The fourth episode of freshman USA Network hit drama Mr. Robot screened last night on the cable network. As usual, it was a fantastic hour of television, but I can't help but wondering whether overkill got the better of proceedings.
"eps1.3_da3m0ns.mp4" is the first episode not to have been written by showrunner Sam Esmail. Adam Penn took on that role with Nisha Ganatra directing.
The hour began with some beautifully produced shots of Elliot's last shot of morphine. From day one, Elliot has used the substance in favor of more hardened drugs to soothe his anxiety, and even then he's used it sparingly to prevent becoming too heavily addicted. Elliot's drug use was far more front and center than we've seen before - and even then it wasn't at any stage been hidden from view. It just didn't resonate with me this time round. I'll dive deeper into this later.
Mere seconds after that opening shot and voiceover introduction, we jump to the fsociety headquarters where Elliot is explaining his plan for destroying Evil Corp's data backup system to Darlene and three other associates, two of whom, according to IMDb, are named Mobley and Trenton (a pet hate of mine is characters not being introduced). Elliot's concept was simple: overclock the air conditioning system and effectively cook the tape drives stored in the Steel Mountain
Ok, we all know what a Raspberry Pi is. What's your point?Those words came out of Darlene's mouth as herself, along with the other three, appeared absolutely clueless as to what Elliot's explanation of his plan meant. Clearly this bunch need Elliot as their brains appear to overload very quickly - their minds able to take on information at a similar 5400rpm hard disk drive compared to Elliot's PCIe based solid state drive-like mind. Fortunately, a visual demonstration was forthcoming for the
Cue the war-style planning session as the group gathered around a map spread out on a table to discuss specifics. Mr. Robot himself, silent until now, questioned why they don't just blow the place up, followed by a shake of the head.
This was an interesting way to open the episode. The previous two have focused on Evil Corp's Tyrell Wellick, who was absent for all but a few seconds this hour. That was not something I was expecting. Despite that, it was nice to get the initial plan sorted early so the remaining 40 odd minutes could be spent on other things.
Let's get the drug stuff out of the way now. It's not a huge deal but I feel this hour went over the top. It's a tough area to criticize because counterbalancing the intense focus on Elliot's drug use is the fact that he spent most of the hour in withdrawl, with his drug dealer, Shayla, running short on supplies in the wake of Fernando Vera's arrest, and the dramatic dreams and hallucinations that came with that. I get the feeling the creative team were trying to introduce Elliot's drugs as another character without realizing they had already done that in the series premiere from my point of view. Not even Angela was immune this time round, getting high as a kite into the small hours with Shayla for no real reason other than to bring the characters closer together. Don't get me wrong - the scenes featuring the drugs were exceptionally well directed and acted, but dialing things back a notch or two would have made the hour much more watchable with the added bonus of freeing up a few extra minutes for other stuff. This being said, I do believe this sort of focus on the drugs is most likely a one-off.
With that said, let's get back to the story. Unusually for Darlene, she decided to knock at Elliot's door this time instead of helping herself to his apartment. Elliot had left the planning session abruptly with withdrawal symptoms, and Darlene showed up to bring him back in. It was all bad news, with the revelation coming that Evil Corp was preparing to duplicate their data backups to four other centers spread nationwide. If the team wanted to destroy the backups, they had to strike in the next couple of days to avoid having to replicate the same task in four other locations. The clock is well and truly ticking.
With the other associates concerned about the near impossible task of breaching the Steel Mountain's security, Elliot pointed out the flaw he wanted to exploit: the people. The group jacked a minivan by capturing the signal the remote locking mechanism broadcasted, and using it to unlock it. A connection to the car's diagnostics port was all that was needed to start it up. This was great to watch.
The group arrived at a motel, minus Darlene and Trenton who stayed behind to assist remotely. A Muslim, Trenton underwent some interesting development as she appeared to want to try on some of Darlene's clothes as an alternative to her traditional dress. We also saw her praying later in the hour.
All the while, however, Elliot was slipping deeper into withdrawal, and the things he saw began to turn into spectacular freak shows and hallucinations. The finest scene of the hour came at the beginning of an extended dream sequence in a spectacular long take where Mr. Robot took Elliot to a seedy dealer's house in search of a morphine fix only to get a shot of heroin instead. A few gun-toting madmen flew up the stairs and through the door, shooting the girl Elliot had just met along with Elliot himself. I've seen some epic long takes in my time watching television but this scene was just outstanding. The camera was in the perfect position right the way through and the actions of the actors were masterfully choreographed. Awesome stuff.
The dream sequence continued with Elliot first appearing in front of a camera recording an Anonymous-style video. In it he was given a key, which followed him right through the sequence. Spawning on the footpath beside an empty section, a girl on a scooter picked up the key. Inside the house that wasn't there, Tyrell Wellick sat at Elliot's desk holding the key as his fish talked to him. Cut to a fine restaurant laid out in the style of office cubicles (that must be a television first) where Elliot sits opposite Angela who is getting stuck into a meal consisting of the talking fish we just saw. Elliot's Raspberry Pie dinner arrived and contained the key.
The restaurant erupts with applause as Angela accepts Elliot's inadvertant proposal. The next scene sees Elliot meet Angela in the fsociety headquarters, with Angela issuing Elliot a challenge to change the world. That conversation gets cut short. The camera greets Elliot again as the hallucination climaxes. Elliot puts on the mask. He thinks he is alone, and is terrified as he wakes up in reality.
You're afraid. Afraid of your monster. Do you even know what it is?This hallucination was 13 minutes long - nigh on one third of the entire episode. It was such a fantastically random, weird and bizarre moment. The creative team must have thrown a ton of random ideas into a hat and drawn them out to end up with that combination. It's one of the reasons why criticizing the drugs aspect of the episode is so tricky because it was those that led to this hallucination.
But lets look at that quote a few lines up. Angela of course said those words to Elliot during the hallucination. Those words are particularly interesting because of the numerous ways they can be interpreted while meaning nothing substantial. It's all mind games too, which compounds possibilities further. Is it Elliot questioning what this adventure is turning him into, or is it him questioning his very identity? I daresay I'm barely scratching the surface.
Outside of the dreamtime, Angela had an interesting night. Still deeply concerned about the hacking of her boyfriend's computer which led to a blackmail demand, Angela use Ollie's swipe card to access Allsafe and examine the mixtape disk further. She didn't end up achieving anything, but a terminal window appeared on the momentarily indicating the disk did something. The computer didn't eject the disk properly either, almost resulting in Angela getting spotted by another staff member. She stopped by at Elliot's apartment too, but neighbor Shayla met her instead, and together they walked Elliot's dog, and later took drugs. The pair even kissed, and one wonders whether Shayla's words to Angela may result in her shedding some of those good moral values she is known for, among a bunch of characters who are quite the opposite.
Look in the mirror. See that badass bitch? That's the only person you should ever worry about.The fallout between her and Ollie will be well worth watching.
For Darlene, in addition to time spent with Trenton, Darlene tracked down an ex-boyfriend named Cisco. The dialog here is very intriguing. I get the impression that one of the reasons Darlene broke it off with Cisco is because he isn't as committed to the cause as she is. There's also room for the cause Darlene is fighting for to be along a different tangent to everyone else. I'm hoping future conversations will better position the dots for linking.
That's just about it from me for this episode of Mr. Robot. Even if I did find the drugs a bit over the top, the resulting scenes were outstanding, as was the rest of the episode. The characters continue to evolve beautifully, and the lack of Tyrell Wellick in any form of substance went largely unnoticed from me. With the master plan in action, I'm hoping to see some good time spent on that next week as Elliot continues to recover from his withdrawal symptoms. As usual, there's a ton of stuff to look forward to, and I'm already hanging out for next Wednesday night.
But what did you think? Did you think the presence of drugs in this episode was over the top? What does the reference to monster mean in your eyes? And what's with Darlene and Angela? Jump in the comments below and let me know. As always, thanks so much for reading! Check out next week's promo here, press release here.
