‘Mr. Robot’ season 1 and its remarkable commercial consistency

A past acquaintance visits Elliot in the upcoming episode of “Mr. Robot”. Elliot is confused and then it dawns him just before Darlene says it. Darlene is Elliot’s sister.

He, frantically, tells his wife the news. It turns out that Gideon (Michel Gill) is not as gullible as he has thus far appeared. Detectives wish to interview Tywell since he was at the reception the previous night, but he storms out of his office. At first, it seems as though Robot is the one who’s on the defensive, as Wellick threatens him: “Aren’t you forgetting I know your dirty little secret?”, he teases, right before Robot calmly reminds him that the only rational thing to do is nothing.

Elliot is our de facto hero, but he’s also pretty creepily invasive with his tendency to hack everyone and anyone. Angela is upset that Elliot is hiding something, but he won’t come clean because it’s been too long, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Mr. Robot and the team hope to convince the army to help them finally take down Evil Corp. If done, they’ll go ahead with the takedown of Steel Mountain via fsociety’s climate control hack. Not only is it clear that Tyrell has deviated from his master plan, but there are underlying signs that he may be losing grip with his own sanity. During the past couple episodes, I’ve heard complaints the show was falling into standard sexist tropes of television drama. Most of the episode revolves around the first meeting between the head of the “dark army”, the only collective more secretive that F Society, and Elliot (Rami Malek). Darlene took his hands and smiled.

Upset, Tywell returns home to his pregnant wife Joanna (Stephanie Corneliussen), but we learn that he had not told her about Sharon Knowles’ death. This time in two weeks, we’ll have the answer to that at least. A moment he believes is more intimate than it is, as he leans over and kisses her. She immediately rebuffs his advances, horrified and sobbing. Angela discovered her attempts to hit Evil Corp will also hurt everyone at AllSafe.

As I discussed last week, much of episode seven took the focus away from Elliot and placed it on the show’s side characters. Here’s a photo of Angela and Elliot.

Let’s talk about a distraction-hack. No, here the reveal scrambles our bearings at the same time it confirms some of our long-held suspicions. Robot I always bump up against the same problem. When I pulled it out-she’s going to kill me for saying this ’cause she’s really sensitive-but I pulled the earbud out of my ear and it was covered in blood. “And she knows it”. Elliot hacks people, Whiterose explains, while she hacks time. She only gives Elliot 50 hours and 23 minutes to get rid of the honeypot in order to initiate the Steel Mountain attack.

Well then, with the voice-over where Elliot is addressing the audience or the made-up person in his head, how does that all work technically? Just as he is able to call off the honeypot from his boss’s phone, Gideon notices Elliot at his desk and becomes suspicious over Elliot’s involvement with ‘fsociety’. She tells him that she hacked Allsafe because she was being blackmailed. After being passed up for promotion, Tyrell and his wife sought revenge against the man who took the high status from him. When Darlene encountered Elliot in the first episode, she insulted him and later showed up unexpectedly at his apartment to shower. He is unable to find any trace of himself online and comes across an unlabeled CD.

Robot is his f***ing father. Elliot has a meltdown on the subway, yes, but then he goes home and sees the photos of his family, and his eyes change ever so slightly. Robot confronts the everyday realities of massive corporate greed, cyber terrorism, and the way the Internet makes us all very, very vulnerable. I love it when father and son cosplay.

Other than the huge pulling back of the curtain, there was also the scene with Tyrell and Mr. Robot. His goal was to unknowingly send Elliot to his meeting, a meeting which actually reveals nearly nothing to us but plenty to Elliot. Mr. Robot knocks on the door, “I think we need to talk”. The stress of this alone would drive a man insane, but seeing as Elliot may already be insane, one can only imagine where his psyche will go from here. Is what Tyrell knows about Mr. Robot relevant to Elliot? Thinking this disc contains his own information he pops into the computer, but it’s filled with pictures of Mr. Robot. Elliot and his mirror-image Wellick are coming loose at the seams.

Now I can’t wait for the end of the season. The premiere season of USA Network’s Mr. Nearly from the very first, this episode was teasing us, Elliot’s invented companion, with things we knew nothing about.

Which leads us to a question not yet asked in these reviews: what in the hell happened to Elliot before the series began?

“Mr. Robot” airs Wednesday at 10 p.m. on USA Network.