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

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

forgot to note that here last night

would've been fine with matthew rhys too but fuck yeah!

I dunno he's perfect for the role and all, but I'm not sure it's one that requires much acting range. Rhys would've been a worthier winner imo.

*eyes bulge, look around*

Very... Slow... Voiceover.

lol fuck this show

sure, but ask it for consent before doing that

as proof that i do not defend EVERYTHING on this show, i thought the reveal re: joanna's plotline was dumb and unnecessary, and made clear that while she is not without her interesting attributes, her psychopathy is ultimately one-note and the series really doesn't need her thread. i would wager that esmail wanted to keep the character around because he liked writing her and just got stumped by what to actually /do/ with her.

aside from that i think the finale was fine tbqh and i'm excited to see what's next. malek's acting - particularly the opening scene where he was playing mr robot rather than elliot - was on fire.

the dom-darlene conversational faceoff was fantastic, and dom's partner going all meta only to prompt dom actually saying "we're not so different you and i" was almost as astute an audience-troll as using "where is my mind" in the episode where mr. robot's falsehood was revealed

There's only so much cliche I can take being defended as "meta commentary" or "audience trolling." Let's just call it what it is - lazy writing. Dom's speech about how she *is* Darlene, Elliot's rant about how reality isn't real (maaaaan), "this isn't some TV show," the useless Joanna plot that used up, what, a full episode of screentime? The details really bother me, too, because they're so half-assed - a brilliantly evil conglomerate like Ecorp dumping all their paper docs into one facility, especially one that's not airgapped in some way? Romero getting offed by a stray bullet? That neverending sub-Lynchian garbage sequence with Angela last week? (OK, I get it, I just hate this show now and should stop.)

lol its perfectly fine to hate & rant!

i'm only defending the "this isn't burn notice" thing as meta because he literally made a joke about burn notice on a usa show.

dismissing romero's killing as a random thing jagged at me too but like, i can /deal/ with that?

imo "this isn't burn notice" should have been followed by someone peeling out in a hyundai

what do you guys think of the ending scene with our f society-in-exile duo working at fry's?

the idea they could magically undo stuff is silly as a hook but I liked it, especially Trenton looking incredibly out of place in uniform

I'm watching the finale. wow, esmail.

Sarah Bunting probably has the best rundown of the second season of anybody: http://previously.tv/mr-robot/mr-robot-did-what-needed-to-be-done/

It still sucked, though.

Yeah, I'm definitely someone who values plotting, and Esmail has said over and over that he doesn't care about plot - he's interested in characters, reactions, choices... The thing is, I don't really love the characters of Mr. Robot that much, and some of the plots have been interesting, and exciting. Plus, if it's a show about characters, why is it so obsessed with getting all of the tech details right? Esmail brought up Lindelof on The Watch, so that pretty much seals it for me. I think I'm out.

And yet... That last scene, with Trenton, Mobly, and Leon will probably keep me watching. They are the only characters in the show who act like actual human beings, which is crazy because so far they've been mostly treated as just extras in service of the supposedly-fascinating (but most tedious and one-note) main characters of the show. Hopefully they get this show moving again next season.

If he repeats the stunt where he directs the whole season as a 12 hour tone poem I can't see how it could possibly get any better

i guess i'm not a lindelof expert since i never watched Lost but The Leftovers is so, so good i'm always tempted to defend him. but maybe that's a scenario where the contract the show makes with its audience really plays into lindelof's strengths?

agree though that "character" seems like a poor M.O. for this last season of mr robot. i'm not sure any of these characters have enough consistency or personality to really count as developed. i mean, would any of them doing anything really be a surprise? i feel like we barely know them at all after two seasons.

Show had some promising characters, then killed them. Meta-whatever's fine, except there's no substance to comment on in this thing. I don't like to pop up on a thread just to be a dick, but this show is insultingly bad.

how was this season of Suits, I only caught a couple episodes

The dude on Suits will never not be Owen Wilson's pilot

Plus, if it's a show about characters, why is it so obsessed with getting all of the tech details right?

Even that kind of went out the window this season. I have some coder friends who were very offended/amused by the FBI hacking sequence.

Also, not something I expected them to pick up on, but pacemakers have a tendency to explode when thrown into incinerators, which is a cool real-life detail they missed out on incorporating!

The attention to detail died with Gideon imo

the dom-darlene conversational faceoff was fantastic

― if young slothrop don't trust ya i'm gon' rhyme ya (slothroprhymes), Thursday, September 22, 2016 3:53 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

seriously baffled by this. came here to complain about how that dialogue is everything wrong with the writing in this show. just lazy, cliche ridden, try-hard, emotionally empty etc. and delivered with such conviction.

agreed