Summary: Fsociety reaches Steel Mountain and Elliot is sent in. He gets access to a tour by using a fake identity verified on wikipedia. Elliot emotionally attacks the tour guide Bill to get into contact with a supervisor to be let into the restricted second level. However, the plan fails when a different supervisor arrives - the other's wife had a baby. Mobley manages to draw the new supervisor away with a text and Elliott tries to get tot he stairs to level two. However, he is found by Tyrell who takes him out to lunch on the second level. Elliot is unnerved by Tyrell but sneaks into the bathroom and installs the raspberry pi. Tyrell tells him that he knows he framed Colby and then leaves. Fsociety return to the amusement park where they learn that the Dark Army in China backed out. Darlene wants to go through with the plan anyways, but Mr. Robot and Elliot stop her. Elliot goes back home and discovers that Vera has abducted Shayla. Tyrell goes to dinner with Scott and enchants his wife. Angela breaks up with Ollie and moves in with her father.
The Good: The heist is a lot of fun to watch, and it is tense because it is uncertain if fsociety will succeed or not. I enjoyed the execution of the plan, and fittingly there were some unforeseen problems throughout the episode. I liked the Sam Sepiol plan, and while the wikipedia page certainly isn't airtight, it's easy to believe that the tour guide would be fooled after a quick google (people trust anything they find online), especially with Elliot saying over and over to "look me up". Following this, the plan is a blast to watch as Elliot is forced to tear down poor Bill (see: Best Moment), and then face a major problem when things fall apart as Wendy doesn't show up and they have to take care of Trudy instead. The tension is raised immediately, and the show comes up with an organic solution, though it isn't entirely satisfying (see: The Bad). What makes it easier to suspend our disbelief is how good Elliot is in these scenes. He is wonderfully awkward, and Rami Malek does a terrific job of raising the stakes and the suspense. But then the episode hits a whole new level of tension and unpredictability with Tyrell's arrival. By reconnecting with Tyrell, "Mr. Robot" played its wild card and went in a totally different direction from what I was expecting. Before now, fsociety had been exposing weaknesses of characters we had never met before, but now Elliot had to do that same thing with a key antagonist that we are familiar with. It was a fascinating dynamic, and seeing Elliot attempt to squirm away fearfully was superb. The bathroom scene is excellent. There is a lot of tension as Elliot tries to install the raspberry pi, and things ratchet up when once again, Tyrell comes into the room and grills Elliot, revealing that he knows that Colby was framed. It's a fascinating sequence that reveals a lot to us about Tyrell, and he proves that to systematically analyze the weaknesses of other people, you have to disregard your own humanity. This is a bleak message for Elliot who was doing the same thing minutes earlier with Bill. Hopefully Elliot won't lose his human side as Tyrell seems to have. Elsewhere we get to see more of Tyrell's personal life and his apparent lack of humanity. When having dinner with Scott and Sharon, he isn't there to have a good time. He's probing for weaknesses and is not afraid to show his hand a little bit to Scott. This leads to a terrific scene as Joanna distracts Scott, allowing for Tyrell to establish dominance over Sharon, after identifying a potential weakness in her. The moment in the bathroom is terrific and intense as Tyrell seems to have infiltrated Sharon's defenses. He's bold and certainly reckless, but the plan looks to have worked. I'm intrigued to see more. This is a decent start for a story that has been shot and written in a very engaging way. Now we need to see the story expanded upon in an interesting and creative way. The end of the episode saw some big changes. The reveal that the Steel Mountain mission would be a failure because of the Dark Army backing out was a real surprise that lead into some genuine tension at the episode's end. Darlene's fight with Mr. Robot is intense, and Darlene herself is given a really good moment as she is forced to accept her failure and that she's let everyone else down. I still don't particularly like Darlene, but this is improvement. We get a big cliffhanger at the very end as Vera has returned to the story and abducted Shayla. Exactly how he has done so is unclear, but this was a very surprising turn for a character who I did not expect to have such a key role in the story. I won't complain about it, as the actor playing Vera was terrific in his scenes a few episodes ago. It was nice to see him exhibit some intelligence and immediately understand that Elliot got him sent away. I'm intrigued by this storyline. Angela's story gets decent progression. I'm happy to see her break up with Ollie officially, which is what the show seemed to be building up to. Having her break up with him while also endangering his career is a very logical explanation for her actions in the previous episode and answers some of the logistical concerns I had raised. I enjoyed meeting her dad. He seems like a very sweet man. The Bad: This biggest problem with Tyrell's appearance in Steel Mountain is that we already pulled back the curtain on his personal life a few episodes ago which ends up deflating the tension of why he's there and if he is after Elliot. We learned two episodes ago that Tyrell's primary goals are involving Scott so he definitely is not only at Steel Mountain for Elliot. This does hurt the drama of their ensuing scenes because had Tyrell still been shrouded in mystery, the suspense in these scenes could have been on a whole other level. Darlene continues to bother me. It is shocking to me that she is still trusted as part of this careful hacking team when she is so careless and frustrating. I was flabbergasted when she openly talked about the attack on Steel Mountain in a silent library, which is quite condemning. Shayla is still quite flat as a character. Frankie Shaw gives a good performance and I buy into her getting involved with Elliot, but they seem to be much closer than they should be based off of what we have seen. I also feel that Shayla hasn't quite grown into her own as a character just yet. Now she's been abducted, and while I'm interested, I'm not worried for her life the way that I would be if I cared about the character. There are some things about the heist plot that don't entirely work. Like with the last episode, I'll say it again: shouldn't a high security place like Steel Mountain have everything under watch with cameras? It's hard to believe that Elliot would ever be able to pick locks without being seen on camera. Furthermore, the supervisor should have quickly been able to realize she was scammed (1 phone call to her husband solves that) and been immediately suspicious of Elliot. The lack of continuity from there is disappointing. The Unknown: What did Tyrell sign off on with those guards? Was it just for his helicopter? What will Tyrell do with his newfound knowledge of Elliot? Is he suspicious of Elliot's presence at Steel Mountain? What is Tyrell's plan for Scott and his wife? Will he try to depose him somehow? Will the installed raspberry pi come into play in a future episode? Who is Whiterose? Why did the Dark Amy back out? What are their goals? How did Fernando manage to get out of imprisonment? Did he escape or was he somehow exonerated? What does he plan on doing with Shayla? What was so significant about the paperwork that Angela found in her dad's place? How will this affect the story? It seems that her dad is in debt, but who is this debt to? Evil Corp? Best Moment: Elliot destroying Bill was a fantastic and depressing scene. We know that Elliot does not want to lose his humanity by viewing Bill as simply an obstacle instead of as a human being. Which is why it's so brutally sad that he ultimately does this, drawing from his past experiences with his mother to tear down the insecurities of this sweet, lonely tour guide. The scene is powerful, and at times darkly funny, and it's easily the worst thing that Elliot has done so far. To make things even more uncomfortable, we see that Elliot is content with what he did later in the episode, further realizing the horror of this scene. Character of the Episode: I'll give it to Tyrell this time. He was imposing the entire episode. Conclusion: A much stronger effort from "Mr. Robot". The show is still developing, but a high degree of tension, some intense emotional scenes, fascinating dialogue exchanges between Elliot and Tyrell, and a surprise cliffhanger resulted in the best episode since the pilot. Score: 68
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
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