hour movie bc esmail was directing it all, but he could've had a head writer/story ed. making sure everything hung together tightly w/o compromising that visual aspect of it, imo

while mentioning malek though i would like to say the sum total of his performance is one of my favorite performances of all time.

he is great

i ilke the cinematography

i love the music

i like the ostensible story

i hate the story as executed

the dialogue is middling

things that should be handled subtly are handled clumsily

I agree w/ all of that. Dom getting ready for work at 4am to "The Highwaymen" is one of my favorite soundtrack cues in a very long time.

Yep, even as a general fan of this season I have to admit this episode was dire. Boring and prestentious. I'm half expecting some bollocks twist like the whole thing has been Elliot's dream or Angela is a figment of his imagination now. Plus I've realised I really don't like Dom.

Didn't realise Esmail has directed the whole season! That's a hell of a workload.

I liked the ridiculous adventure game thing

white rose's domain is magic realism

also an extended white rose scene was appreciated, need more b.d. wong

the use of the back to the future soundtrack music (something is a clue, there) also let me learn this:

there's a lindsey buckingham song (the one linked above) on the bttf soundtrack that, as far as i can tell, has never been released on any other album

i noticed the BttF music too. but my god this episode was so dull and self indulgent, i don't even want to contemplate what it could be about.

when is this show going to have some goddamn robots

EMMY AWARD WINNING LEAD ACTOR RAMI MALEK