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USA announced that they are delaying the season finale a week as supposedly there was a "graphic scene similiar to the events of today"

 

Reminds me of the infamous Lone Gunmen pilot that you have never seen rebroadcasted since 9-11.

 

I applaud someone at USA having some compassion but jeez, that episode has been in a can for a while now.  It's not like Esmail wrote that episode specifically to exploit the situation.

 

The announcement also spoils the episode somewhat since I have an approximation of what to expect.

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I'd never heard of any Tyler Durden-esque theories until the other thread and can't say I'd ever even thought of something like that.  Both he and Elliot interact with multiple other characters, often at the same time, so I don't see why there's a question that there's some alter-ego gimmick going on.

 

 

I'm only on episode 7, and I can't go very much lower in the thread than this.  I'm sure this post is completely irrelevant by now, but i'm gonna post it anyways.  No one responds to Mr Robot until EP 7.  Not the bartender or the people at Elliot's work or the other members of fsociety.  They fake you out a few times in earlier episodes (someone responds to Mr Robot, but it turns out to be Elliot's fevor dream).  Only in episode 7 is Mr Robot talking to Darlene and threatening the other dude.  Elliot isn't "there" for those scenes.  It's the first time a Tyler Durden moment has been shown on screen, because the audience is usually in Elliot's head.  My guess is that Shayla's murder caused some sort of mental break and we are going to see more of these Mr Robot without Elliot scenes in the next few episodes.

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The post-credit scene was what really made the episode. It had enough otherwise but it needed more to get us to S2 and that delivered.

 

I loved Slater's speech. I thought basically everything with Angela was great. And the scene with Elliot and Joanna was something else. Michael Cristofer is probably the best performance of all somehow, too. I wish that guy was my boss.

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The post-credit scene was what really made the episode. It had enough otherwise but it needed more to get us to S2 and that delivered.

 

The pre-credits ruined that scene for me.  There was BD Wong's name so I was expecting to see White Rose at some point in the show and didn't, so something told me that something else was up and there he was in the big reveal post credit scene.

 

And was It me or:

 

Was that a song from the Under The Skin soundtrack playing while Eliot was at Tyrell's house talking to his wife?  Irony?  Foreshadowing?

 

As for the "controversy":

 

I am old enough to remember Bud Dwyer blowing his brains out on live television (HEY MAN, NICE SHOT~!), so the televised suicide reminded me more of that than it did the events of Roanoke. 

 

I suspect that Esmail wanted to channel that event and the episode had the misfortune to air during all of that craziness with the two slain reporters.

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When they did the Mr. Robot being a ghost reveal, my interest dropped a bit as it somehow made things less interesting.  Elliot just being over the top crazy and constantly going off the rails strained the plot a bit too much for me.  I'm back on board after tonight though.  In the scene where Angela was talking to the main boss guy and he mentioned the CEO's family, it got me wondering who Tyrell's wife is related to.  She's clearly calling the shots in their relationship and has made mention of "family" numerous times which makes me think she's somehow related to the main boss or whatever Illuminati-type society they're part of.

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This shit jumped the shark with Slater's 3-minute junior high rant on the nature of society.  For a second there I was wondering if they just had him redo some monologue from Pump Up The Volume. 

 

It's the mark of bad writers who aren't confident that they're getting the message and subtext across that they have to essentially have a main character look right into the camera and spell it out for you.  The whole deal sounded like a schoolboy who read too much of that hack Chuck Palaniuk.  OMG everybody did you know corporations rule the world now?  Truth to power~!  I'm old enough to have seen this "mind blowing" message spewed so many times that packaging it in a different wrapper did nothing to make it any more interesting than the previous thousand times I've heard it.

 

This show started off pretty well, then went the way of hackneyed plot twists and then turned straight into high school navel gazing bullshit.  USA Network is trying hard to go "gritty" but this is not the way to do it, with a show that takes a handful of original ideas and dresses them up trying to pass them off as something new. 

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This shit jumped the shark with Slater's 3-minute junior high rant on the nature of society.  For a second there I was wondering if they just had him redo some monologue from Pump Up The Volume. 

 

I'm old enough to have seen this "mind blowing" message spewed so many times that packaging it in a different wrapper did nothing to make it any more interesting than the previous thousand times I've heard it.

 

I disagree with most of what you are saying, but I wanted to point out the brilliance of this scene specifically.  We see Elliot mid-breakdown with Slater talking to him, but if you watch the crowd they start to slowly turn towards Elliot as the Slater speech goes on.  Even screaming along in support as the speech reaches its climax.  

 

The point of the scene wasn't the content of the speech, it was Elliot on the verge of outing himself as the leader of fsociety in a very public setting.  Although the speech clearly inspired the people marching, in the viewer it is meant to inspire a sense of dread.  

I think they nailed that scene.

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Oof, that was pretty much a jumped the shark moment for me. We'll see how they finish of the season but between the murder and this week's gimmicky reveal, the show is leaning on some bad tropes that could lead it down the shit path. The core concept of the show is something most everybody can relate to in one way or another, it didn't need these stupid plot twists.

 

This is an earlier criticism talking about the "reveal", which, now that I'm caught up I want to tackle.  

 

The core concept of this show IS the faulty narration.  I know some of you were wishing they were going down a different path, but Elliot says it himself: "You knew all along, didn't you?"  That was only a reveal to Elliot.

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I don't care much about how the scene was shot.  I care about wasting my time on something that aimed high, only to land in a gross melange of disgruntled  high school Holden Caufield/Tyler Durden cliches.  The world is phony, and run by corporations.  Wow so edgy.

 

Also, the winking references like "you knew all along, didn't you" and playing "where is my mind" should not deflect how hackneyed this shit was.  Being lame and unoriginal and then acting like you meant to do it all along?  What is this, The Room?

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I don't care much about how the scene was shot.  I care about wasting my time on something that aimed high, only to land in a gross melange of disgruntled  high school Holden Caufield/Tyler Durden cliches.  The world is phony, and run by corporations.  Wow so edgy.

 

The scene is not about the message, man. It was about a leader of a secret/wanted organization openly preaching to his congregation.  The kicker being he is so out of control that he doesn't even realize he is preaching.  A couple more moments like that one and everyone in the world will know who the leader of fsociety is.

 

I've never gotten the sense that the audience is supposed to agree with Mr. Robot's speech or Elliot's politics.  You seem to think that is the case.  Or maybe you were hoping for some political statement you could agree with?  I don't know, but that's decidedly not what this show is about.

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I think this show is more about dissociative disorder and the ramifications that comes with it, than any kind of social commentary on our society. Sure, it's structered around corporate greed and the voiceless, and draws from things like Occupy Wall Street and Anonymous. But things like Mr. Robot being his dad, exactly how he was in a picture Elliott keeps, and seeing himself as a child and his mother, forgetting who his sister is, loss of chunks of memory, not knowing what he had done prior to the hack, etc. all touches on key elemets of dissociative disorder, and honestly I think that's the real commentary here. He wants to save the world because he can't save himself, and often times he doesn't even know who he really is. Is he Tyrell? Is he Mr. Robot? Is he Elliott?

 

Maybe I'm looking too deep into this show, but from a couple of episodes into the season, I always got the impression that it was focusing more on what's wrong with Elliott and what's going on inside of his head, and if everything we're seeing is real or imaginary.

 

Of course, the post-credit scene with BD Wong's character kind of puts my theory on it's ass, but it's possible for a show to have hidden undertones while focusing on simple ideas for the audience that don't want to delve deeper into this show and it's characters. I think it's a fascinating show, personally, and it's beautifully shot. I really loved the scene(s) with Elliott's therapist and her ex-lover, and then later on with Elliott and Tyrell's wife(?).

 

Also, the scene with the E Corp suit committing suicide was downright nasty. Pretty graphic for a show on the USA Network. I think we all know by now that the show wasn't made specifially for them, because of that scene and all of the f-bombs and whatnot the entire season. It's an interesting road that network is taking if they continue to buy the rights to shows, instead of making them from scratch like they used to.

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I think that's a neat take, but it's clearly the secondary and more nuanced narrative supporting (and perhaps interwoven with) the social and economical theme. I get Technico's frustrations though I don't agree entirely with them. While it's nothing new and it does reek of teenage angst, that speech is something I would never have guessed I'd hear on a network TV show, particularly at a time of such turmoil. Cult movies? Sure. But not a show on friggin' USA Network (with Michael Cole plugging it!). Maybe I shouldn't be surprised at the lengths some go in co-opting. I would disagree with Jrag too, in that you're going too far in suggesting the message be entirely ignored and the drama circulate entirely around this fictitious character's role in a fictitious uprising. There's nothing for people to relate in that and it really doesn't matter to us. There's everything for 99% of people to relate to the message. They've clearly built up Elliot as a heroic protagonist time and time again. While he is the extreme, we're supposed to relate to him, his desensitization, his disconnect, his angst, etc.

 

Hmm, the more I think of the correlation between Elliot's dissociation and lack of identity, the more you can connect that to our dissociation with our complicity in our roles of keeping the broken system in place and running. I think the relationship between the two could've been handled with far more grace though.

 

And another thing I find interesting is the sense of agency now, particularly after the whole Mr. Robot reveal. So many movies and series are based around an unknowing and initially unwilling participant getting sucked into something major and wonderful. It creates a sense of passivity. People don't actively create change, change/fame/success is thrust upon them. Mr. Robot starts off in much the same way but then that whole idea gets turned upside down. He's been dragged into this revolution by himself and he had no idea. He both has agency and he does not. He goes from Neo to Morpheus and back again. 

 

I enjoy the show but it's not one without problems. 

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The suicide scene was pretty nasty.  Sympathies to the families of the slain journalists in Virginia but there is no reason that episode should've been postponed.

 

I am guessing that televised suicide of Budd Dwyer (whom that scene was obviously supposed to emulate right down to the blood gushing out of the E-Corp exec's nose) is so far out of the collective zeitgeist that folks would incorrectly scream too soon and try to compare it to the live murder of those poor people.

 

Now I have to go and listen to HEY MAN, NICE SHOT~! by Filter.

 

What the fuck is White Rose up to?

 

Angela sending that shoe salesman to fetch her a pair of Pradas was fucking awesome.  Next season, I am looking forward to her becoming the monster she once hunted.  So very Nietzschean.

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The suicide scene was pretty nasty.  Sympathies to the families of the slain journalists in Virginia but there is no reason that episode should've been postponed.

 

I am guessing that televised suicide of Budd Dwyer (whom that scene was obviously supposed to emulate right down to the blood gushing out of the E-Corp exec's nose) is so far out of the collective zeitgeist that folks would incorrectly scream too soon and try to compare it to the live murder of those poor people.

 

Now I have to go and listen to HEY MAN, NICE SHOT~! by Filter.

 

What the fuck is White Rose up to?

 

Angela sending that shoe salesman to fetch her a pair of Pradas was fucking awesome.  Next season, I am looking forward to her becoming the monster she once hunted.  So very Nietzschean.

Easily the most exciting part of the show's future. Should be absolutely fantastic.

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To my dismay, YouTube has vids of the Dwyer suicide. 

 

Not for the squeamish and very disturbing since you're watching a poor man with the weight of the world on his shoulders blow his brains out on live television, but worthwhile if you can manage to sit through it because you will get a better sense of what Esmail was apeing in that suicide scene..... which in retrospect I am increasingly finding to be rather tasteless.

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I think a lot of viewers who are annoyed with Darlene as a character have no concept of what "I did it for the lulz." is.  If they did, Darlene's nonchalance and narcissism would make a lot more sense to them.

 

That is why Darlene has personality issues with Trenton and Romero.  They know that Darlene is not a true believer of the cause and her attitude can lead to carelessness that will get them all into huge amounts of trouble.

 

The parallels between Darlene and Tyrell as they pertain to fsociety are very interesting.  Darlene hacks for kicks while Tyrell has an axe to grind against E Corps for his dismissal and both are using fsociety as a means to an end without too much regard for the people involved.   It will be interesting to see what Romero, Trenton, and Mobley do next season once they figure out what is what.

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