USA Renews Mr. Robot For A Third Season

[Primetimer]

It's a good time for strange and daring programs to be alive.

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[shapeshifter]

Also from the EW interview:

Quote

. In addition to the third season, the first official series books, co-written by Esmail and series writer Courtney Looney, hits shelves on Nov. 1. 

Given the authors of the book(s), this doesn't sound like the typical poorly written novels that have followed shows. 

[Milaxx]

It helps when the book is integrated into the show and not just another money making stream. I remember Six Feet Under also had a companion book that was pretty good. I can't recall the name of the book & my copy is packed away.  Considering how strictly he likes to adhere to actual usable tech, I expect good things from this book.

[hincandenza]

Not at all surprising it was renewed; this is far and away their biggest hit, even with the high levels of torrenting (so basically USA's own "Game of Thrones").  The perpetual challenge of American episodic television is that if you can't expect that you'll get exactly E episodes over S seasons, it's hard to plan out the story in meticulous detail: you'll either have to tread water during the middle seasons until a clear end date is in place (e.g., "Lost") or you'll find that you get unceremoniously canceled/truncated and have to drop/cram huge elements of story, character development, and nuance into a much shorter set of episodes (e.g., Arrested Development, Firefly- basically, most shows FOX has ever made).  The best case is something like "Babylon 5", famous for having intricately detailed plotting for exactly 5 seasons... and even that was thrown a monkey wrench when its planned 5th season was canceled- and then later renewed, after they'd crammed the 5th season plot into season 4.

The difficulty with a companion book series is how much you make it a part of the show.  If the show- or key plot points- depend on people having read the book, then you'll get a lot of very confused viewers; if the books are purely backstory and side story, they can be mildly entertaining but ultimately unimportant.  I guess if you were supremely ambitious, you could plan for this: make those who've read the books have literally an opposite reaction to certain characters than those who only got the show's perspective, because they are privy to back story or extenuating circumstances that make a seeming villain become much more nuanced and understandable.  As a meta-commentary on media narratives and corporate control, that would certainly be... fitting for a show like "Mr. Robot".