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

halfway through this first episode and it's off to a good start. jake busey cameo! violence! a fully in control mr robot binary!

revisited the pilot recently and am kind of in awe at how far off the rails the show went from there. I will probably still begrudgingly catch s4 at some point.

I can't really remember how we got here but that was a good episode!

I only have a vague memory of season 2 (which I bailed on toward the end, I think) but I felt like it made a huge mistake in trying to make things make sense. Season 1 didn't need to be continued on and clarified.

Whyyyyy do I do this? Two episodes deep and there's *still* nearly no story to this PoS show, but it looks and sounds so good.

I have no clue what is going on in this show too but then read last year that BD Wong also couldn't remember what was going on before he started season 3.

The exchanges between Elliot and his sister are so glacial it's like watching an episode of Jam, I wish they'd speed it up slightly, it's boring as fuck to watch. The whole second episode looks like Eyes Wide Shut though, I'm digging that.

S4E2 lots of nothing and the uh "twist" goes back to the show's worst tendencies

honestly I watched about half of the s4 premiere and then bailed. in retrospect it really seems like Esmail and co. just had no clue what to do with the non-Elliot characters even as he kept adding more and more of them.

I've seen speculation that Angela's fate was the product of some real-life interpersonal drama but honestly given how wasted other female characters have been who could even tell

Now it feels like I'm watching Season 5 of Lost or something where they're *still* pissing around running from one side of the island to the next to do 'a thing', completely beholden to the conceit laid out in the first twenty minutes of the very first episode.

tobias: best new incidental character

I didn't spot the gimmick for this episode until the very end - well done, I guess? Apart from that almost nothing happened, just moving pieces around.

Is the gimmick that there was no dialogue?

Great episode; best of the season. And Young M.A.! What with Joey Badass I'm guessing Sam Esmail is a backpacker hip hop nerd.

This show is simultaneously amazing and garbage in a way nothing else is.

xps - yep

also not an xp - yep

Enjoyed the last two, what was the gimmick though?

Oh wait, no dialogue?

yep

Has it ever been clarified the purpose of the machine that White Rose is building/built?

It's a dead-mom-bringing-back machine

makes all your dead parents forever live in your head

Elliot's the first test subject

Man these last two weeks have sucked. The Vera character is so lame.

SPOILERS

And all of this crap is in service of a cheap child abuse revelation. I dunno, I know all the TV auteurs claim they are more interested in characters than plot, but when Esmail assembles such a (mostly) mediocre cast and give them cliched and not-very-interesting things to say, maybe it would have been better to focus on the plot. The hacker heist bits are definitely my favorite parts of the show.

plot reveals character!

At last! Also lolz at Trump in the Deus groop gathering.

fun episode

love 2 put all my infinite money in one bank and get all my friends to do the same thing

Anybody still watching this thing? Penultimate episode dropped last night, two-hour finale next weekend. I feel like I've spent the entire season slowly recalling all of the things I'd forgotten about previous seasons. Not unconvinced it's all gonna be nonsense in the end, but we've gotten a few years of nicely-filmed sturm und drang out of the deal, and that ain't nothin'.

I am still watching! Haven't seen the latest episode though.

Still watching, what a time to hit the button though, right at the end of the whole thing, interested to see what the actual fuck is going to happen now.

I'm withholding judgment and trying to just enjoy the ride (an approach that I find is the most constructive way to enjoy this show), but I'm hard-pressed to think of any explanation for the sudden shift in the status quo that won't be disappointing. Every show and movie in existence is banking on high concept at the moment, so if you're going that route you really gotta wow the audience with something unexpected.

I still haven't started the last season and I have a feeling I might just bail on it.

At this point in this kind of show all I really want is for them to not completely mess up the ending. This episode was fine! I'm making myself not waste time on speculation - the plot will go wherever Esmail wants it to - and yeah, just enjoy the ride.

(though I'm pretty sure it's the same Tyrell that got lost in the words; and why no Darlene? Mrs. Alderson had an affair, and that didn't happen in the new timeline?)

lost in the *woods*

white rose looking good in the end times

however it ends, the journey was worth it imo - especially this last season! writing, cinematography and performances have all been ON POINT. The malek/wong staredown in the latest episode was a particular high point.

I didn't expect the Elliot Instrumentality Project, but I'm tentatively on board. I always liked Eva's ending.

I think they stuck the landing

I stopped watching but I guess they went full St Elsewhere with it?

I am thinking of just watching the finale and not the rest of the final season.

same tbh

I’d throw in the preceding episode as well

Fuck this candy-ass Dallas bullshit and fuck M83

At least he didn't move to Canada and become a lumberjack.

so yeah huh

I wasn't expecting the finale to be an extended riff on Inside Out

Agree, stuck the landing, for me. Wasn't expecting the reveal and loved how the reintegration was shown.

Just finished the finale, literally came here to type the phrase 'stuck the landing'. Glad to see I'm not alone! Esmail adroitly sailed between the cyberpunk Scylla and the multiversal Charybdis he'd set the audience up to expect. It ended in a much more satisfying and internally-consistent fashion than some of the shows I've deeply loved (I think I've settled on a designation of 'pretty darn good' for this particular show).

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2019 season is nominated in the 2019 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2019 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends January 31

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (4 minimum, 25 maximum, organized by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail by end of day today. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

Four-and-a-half years since I gave up on this--almost back where I bailed, S2/E5. I will definitely finish this time. Having subtitles off Prime helps (was watching bootlegs last time).