Summary: Leon has killed Mobley's friend and is holding Mobley and Trenton hostage. He takes them out into the desert to bury him and Mobley and Trenton try to escape but crash. Leon takes them to a house where Whiterose's right hand man awaits them. He sets up a scenario to make it look like Trenton and Mobley were the leaders of fsociety, and he promptly kills them to make it look like suicide. The FBI has captured Tyrell who offers a deal to lead them to 2 fsociety operatives who kept him captive. Dom doesn't buy it but Santiago makes it happen. He also informs Tyrell of Joanna's death and threatens him into sticking to the plan. The FBI get the names of Mobley and Trenton from Tyrell and they track them to a house where they find them dead. Elliot panics upon seeing the news and goes to Krista but can't bring himself to face what happened. Mr. Robot comes out and all but admits to Krista that he was the architect of 5/9 while venting. Krista is bound by confidentiality and is unable to tell anyone about this. Upset, Mr. Robot confronts Irving who shows him a rich party happening on the same day. He tells Mr. Robot that his revolution was only allowed to happen because it was paid for by the top 1%. Angela is shell-shocked about the explosions and tells herself that she can rewind time and everyone will be okay. Price is angry at Whiterose who has ensured that Price will be fired. She reveals that she lied to Angela to ensure she stops being a problem, and that she turned on Price because she has to ask him twice.
The Good: The three words that I will use to describe this episode are emotional, devastating, and terrific. This was a harrowing and bleak experience as every single character went through some sort of mental trauma and the fallout of the attacks made things worse for every single character. That is, every single character except Whiterose. Among a world filled with chaos where everything is terrible, one person reigns supreme and that is the single most evil and sadistic character in this universe. This is a dominating win from the bad guys, and the episode does not shy away from examining how terrible this is for everyone else involved. Let's start with Elliot who had just learned about the attacks at the end of the previous episode. Poor Elliot can't handle what he has learned. Even though he isn't directly responsible for what happened, he is wracked with guilt for the role he played. This is shown to us in a fantastic way through Elliot's breakdown at Krista's house, with Elliot being unable to say what he has done as the audio and video crackles and makes it clear how overwhelmed Elliot feels. This was outstanding stuff, brutally effective and scary. Then we get to see Mr. Robot come out and he takes over the rest of the episode from Elliot. Mr. Robot has always been the force that we root for Elliot to overcome and yet that changes here because he's been played every bit as much as Elliot has. His rant to Krista is great. In this moment, he loses the ability to control what he says because of his need to vent. He was the mastermind behind fsociety, but now he has to watch as the organization and revolution he created gets morphed into something completely different, abandoning the morals that he followed. From being a noble revolution against the top 1%, fsociety is just another pawn for the top 1% committing terrorist attacks and murdering innocents. Mr. Robot is rightfully angry about this and goes straight to Irving to protest what's been done. And it's here that Irving tells him the sad, terrible truth: Elliot and Mr. Robot were always just pawns. He wasn't an architect for anything. The only reason his revolution happened was because the top 1% allowed it to happen and even funded it. This revelation is horrifying for Mr. Robot and it's horrifying for us. This is Irving bleakly telling us that it's all meaningless, because no matter what happens, you cannot take down the people sitting at the top. No economic crisis, dead bodies in the bathroom, or terrorist attacks around the country are capable of stopping them, so what can be done. Irving has the energy of somebody who has given up on changing society and has simply accepted his small, overlooked role in everything. But for Mr. Robot who was a revolutionary with enormous goals, this moment signifies a realization that he will never succeed in his goal, and that his entire purpose was doomed to only make things worse from the start. It's bleak, it's sad, it's hopeless, emotions that this episode does a fantastic job of making you feel. Another character thrown in a hopeless scenario is Tyrell. Tyrell has been strictly loyal to the Dark Army in spite of everything. We have seen the extent of his sacrifice. He avoided his family, he shot Elliot, he changed his plans accordingly, and now he's let himself be arrested and framed two innocent people for everything. Tyrell worked hard and loyally, and this episode we see how he is rewarded: a stoic FBI agent who doesn't even like him tells him that his wife died and was cheating on him, and threatens to ensure a terrible life for his son if Tyrell doesn't continue to comply with everything the Dark Army asks of him. This scene is outstanding and Martin Wallstrom's acting is unbelievable. He conveys Tyrell's pain so well that you can't help but feel for this sociopath as he realizes that he has lost everything to the Dark Army and now has to keep working for them while having nothing to live for. The scene is perhaps the most painful of the episode due to the extent of Tyrell's grief and the heartless brutality of Santiago's words. Speaking of Santiago, he had a pretty good episode. He continues to be humanized a little bit through his calls with his mother, and I'm curious to learn more about his personal situation and why he is working for the Dark Army. I'm pleased that the character is being expanded upon so that he is more than just a 2-dimensional villain. Revealing that Santiago is a double agent was a good call because all of his scenes with Dom contain more tension. We know that Santiago is working to further the Dark Army's agenda, so it's easy to root for Dom to overcome his influence, though she fails every time. This episode utilized their story perfectly as Santiago does just enough to remain credible despite actively sabotaging the FBI's operation. They end up capturing Mobley and Trenton at the end of the episode but naturally Dom doesn't believe it. She has interrogated Mobley and she knows that he is not leadership material. He has been framed, Dom knows it, Santiago knows it, and I suspect that Dom is starting to realize that Santiago's string of poor decisions is not just coincidence. The interplay between these characters and the slow realization that Dom is having is engaging to watch, and it leads to a tremendously satisfying moment at the end of the episode. Santiago congratulates Dom for a successful capture, but Dom isn't having it. She knows better, and she's not buying into Santiago's plan. She rushes off to investigate on her own and confirms that the Dark Army is responsible for this. The final moments of the episode are fantastic and perfectly sum up the purpose of this episode. Dom knows that Whiterose did this, but the entire world remains clueless. She is one person caught in a storm without anybody to trust. She feels powerless, and she faces the harsh realization that Whiterose is "actually going to get away with this". A bleak, depressing message to conclude the episode, letting us know that Whiterose has won and that she will not be facing repercussions from what she did. Whiterose's scenes with Price are thrilling in this episode. From being frustratingly vague in seasons 1 and 2, this relationship has evolved into being one of the most captivating and exciting things to watch. The show is also making an effort to explain what exactly was going on between the two characters in season 2. We get some nice reveals that Whiterose installed Price to obey her, that Price's only job was to take care of Angela, and that Whiterose lied to Angela to prevent her from interfering with his plans (more on this in a bit). It clears up a lot of mystery, while also reinforcing the villainy of Whiterose as she reveals her petty reasoning for screwing over Price entirely: she had to ask him twice. It's awful, it's frustrating and it ensures that we feel a sense of hopelessness as this terrible, terrible person continues to succeed without any sort of consequences. Michael Cristofer continues to be a stand-out performer in this show. His rage upon realizing that he was played by Whiterose is fantastic, and you can't help but feel for him as he has been screwed by a character who is proving to be the absolute worst in the entire show. We know that Price wants to be the most powerful man in the room, so being thoroughly outplayed by Whiterose must be an awful feeling for him. I wonder if "Mr. Robot" will attempt to humanize Price further and even get us to sympathize more with him. Angela did not have very many scenes in this episode, but you can't help but feel for her. She is in a deluded state, replaying the building collapses over and over again. Once more, she is echoing whatever belief that Whiterose instilled in her, hopeful that everything can be undone. But she sounds more and more insane with each thing she says. It only gets worse when we learn that Whiterose was likely lying about everything, and that the cause Angela is so invested in is likely nonexistent. It's a brutal reveal because we have seen how much Angela has been affected by everything. It's terrible to see Angela in an almost catatonic state as a result of all she has been through. She was once the optimistic moral compass of the show, and look where she is now. It's very sad. Mobley and Trenton's story is the main focus of the episode, and I enjoyed it a lot. Leon's presence thankfully injects some comedy into this bleak episode to ensure that it isn't an entirely miserable experience. Leon's constant TV show references are as fun as ever as he takes on "Frasier" and "Knight Rider" in this episode. I haven't seen either, but I appreciate that the episode's intro was done to the "Knight Rider" theme song, a funny reference. Leon continues to pull out some great lines like "that's no way to treat a caddy" and a funny reference to "eps2.5_h4ndshake.sme" when he refers to where his knife has been. While Leon is funny and charming, Mobley and Trenton feel very real in their efforts to escape. Their banter is a lot of fun, making me wish that we had seen more of them up until now. In the end, their fate ends up being a sad one. We are hopeful that they can at least get away safe in spite of all the horror that has happened in this episode. Even though they aren't the deepest characters, we understand that they simply wanted to get away and that they were in over their head. These emotions are relatable and it ensures that we are invested in their plight. In an episode where everything is going terribly, we would at least liek to see these two minor characters get out alive. But of course, the cherry on top is that it doesn't happen. The Dark Army lead Trenton and Mobley away and it slowly becomes clear that the plan is to murder them and frame them for everything, which is such a tragic fate considering that they weren't very invested in the revolution anyways. The FBI raid is intercut with the Dark Army preparing their deaths, and it leads us to hope against hope that somehow they can get there in time and save Trenton and Mobley, and perhaps uncover the truth about the Dark Army. But of course, in a clever editing trick, we are seeing two different timelines and by the time the FBI enter the building, it's much too late. Trenton and Mobley are dead, and framed for one of the world's biggest crimes, a crime that they weren't even involved in. One final gutpunch to conclude an episode filled with them. The Bad: It's mostly little things that detracted from some of this. I still find it tough to connect with Angela's delusions because we didn't see what made her like this. Whiterose and Price arguing loudly and openly in public should surely be a bad idea. They wouldn't want anyone else to hear what they are up to. Mobley and Trenton's deaths were sad and impactful, but they could have hit so much harder if these two were developed and explored properly in the previous seasons. They hardly felt like characters by the time of their deaths. The Unknown: Why did Leon kill Mobley's roommate? What will Krista do with her information about Elliot? How will her relationship with him change? Will Tyrell remain loyal to the Dark Army after what has happened? I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Dom finds some proof on Santiago. Does she already suspect that he's compromised? Why is Santiago so frustrated? Is he a double agent by choice or is he being forced by the Dark Army to be a double agent? What is on Trenton's email? Who did she send it to? Darlene? How long does Price have left at E Corp? Will he attempt to get back at Whiterose somehow? Who will he select to be his replacement? Is Angela proposing that Whiterose is attempting time travel? Judging by Whiterose's later conversation with Price, it sounds like everything she told Angela was a lie to manipulate her. How will Elliot process what happens when he emerges again? Best Moment: We are really spoiled for choice here. I'll go with Irving's speech to Mr. Robot for its thematic significance combined with that sense of bleakness that permeated the entire episode. Character of the Episode: Whiterose. This was her victory, through and through. Conclusion: Despite not being as intense as the last two episodes, this was even better. This episode examined Whiterose's victory to perfection, created a devastating and upsetting episode that makes it explicitly clear how hopeless everything is. These emotions were perfectly realized and this episode hits hard in a way that very few episodes of television can. Simply fantastic stuff as "Mr. Robot" continues to tell an incredible story in season 3. Score: 85
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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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