Summary: Tyrell knocks out the guy in the van, thinking that he's killed him. Elliot and Tyrell drive the van to a distant gas station to dispose of the body, but when they go inside, the man in the van drives away. Elliot and Tyrell walk through the forest as a shortcut, get lost, and face the reality that they are doomed. Elliot and Tyrell argue and then have a heart to heart. Tyrell agrees to help Elliot get back so he can at least warn Darlene to get away. Darlene goes to Elliot's apartment and sees that he's missing. She tracks his coordinates and tires to hotwire a car but is caught by a drunken man named Tobias. Darlene agrees to drive him home on the way. Darlene is frustrated by him but ends up opening up to him about her frustrations. Dom is lonely on Christmas Eve and tries to hook up with her online friend "HardOnHarry" and finds out she is a girl. Dom invites her over but she ends up being a Dark Army agent and tries to drown her. Dom wakes up, it was all a dream.
The Good: I usually really enjoy episodes like these. While this one had a lot of flaws (see: The Bad), there was a lot that it did right. "Mr. Robot" is a plot-heavy show, but its heart lies in its characters. Thus, an episode that puts away all of the plot to focus on every character's quest to find purpose and find their own happiness will be a memorable experience. Elliot, Tyrell, Darlene, and Dom all get a thorough exploration in this episode as they try to deal with the many struggles in their life. Elliot and Tyrell's trip to the woods was a lot of fun. There was some ridiculousness here (see: The Bad), but the episode has a good premise to send them out into the wild. It starts off as humorous with Tyrell immediately knocking out the man in the van, and remains humourous with the poor talkative lady at the gas station who strikes up conversation with the wrong people. I really got a lot of laughs out of this lady and Elliot and Tyrell's continued frustration with her. Following this, Elliot and Tyrell go on their trip through the woods which served as a perfect setting to explore their relationship with each other. Their interactions are enjoyable to watch and well-acted. Their argument was sad and powerful, especially for Tyrell who is forced to understand and accept that Elliot will never feel much more than contempt for him. But there is a part of Elliot that does care about Tyrell, and that part is Mr. Robot. A lovely touch is how Elliot walks away from Tyrell, but Mr. Robot is unable to leave him. Elliot may not care for Tyrell, but Mr. Robot has a strange sort of bond with him after their many interactions over the past few seasons. And Elliot recognizes that part of him, and finds himself unable to leave Tyrell behind to die. Tyrell is annoying, he's sloppy, he's dangerous. But Elliot has that spot of fondness for him because, as he says, Tyrell is about the only person in the world that actually likes Elliot, and that little bit of human connection means that Elliot cannot leave him behind. This was a beautiful exploration of their relationship and why its been such a compelling part of the show. Another key emotional aspect of this storyline is Tyrell finding peace in his failure of a life and ultimately dying. Tyrell is the star of this episode for sure. While the past few episodes have done a poor job of showing his struggles (see: The Bad), this episode makes it clear what Tyrell has been going through without his family. He fought hard against his own insecurity to rise to power, but the cost was everything that he loved. He has the power, but he no longer has the family that motivated him to get power to begin with. Tyrell is adrift, he's lost his purpose, and he doesn't know what to do with his life. Elliot is all he has left now, and Tyrell has to make peace with the fact that despite all that he does, he's never going to have anything more than a passive friendship with Elliot anyways. On this walk, Tyrell comes to terms with his life, how little it has amounted to, and how little he has left to live for. It's depressing, it's powerful, and it's relatable. And all the while the wolves/coyotes howl in the background, telling Tyrell that death is calling for him. Tyrell knows he is doomed, and that's why he spends so much time in this episode contemplating life and his own worth. Tyrell's mind is explored beautifully, and when he decides to give up, you understand exactly why. But surprisingly, Elliot is able to pull Tyrell back. Elliot has always been one to shut himself off from reality, but in hearing Tyrell's plight, he accepts that they are more than likely going to die. But Elliot wants to do just one thing; not destroy E Corp or pull off any crazy hack, but to warn his sister so that she can get away. And it's in this task that Tyrell finds one last purpose in his life. He's no longer being a selfish, insecure, power-hungry prick, and in this one moment he decides to keep going for a purely selfless reason: to help Elliot call his sister. It's a great moment of redemption for Tyrell, and though he ends up going to his death, there is a sense of acceptance in Tyrell's actions. His death is sad, but the way that the character is written in this episode makes the death fit him. He could have tried to prolong his own life, but he tells Elliot to go, and ends up taking a short, peaceful walk through the forest to meet his fate. There's a lot of beauty to this sequence, and it feels like Tyrell did become fulfilled as a person in his final moments. Darlene's inner conflict is also explored nicely here. The first scene with her is a lot of fun as she viciously rants at Elliot in a way that only she can. It's a nice touch that she deletes the voicemail because of course she doesn't wish that Elliot is dead. That's a nice way to highlight that Darlene is mad at Elliot, but she still loves him because he is all that she has. The rest of the episode explores this idea further as Darlene manages to form a hilarious connection with the drunken Tobias. Tobias was terrific in the role, and I got some good laughs out of him. I laughed at the reveal that Tobias' dark backstory with his dead wife, morbid statements, and addiction problems was a misdirection and that everything was totally fine. It was just that Darlene was in such pain that she easily read Tobias' problems as more serious than they are. Tobias served as a wonderful way for Darlene to let out her fears, pains, and guilt, and his final words for Darlene were an affecting way to conclude her story for the episode. Dom's story is short and flawed, but it's an effective way to show us how broken she feels. She's as lonely as ever, masturbating to Darlene's interrogation, which tells us that she did actually connect with Darlene in spite of all that has happened. She spends her Christmas Eve alone in her room, hiding from the family that she can no longer protect. Even her dreams aren't safe anymore as she finds her own sense of freedom and happiness attacked by the Dark Army. The Bad: This episode is very similar to "eps3.7_dont-delete-me.ko", but this one fails to have that same impact. I don't think that stalling the plot to have this character-based experience was necessary like it was in season 3. Season 3 had to show how Elliot would cope with the E Corp bombings and "eps3.7_dont-delete-me.ko" was dedicated to showing that. This episode doesn't have that same sense of purpose and necessity that demanded it exist. Because of that, no matter how artful or emotional this episode is, it will not hit the same level of exceptional television. And unfortunately for this episode, it is very imperfect. The entire premise of this episode is based off of characters making incompetent decisions, and coincidences. Having 1 or 2 of these bits of sloppiness can be overlooked, but when it's repeated then it becomes a major problem. And it is repeated over and over in this episode. Tyrell's inexplicable inability to shut up at the end of the episode is followed up by Tyrell and Elliot's laughable refusal to check if the man in the van was dead. That should be the first thing they do! And if he's not dead, then tie him up. Then after that, the two of them both go into the gas station for some reason, allowing the other man in the van plenty of time to drive away. There are two of them, why not have someone wait in the van? Especially when Tyrell is so easily recognizable, wouldn't you want to keep him away from unnecessary interactions with people as much as possible? As for coincidences, isn't it lucky that the guy in the van just happened to smash into a deer? That was a convenient solution to Elliot and Tyrell's problems. Furthermore, he conveniently manages to shoot Tyrell from an angle where he never would have hit him, allowing the show to write off the character with ease (more on this later). And in other storylines, Darlene happens to steal the one car that is exactly like Tobias', and he happens to be the one person who lives upstate which is where Darlene is heading. Furthermore, why was Tobias on his own anyways? Surely he had arranged for someone to drive him home rather than Darlene. As mentioned above, Tyrell's death was emotionally satisfying from a character writing perspective. But it can't help but feel like an enormous anticlimax. Tyrell was presented as a major, important character in season 1 and I can't help but feel that he has been misused since then, and his death here feels completely underwhelming. The end of season 3 set up an interesting storyline for Tyrell with him being in that higher-up position that he always dreamed of. This was a good idea because it gave us a prime opportunity to explore Tyrell's character and to see how he adapts to life following the loss of his family, also allowing him a good way to keep working with Elliot. But this season hardly showed Tyrell at all and we got no sense of how he was adapting and what his role in the show was. That's a huge underutilization of one of the most interesting characters. And now the show decides to finally give him some time to express himself only to rush his story arc by giving him sudden closure that has zero relevance to the plot, and then he dies. What a waste of a potentially interesting storyline for Tyrell. It feels like the writers did not know what to do with Tyrell, so instead of concluding his character arc meaningfully, they gave him a send off and killed him off. This show really struggles with killing characters. Tyrell joins Joanna and Angela as another major character who still had much left to offer the story, but was given a rushed and unsatisfying end that left an awful taste in my mouth. Tyrell deserved a better and more significant ending than this. Dom's dream reveal felt cheap. Her dream scenes were intercut with the rest of the episode, so it feels like the show was lying to us specifically to misdirect us. The Unknown: Did the man get around to sending Elliot and Tyrell's conversation to the Dark Army? What did Tyrell see in the forest at the end? Was it something important or was it just a visualization of death? Best Moment: Elliot and Tyrell's argument in the snow was powerful and effective. Character of the Episode: Tyrell. Conclusion: Episodes like these are where my scoring system is never entirely accurate. For me, this was the single most polarizing episode of the show. There were aspects that I loved and aspects that I hated. It's difficult because I got more enjoyment out of this episode than any other this season, but also more frustration. Mixed feelings would be putting it lightly. As for my thoughts on season 4 so far, I've enjoyed it but the grievous mishandling of Angela and Tyrell has left a bad taste in my mouth. Score: 65
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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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