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S01.E02: EPS1.1_ONES-AND-ZER0ES.MPEG


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No wonder Elliot only rescues women. Trying to rescue Dad didn't turn out very well. And now Mr. Robot is re-enacting that trauma, blaming Elliot for his own abuse. Was Vera right that hating yourself gives you power?  And now we have a malicious hacker in the form of rapping guy, who definitely isn't a figment of Elliot's imagination.

I'm glad they are ending the addiction storyline.

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(edited)

Overall I liked the pilot but I'm less sure about this episode.  So the whole series is going to be about this guy caught between his real life, Evil Corp and this hacker group who wants him to join and change the world?  There were times I was interested and there were times I was bored.  I'm not sure if this story is enough to get me to watch ten episodes of it.

 

Now, on to more recurring characters.  Last week, I was worried about the fact that he only inserted himself into the lives of women he was close to and then got to decide what he was going to do with the information he had about their partners.  I was worried about what that meant for the show and how it would treat its female characters.

 

This week didn't alleviate any of those concerns.  He inserts himself into Shayla's life and the show breaks out the "woman is raped so the man will be spurred to take action" plot device which is my least favorite fuckin' trope out there.  You would think Game of Thrones would have used up the quota but alas...there's always room for more casual rape of a chick that some dude has to deal with. How do they go on?

 

Heck, maybe the ultimate end game of the show is to make some kind of commentary on this but I'm skeptical. 

Edited by Irlandesa
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(edited)

This show is still the strongest of the summer fair I'm still watching (which isn't much, due to life issues). When Slater's character (I don't want to call him Mr. Robot because in many ways Elliot seems to be the real Mr. Robot--even with Fight Club analogies aside) asked Elliot to take a seat on the frickin' railing, I got a definite Chekhov's railing vibe. Then the camera pulled back and we saw the two silhouetted--Elliot awkwardly, precariously perched--Slater's character comfortably lounging, and the foreshadowing grew. And then...just when Elliot let's Mr. Robot (Slater) touch him and rub his back in a fatherly way...wham!

Lately I've been longing for a show like Fringe that makes me say Wow at the end of an episode. This one at least made me say Crap.

ETA: Early in this episode I realized I like it because I relate to Elliot in many ways.* Unfortunately, that also implies most viewers will not likely relate to him.

ETAA: *I'm a woman who identifies with Elliot, which might be why I don't mind his rescuing women--if that makes sense. Plus, as I mentioned on the last episode thread, I'm from an older generation in which little girls dreamed of being rescued by knights in shining armor.

Edited by shapeshifter
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I was really distracted by how radically different Elliot's hair was from the pilot to this episode. It was glaringly obvious between the two silhouettes.

I totally did not see Chekhov's railing coming—though it's anvillicious in retrospect. And Elliot "saving by cyberstalking" yet another woman irks. Next it's Darlene's turn, right show?

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Not as good as the pilot but I'm still in, enjoyed most of that.  Elliot as his mental issues are still my favorite thing about the show, I think as a character portrait its very well done.. he is extremely flawed and more of that came out in this episode.  The overarching plot is still a bit ham-fisted, and that cosmopolitan hacker group made me cringe a little, and with the Big Plan to blow up the backup facility and the ensuing dialogue I felt the "USAness" bleeding through... but the show has definitely earned itself some time from me, better than most else on my plate these days.

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Not as good as the pilot but I'm still in, enjoyed most of that.  Elliot as his mental issues are still my favorite thing about the show, I think as a character portrait its very well done.. he is extremely flawed and more of that came out in this episode.  The overarching plot is still a bit ham-fisted, and that cosmopolitan hacker group made me cringe a little, and with the Big Plan to blow up the backup facility and the ensuing dialogue I felt the "USAness" bleeding through... but the show has definitely earned itself some time from me, better than most else on my plate these days.

the plan is so stupid i don't even know why elliot changed his mind and decided to join him. Also i don't see why he doesn't hack into into the computers and unframe the evil corp guy he framed and jsut give up the f society hackers.

 

Their paln is so dumb and stupid like seriously dumb

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What's Chekhov's railing?

 

A saying attributed to the playwright Chekhov is basically that if you see a gun in the first act of a play, you should see it go off in the third. 

 

So the idea that "if X is given prominence early on, it's to foreshadow something happening later with it," gets nicknamed "Chekhov's X." 

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Over on IMDb, a poster suggests that Slater's character is not real (as we discussed in the last episode thread here) and therefore Elliot lets himself fall off of the railing. It seems like a plausible theory to me. Slater is posed so cavalierly on the railing, kind of like an evil Jiminy Cricket.

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I dunno.  I really liked the pilot, but I had a hard time watching this episode.  Mostly I was worried that Elliot was going to flip out on Flipper or something. 

The whole story with his neighbor and her supplier was horrifying.  I"m glad Elliot decided to get rid of him.

 

I have to say I'm confused as to where the story is going.  Is Evil Corp evil, or is Mr. Robot?  I'm in for a couple more, I think, but I want to be entertained a bit, not horrified all the way through.

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Over on IMDb, a poster suggests that Slater's character is not real (as we discussed in the last episode thread here) and therefore Elliot lets himself fall off of the railing.

In the pilot, my impression was "everybody smokes." This episode, it was just Elliot & Mr. Robot. Another tell that they're one and the same?

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(edited)

I have to say I'm confused as to where the story is going. Is Evil Corp evil, or is Mr. Robot? I'm in for a couple more, I think, but I want to be entertained a bit, not horrified all the way through.

They both were. The was the whole point of Elliot's rant to the doctor. What is the point of chosibg between this and that when in the end they are both the same? Edited by Chaos Theory
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They both were. The was the whole point of Elliot's rant to the doctor. What is the point of chosibg between this and that when in the end they are both the same?

Well, crap. Life sucks and then you die, I guess.  

 

I have a feeling this might not be an uplifting show.  

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Well, crap. Life sucks and then you die, I guess.

I have a feeling this might not be an uplifting show.

Leads a paranoid drug addict who might be hallucinating a terrorist. It took you two episodes to figure that out?

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Leads a paranoid drug addict who might be hallucinating a terrorist. It took you two episodes to figure that out?

Yeah, I think it did. I must be slower than you.  There were little cracks of light in the first episode. 

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Right now, I'm going with the theory that all the hacker brigade -- Christian Slater, Hacker Girl and the other folks are Elliot's delusions. Until I see any of them reacting with any real-world people, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

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Right now, I'm going with the theory that all the hacker brigade -- Christian Slater, Hacker Girl and the other folks are Elliot's delusions. Until I see any of them reacting with any real-world people, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I think Christian Slater and that low-rent Patrick Batemen CTO are Elliot. Hacker Girl is real.
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USA network is a cable station and not a broadcast station, so it isn't subject to the FCC regulations.

They didn't even censor the second f-bomb on the post-midnight showing. (First one still was)

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I think the show suffers from an imbalance between Evil Corp and fsociety. Evil Corp is easy to caricature because their goal is straightforward, profit, at anybody and everybody's expense. However Fsociety feels like a mashup of conflicting parts. Are they Fight Club IDGAF about the consequences type anarchists? Or are they Occupiers who seek to establish radical changes in the existing system to make it more equitable?

 

Like others, I'm bothered by the use of the Damsel in Distress plot of the week. I groaned as soon as I saw the dealer harassing Elliot's supplier because it was clear where that plot was headed. Someone mentioned Chekhov's railing, right now we are headed to Chekhov's female character.

 

I loved the cinematic style opening credits with Beethoven's Seventh.

 

Street corner hiphop/hacker guy made me laugh. He is exactly like one of the guys at my barbershop (minus the hacking part). Right down to hustling sales of his mixtape.

 

Over on IMDb, a poster suggests that Slater's character is not real (as we discussed in the last episode thread here) and therefore Elliot lets himself fall off of the railing. It seems like a plausible theory to me. Slater is posed so cavalierly on the railing, kind of like an evil Jiminy Cricket.

 

I sincerely hope not. That would be too Fight Club.

 

Did anyone else think the EvilCorp executive was sincerely disappointed when Elliot turned them down?

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(edited)

Right now, I'm going with the theory that all the hacker brigade -- Christian Slater, Hacker Girl and the other folks are Elliot's delusions. Until I see any of them reacting with any real-world people, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Did Shayla react to Darlene?

Edited to add that whatever the reveal, this show's going to require a rewatch.

Edited by editorgrrl
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I loved the cinematic style opening credits with Beethoven's Seventh.

 

 

Oh me too!  Best part of this episode. 

 

Street corner hiphop/hacker guy made me laugh. He is exactly like one of the guys at my barbershop (minus the hacking part). Right down to hustling sales of his mixtape.

 

 

Oh, well, you never know.  I wouldn't be accepting discs from some random after this episode. 

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I kept worrying about Flipper. Especially in Shayla's apartment with the drug dealer. I had flashbacks to Rounders where the drug guy really brutalized his dog.  That kept taking me out of the show a little. Maybe that was the point, it made the scene in her apartment full of tension for me.  Still loving it though. I agree that Elliott's hair looked different. Curious as to where they will go with it all. Elliott is definitely paranoid. I am on the fence about Slater and all the other hackers are hallucinations, but if the show goes that way, then ok.  I would like to think that these people and things are real. It makes it much more scary that this stuff could really happen. The fact that Elliott is paranoid and has legit reasons for and exhibits mental illness, just adds to it.  One thing that struck me was a lot of scenes were filmed from a one shot or far length perspective (not sure what this is called in film making). It came across like  a film. I thought it was interesting and wondered if it was some type of message or clue to Elliott's state of mind or commentary on how things are going down hill fast? It is as if things are clear, but you are too far away to make sense of the situation. Like a you can't see the forest for the trees kind of thing. 

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The backstory on Elliot's dad clarifies the shape of what I believe to be Elliot's delusions. His dad got sick and E Corp fired him, probably depriving him of health insurance. (Dad was a computer engineer.) That makes E Corp a villain and, from one perspective, his dad its victim. But Dad refused to do anything to help himself, making him appear an impotent coward. When Elliot tries to step in to be the savior, revealing Dad's illness to his mom, Dad throws him out a window and never speaks to him again. Now Dad looks a bit villainous himself. Slater seems to be the angry insurgent Elliot wished his dad had been but Elliot realizes that the last thing you want to do with a man who has anger issues is arm him for revolution. Tyrell represents corporatist greed and joining him would at least compensate Elliot for the money E Corp denied the family. But that price is way too high. (I think Tyrell is real but is in fact the innocuous person the hack reveals; he's never even spoken to Elliot IRL.)

 

Seeing no good option, because Mr. Robot isn't interested in a plan that prevents casualties, Elliot realizes his dad saw him as a traitor and an enemy and throws himself off that railing in despair. I do have to question whether a father concealing an illness from his wife would confide in an eight-year-old.

 

I'm 50/50 on whether Darlene is real.

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Right now, I'm going with the theory that all the hacker brigade -- Christian Slater, Hacker Girl and the other folks are Elliot's delusions. Until I see any of them reacting with any real-world people, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Agree wholeheartedly. Girl's just waiting for him in his apartment? Doubt it. They're all at the abandoned video game place one minute, the next minute it looks all old and dusty, like no one's been there in years. They're all in his head, perhaps different aspects of his personality. He totally threw himself off the railing. Really enjoying the show so far. Love his relationship with the therapist.

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After the pilot, I thought this was a bit of a step down, even if it still had some moments.  Really getting tired of them making another one of the female characters need to be saved by Elliot. Just getting a bit too much into white knight territory with him.  I would say that maybe a guy could be damseled next time, but then I remember that Gideon is the only real guy he interacts with, so I'm not sure if will be any better to go from "Elliot saves the women" to "Elliot saves the lone gay character."  I guess in short, I just wish the rest of the characters were able to handle more things themselves, and didn't need Elliot to bail them out.

 

So, it sounds like the big set-up is that Elliot is torn between Evil Corporation and FSociety, and I'm not sure what to think.  Sure, Evil Corp is obvious over how, well, evil they are, but if tonight was any indication, FSociety really isn't coming off well either.  They will do anything to "change the world", and that include even killing innocents?  Not exactly a great group of people there.  Or is this mainly Mr. Robot/Christian Slater's doing, and the rest don't really know what is really going on?

 

Actually, FSociety being a hallucination of Elliott's, could be an idea.  I don't remember them interacting with anyone else yet, besides Darlene and Shayla being in the same room, but I don't remember them ever speaking.

 

So, who is this fake rapper hacker, who is now spying on Angela?

 

That ending though was something.  Assuming he's real, Christian Slater really does believe in harsh punishments.

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The show is hurting its tech cred in 2015 by repeatedly using optical discs as key elements of the plot.

Disguising data as an audio CD collection is a pretty great idea, honestly.  

 

And, yes, struggling musicians still distribute CDs face to face.

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I was so worried about Flipper! Very Fight Club with a little Trainspotting ending monologue.

I think the hackers may be delusions. That ending was so harsh.

Agreed that this was a step down from the pilot.

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As soon as he pushed himself off the pier (I totally do not believe that the CS character exist) I thought...he found another way to get drugs. He will need pain meds now. Also, the way they filmed the scenes with his doctor makes me think she is a stand in for his mom. His blue iris's were so stark against his giant white eyeballs that he really put me in mind of Gollum. His face is fascinating and at this point I'm along for the ride solely based on his performance.

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Pacodakat, I was just coming here to post the same thing re: drugs. And your comment about the doctor makes me wonder if she's real. What did you notice about the way that it was filmed that gave you the mother/stand-in thought?

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And other not-quite-burning questions about the second episode. http://previously.tv/mr-robot/how-much-of-mr-robot-is-like-real/

...Getting shoved into a black SUV and ferried to a room filled with like a dozen lawyers seems like a paranoid fantasy, but is it? ...

Actually, the main guy made a point of saying there were 11 lawyers. That made me see the main guy as a type of Christ with Elliot as a type of Judas (with the 11 lawyers as the disciples). Sorry, that's all I got.
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Well, kat165, she is kind of out of focus and her face sometimes looks as if it's floating. I know that could be because he's high but she's asking him what a mother would ask..."Why wont you talk to me?" "Tell me what's going on with you" The way he looked at the picture from the bookcase. I don't know....... he never really interacts with her ( the therapist) it's mostly a stand in for the imaginary audience or other people in his life. At least it felt like that this episode for me.  Does anyone believe his father pushed him out of a window?

Edited by Pacodakat
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(edited)

Thanks, Paco. Yeah, I can see that. I find the meetings with his doctor kind of odd too as it doesn't seem like something he would do. I really like his boss Gideon & would like to see him interact with him more.

 

CofCinci, good point about the dog. Nice catch.

Edited by kat165
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Damn, that ending! I did NOT see that one coming. 

 

I am already over the "Elliot uses tech to save some poor damsel in his life from an evil man" thing, and its only been two freaking episodes! Enough already! Its like Person of Interest, except ever POI was a woman being used by an evil man! 

 

Other than that, I liked this episode, even if it was a bit of a step down from the plot. Elliot and his mental issues are really compelling, and the actor is still great. I want to see where the series goes from here. 

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Elliot's conversations with his therapist remind me of Perception, in which Eric McCormack's character (Dr. Daniel Pierce) had conversations with his therapist Natalie--who initially existed in his head, but then turned out to be real. It was an odd twist on the Fight Club concept. I don't recall anyone ever mentioning Fight Club when discussing Perception.

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People think of Fight Club here because HCS, like Tyler Durden, is egging Elliot on to become an anarchist and destroyer of soul-sucking late stage capitalism. On Perception the delusions just helped him puzzle out mysteries. Perception was like the benign half of Beautiful Mind.

 

The show is going to reach a tipping point of how many of the characters aren't real. Unless relatively few are hallucinations, we might go all the way and have him imagining the whole thing from a mental ward.

 

I do like the irony of there being a real conspiracy for which rapping guy works all the while unnoticed by Elliot as he pursues chimeras.

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Did anyone else think the EvilCorp executive was sincerely disappointed when Elliot turned them down?

 

I did! Tyrell looked so lonely standing behind the column with his sad little "Well, I thought I'd ask."  He looked like he thought he found a friend and then got rejected.

 

Gah, I hate unreliable narrators. Everything is suspect. I already can't figure out if those men in suits that Elliot keeps seeing are real or not. I can accept that Mr. Robot may not be real, but not the whole fsociety group. When Darlene was waiting while Elliot brought his dog to Shayla, it seemed that Shayla glanced in her direction. Or not. This will drive me nuts so for now, I'll choose to believe it's all real until it's not.

 

That listen-to-my-CD hacker was chatting with someone in Chinese. My Mandarin is rusty (feel free to correct) but it looked like he responded to someone with the handle "White Rose" who said that they have no time to waste and that this was for leverage. Mr. Robot mentioned working with the Dark Army on some eastern China server when he was describing their grand plan. I wonder if this is related somehow.

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In the scene with Elliot, Shayla, and Darlene, Shayla definitely reacted to Darlene (after the "froyo" line), but she was out-of-focus in the background.

 

Who does Angela think is Elliot's girlfriend?  Shayla?

 

I'm leaning heavily toward Slater not being real.  In the scene at the arcade, I noticed that Slater stepped directly between Elliot & Darlene, so Darlene's eye-line *looked* like it was aimed at Slater when it could have been Elliot just as easily.  I'm less certain about the rest of the group. They seemed to react to Elliot's odd behaviour (i.e., when Elliot followed-up on a remark from Slater), but then later they seemed to check out completely -- as if Elliot weren't there at all. I guess that could make sense if Elliot had in reality just been standing there not doing anything.

 

Good call about the med scheme, Pacodakat!  And I agree there was something off about the therapy session.  Krista Gordon seemed very ethereal, and she rarely blinked.  I think she's real, but I think we may not be seeing everything that's happening during the session.

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...The show is going to reach a tipping point of how many of the characters aren't real. Unless relatively few are hallucinations, we might go all the way and have him imagining the whole thing from a mental ward...

Right now it feels like they all could be figments of Elliot's imagination--even furry little flipper who shat on the bed--maybe especially him. So maybe we should be trying to figure out which one is real. I'm guessing it's a female person who is a damsel in distress, but it would be a nice twist if the damsels in distress are all representations of Elliot too.
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