Summary: Elliot prepares to meet with Whiterose. He goes back to work but Ollie gives him instructions to go to an appointment, and Elliot understands that this is the Whiterose meeting. He goes to the meet and Whiterose informs him that Gideon is using the CS30 server as a trapped honeypot. She gives Elliot 50 hours to rectify the issue and prepare his new plan. Elliot agrees to take care of the issue, and with Darlene's help, he distracts Allsafe with an fsociety video and hacks Gideon's phone. However, Gideon notices that Elliot was absent and intends to have a big talk with him. Elliot meets with Darlene and is elated by his success. He kisses her, and Darlene, horrified that he has forgotten, reminds Elliot that they are sisters. Elliot mentally breaks down, and upon going home he realizes that Mr. Robot is his father. Mr. Robot arrives and says that they need to talk. Tyrell hides what he's done from his wife and avoids the police at work. The police arrives at his home and Joanna learns what he's done, and she induces labour by breaking her own water to protect Tyrell.
The Good: Before I talk about this episode I'll talk about the ending of the previous one. It turns out I was wrong about Elliot, and he still ignored Gideon's advice and only talked to Krista to help her, not to help himself. This is distressing news because it means that Elliot still isn't facing any of his own problems and continues to run away from grief and embracing his human emotions, just like Tyrell. It's a sad twist on last episode's ending. As for this episode, it's heavily built around tension. The build up to the meeting with Whiterose is very suspenseful as it becomes apparent that Whiterose wants to meet with Elliot himself. I enjoyed Ollie's role in the story, tying up the loose end of Cisco's connection to him, and I like that Elliot was intelligent enough to figure out that Ollie was compromised and was being used to set up the meeting. The meeting itself was tense and exciting, and Whiterose was very interesting. I hope we see more of her because she has potential to be a very fascinating character. Her interactions with Elliot were cleverly written to be tense, funny, and creative. I'm certain that Elliot will be meeting her again. The best thing that the Whiterose meeting did was add a time limit. Elliot's inner monologue worked tremendously here because it highlighted Elliot's anxiety in an interesting way, which ramped up the suspense. The attempt to hack Gideon was excellent, and the plan was good while still having clear flaws which raised the risk of Elliot being caught. Gideon finally confronting and lecturing him was extremely suspenseful and a perfect climax for the main plot of this episode. But the real twist is that the episode kept going from there and it completely upended everything about this first season with a brilliant final five minutes. The Darlene twist caught me entirely off guard, just as it did Elliot. I was about to roll my eyes at how forced this romance felt when the clear tension was building, but I was not expecting the twist that Darlene was Elliot's sister. And yet it made perfect sense. There were little inaccuracies throughout the season that I'm suddenly realizing were intentional instead of moments of slight awkwardness. Plus this perfectly explained the perplexing opening scene where Angela and Darlene confusingly seemed to know each other, a scene that made me question if I had maybe skipped an episode at some point. Looking back, that opening scene is a terrific bit of foreshadowing that sets up this twist. And when I say this changes everything, I mean it changes everything. We cannot take anything we see in this show at face value because Elliot cannot be trusted as a protagonist. Evidently, he's mentally ill and crazy, so we have no idea if what we're seeing is even real or not. The show toyed with this idea early on but ignored it for much of the season, which I was displeased about. But it turns out that much of what we saw throughout the season wasn't an accurate rendition of events at all. This is a massive twist, and it gives much more value to the scenes we are watching when get the added tension of being uncertain about what is reality and what is not. And perhaps more fascinatingly, we can't even be sure that we are just viewers of this show. Perhaps our role is more important than we thought. The ideas that this show is throwing around are so fascinating, and they are explored expertly. Tyrell's murder progresses well and he is suitably unhinged. Even though I do not relate much with Tyrell, he is so enigmatic that I am immediately hooked by his unpredictability when he's on screen. He is entirely unstable throughout the episode as he avoids facing up to his crime. The police arrival at the end was intriguing and I was expecting another tense sequence. Instead, Joanna surprised me by taking Tyrell's side and coming up with a clever way out of the situation by inducing her own labour. That was a gruesome moment, but was very revealing about this character and the pragmatic way that she thinks. The Bad: Nothing outright bad. I suppose I am a little disappointed that the lengthy Ollie storyline with Cisco only served to set up Elliot's meeting with Whiterose, which is a lame pay-off. The Unknown: Who was that man that Darlene slept with? How well does Darlene know Angela? I was confused by their meeting at first, thinking that I had missed or forgotten the scene where they met. But with the ending reveal it makes perfect sense that they know each other. Why is Whiterose working with fsociety? What are her goals? Will she go through with the plan this time? This episode hams up on Elliot's interactions with us, and that interests me. What are we exactly in the context of the show? Is the fact that we are watching the events of Elliot's life going to be a significant aspect of the show and Elliot's mental state? I thought that Elliot talking to us was just a gimmick but the show is promising that it is something more. What is Mr. Robot's dirty secret? How does Tyrell know him? What is their relationship? What is Tyrell's agreement with him? Now the big one. How did Elliot forget about Darlene? Clearly he's known her his whole life, so how does he simply forget? Didn't he meet her for the first time in the first episode? Or perhaps that scene was written differently and I just don't remember. How are Elliot's memories locked away? Who did this? Why? Is Mr. Robot Elliot's father? I thought he died. Is he still alive? Did he fake his own death? Or is he still in Elliot's head? Best Moment: Elliot's complete mental breakdown after the shock reveal by Darlene. The sequence was so effective and horrifying. I could feel Elliot's panic, paranoia, confusion, and fear conveyed perfectly by both the acting and directing. This is one of the most stylish TV shows that I have seen, and it puts that style to good use in this sequence. Character of the Episode: Elliot. Conclusion: This was a huge episode that upended everything, yet looking back, it explains a lot of the oddities that we had seen in this first season. The big ending twist was earned, and it comes at the end of another beautifully tense episode. This is great stuff. Score: 70
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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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