Actually since this is the last season they gave them a few extra episodes, so we’re actually only about halfway through the season. Last episode was #7, there are I believe 13 total.
Also this is the second artsy episode of the season (the other one was much subtler though) so I wouldn’t be surprised if we get another one as they try to get to whatever gimmicks they ever wanted to try.
I watched the first episode of the new season yesterday. It took me WAY too much work to get my head back into the show’s interminable, over-complicated and far too puzzle-boxy plotlines, but once I finally had it all (mostly) straight and got into the episode, I did have a pretty good time.
There’s a certain atmosphere of paranoid menace that this show pulls off pretty well, and it’s STILL very fun to watch a magical realist hacker take down assholes. I’m definitely going to watch the rest of this season. I hope they can stick the landing. I’ll be pissed if it’s building up to another reddit-bait fight club twist though, that shit has to be the weakest part of this show.
That’s good news! Excellent.
I agree, they will try something wacky, and probably pull it off like it’s no big deal.
Homecoming, if people haven’t seen that, should be on your watchlist…
Regarding the ep you mentioned, i think i know which one you mean - the christmas episode, where Elliott, Mr Robot and… the dutch guy are on their x-mas trip?
That felt like a mini-artsy ep to me…
It was actually the episode after that! It starts with Darlene picking up Elliot and basically saying “you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to” and ends with Vera saying “we need to talk”… and there is zero spoken dialogue in the episode between those two bookend statements. As said it is rather subtle in that many people didn’t even pick up on it (I didn’t notice until it was pointed out to me), but I think it qualifies.
wow, gotta rewatch that ep then - that’d perfectly qualify, yes!
Making the Illuminati so specific and tangible sure is a weird idea It was very fun and cathartic to watch the heist go down. I can suspend my disbelief with the sort of simplified concept that exactly 100 powerful men (including Donald Trump!) keep a lot of money in an investment fund to control world politics. But the show really seemed to double down on the concept of “they’re broke and powerless” which…I hope the next episodes are more detailed with the fallout in sort of a post 5/9 way. Anyway now that they have “Stadium Money” I wonder if they are gonna try to finish building Zhang’s time machine. Will be fascinated to finally see who the other personality is
I really enjoyed that episode. From the very start, I wanted the whole show to be stuff like that.
In the real world, when powerful people take a fall like this they usually get pulled back on their feet by their class allies. Some other rich person in a position of leadership grants them a cushy, high-paying consultant role until they can get their bearings again and secure another leadership position. I wonder if the show will handle that or just ignore the class dynamics in play. I would love it if the show ended with some kind of quasi-realistic or at least cathartic emancipation from capitalism, but I kind of doubt Esmail has that level of conviction or any kind of real utopian bent.
I would also accept Elliot finishing the time machine and using it to assassinate the pinkertons and random 18th century English factory owners.
My great fear in Mr. Robot has been that all the Mandela Effect theories end up being true as I think it would just absolutely murder everything that happened prior to it, so there is nothing I am more wary about that Zhang’s machine. It obviously has to be addressed, and they’ve been teasing it going in this direction for years now so I assume it’ll be done so again, but god I hope it is nothing more than a tease.
In one of the recent episodes, I remember Elliot saying something about how it would be useless to change his past, because if the trauma he’d been through never happened, he wouldn’t be the same person. So it seems like the show is aware of how lame it would be if it totally undid itself with time travel magic. But we’ll see!
Never thought they’d make what is functionally a romantic comedy episode but it worked. Leon is still the best character of all time although him and Irving just chilling out is absolutely terrifying. I honestly can’t believe they actually pulled off the robin hood stuff. I mean it rules as a concept and I think the show will let it happen but I still don’t buy for a second that even in a world where all banks switched to blockchain that this money wouldn’t be confiscated somehow.
That was a totally weird episode, but enjoyable. I was so happy to see that Robin Hood moment, one of the best scenes in the whole series. That kind of thing is why I watch the show. I was worried it wouldn’t go there, but it went there. Let’s hope they don’t reverse it or paint it as childish or something.
I just caught up with the latest episode. Wild ending, I did not expect The Elliot Instrumentality Project.
I caught the latest ep as well and they did it and I hate it and would drop the show if there was a season instead of an episode or two left. On the positive side when someone asks me what show do I think dropped the ball the worst at the last moment I have a new answer.
Caught up with the most recent ep today, and
idk, the signs are there that something is amiss?
The DP is obv celebrating his craft, and they put so much effort into ever so slightly unsettling the perfect illusion, that i am almost sure that we will get Elliot dropping back into reality before too long. And then i guess it’ll be goodbye, my friend…
Well, i am ready for the finale, bring it on!
My big hope is that Elliot has proven to be very… let’s say dedicated with his delusions, so it is always in play that this is just another one of those and he is just… I don’t know, pondering what it would be like in the moments before nuclear annihilation. I don’t think there is much of a chance that the story ends with this new world still in place, but I mostly object to them potentially deciding in the last couple episodes that magic is basically real rather than every death and sacrifice being undone.
I am glad I decided to check the cable guide today so that I knew that they were running the final two episodes tonight, and hence were starting an hour early. If I tuned it at the normal time just to catch the ending of the penultimate episode, well I’d have felt that particular brand of stupid angry I specialize in.
Anyways…
Thank god the alternate dimension/magic machine working were just a massive tease, what they went with takes the delusion/DID thing perhaps a bit further than necessary but is still a fair play given how everything has been set up. Our Eliot being a rogue personality who lost track of that is something I have to sleep on, but I think I am okay with it.
I will miss the cinematography aspirations of this show most of all. Every car in delusion land except his own being white (and possibly the same model? I have a bad eye for car types) is such a nice touch that started subtle and gradually became hard to ignore.
I think this is a situation where the general outline of the show was planned out well enough that they stuck the landing. Really liked it. Waiting the whole show to needledrop Mr. Roboto and doing it during a Hill Valley homage is basically the most Mr. Robot thing possible. The idea of creating an entire fictional world to lock your real mind in is an incredibly high concept. I can’t believe this show managed to somehow become even more Fight Club than before which is hilarious. I’m a little curious about what Whiterose showed Angela but way, way more curious about Actual Elliot meeting with Vera which is a thing I think happened? The Being John Malkovich moment was very corny but as a finale ass finale I am more than happy to just sort of soak in all of Esmails indulgences. I think the show really works well and despite the prison season maybe taking up too much space, I think that this will play way better as a watch at your leisure show than a week to week show.
man esmail kinda spelled it out in season 1 “you were only born a month ago” “you’re afraid of your monster”
this show was so frustrating. it’s like two different shows, a revolutionary hacker thing, and a magical mental illness puzzle thing, each overly complicated enough as it is but they also keep interrupting and talking over each other constantly. and there was so much foot dragging every season, seems like they could of done whatever they were going for in one or two seasons. or just done a movie every couple years. how many grand hacks that didn’t really change much, or they didn’t want to write out the consequences, did we need. what was the point of tyrell in this show. feels like he was supposed to be a ridiculously evil rich guy (wasn’t he literally beating up homeless people in season 1 I can’t remember this shit anymore) but then became a die hard elliot follower for no reason, who doesn’t do much else but dies ambiguously, maybe, a couple times. every season I kept thinking, was this guy busy back in whatever nordic country he comes from that they had to reduce his role? what was the point of the dark army. why did they have such fanatical followers. was whiterose’s machine a casually friendly psychopath henchman assembly line? was mr. robot not a revolutionary who blew up a bunch of buildings in a previous season, but now he is mr. friendly who just wants to guide elliot back to mental wellness?
like that season 1 dream sequence, that’s frustrating because that all seems like that all could be referring to season 1 specific stuff. but now the show has gone on so long, it’s like a horoscope, you can apply it to anything to make it all seem pre-planned.
really liked the bank heist episode though
Regarding the exploding buildings all the buildings being blown up were due to the dark army working to prevent Elliot/Mr. Robot from stopping… I think stage 2 by preventing a single building from being blown up, but I think Mr. Robot would have been alright if that single building had to blow up. Your larger point stands though.