Summary: Elliot makes a plan to use the climate control system within Steel Mountain to destroy all of the data. However, the data is going to be spread out across multiple facilities within 3 days, so the group leaves immediately. However, Elliot faces withdrawal symptoms and the group is halted to take care of him while he has visions. Darlene and Trenton go to meet with Darlene's hacker contact. After searching the whole night, they finally meet Cisco, who is the same hacker threatening Angela and Ollie. Angela looks for freedom in her life and does drugs with Shayla. Following this, she immediately acts and uploads the virus onto Allsafe's network.
The Good: I enjoy detail-oriented heist storylines so I am excited to see where this Steel Mountain story goes. The planning scenes early in the episode were well done, and I am excited to see this plan put into action. But of course the plan gets derailed by Elliot's withdrawal. This story is built up nicely as we open with a close-up on Elliot's final line, and the turning point in the episode comes when he finally takes it, leading to withdrawal symptoms when he leaves with fsociety. The rest of the episode took an interesting turn as we get a terrific drug trip sequence as Elliot contends with withdrawal. This sequence is directed beautifully and is wonderfully mysterious. I was at the edge of my seat trying to figure out these mysteries and understand what exactly is going on in Elliot's head (see: The Unknown). The rest of the episode has a bit of a drug theme going on as well. Angela also ends up doing drugs with Shayla which was a surprising development for her. We get to understand Angela's deep-rooted fears and her desire to break free from them. Ultimately her experience with Shayla leads to her doubling down on infecting the Allsafe servers without even asking Ollie about it. She's done with worrying, and is acting purely in her own self-interest. Finally some of these disparate storylines started to combine as we learn that the hacker who is blackmailing Ollie is actually Cisco, Darlene's ex-boyfriend. While this doesn't have any impact on the story yet, it is good to see the story threads starting to connect. The Bad: The two side stories did very little for me. The writing is okay but the big problem is that I am not emotionally invested in these characters and their stories yet. The only character I am invested in right now is Elliot, so every story in this show should be connected to him somehow. But they aren't. Angela and Ollie have their own thing going on, and with Angela going off on her own, her weaknesses as an individual character reared their head. I don't understand much about her, and she doesn't have enough of interest going on to make me care about her story. Her kiss with Shayla also reeks of fanservice. Similarly, I find Darlene to be really annoying, and her scenes with Trenton did nothing for me. Again, I do not care about these characters at all. Their story seemingly has plot relevance, but it's hard to invest in it since we know that the plot has been stalled to accommodate Elliot's withdrawal. Which brings me to my next point. This episode feels like it is 50% stalling. The first part of the episode gets the Steel Mountain plot underway and builds excitement to see it. But then the second half of the episode sees no plot progression at all. Elliot's visions are interesting, but the plot stopped entirely to accommodate them, and the pacing of the show suffers. Furthermore, Darlene and Trenton's story is substantially less interesting and tense because we know that there is no time crunch, and it doesn't really matter if they succeed because none of the others have even made it to Steel Mountain. The scene of Angela installing the infected code did not work for me. I am confused as to why she did it in secret the way that she did. Did she really have to go to Allsafe before it opened to install it in secret? This is a security building, surely they have cameras and security protocols in place that would quickly reveal what she has done. Installing it during work hours would have been far less suspicious. Hell, Ollie almost did it himself in the previous episode! So Angela's covert trip to Allsafe felt entirely unnecessary and either makes her look stupid, or makes the company look incompetent. Furthermore, why did Angela show up at a time when someone else was about to enter the company? Surely she could have come a little earlier to decrease the risk of getting caught. The logistics here were very poorly thought out. Elliot's voice-over is not working for me anymore. It attempts to connect the themes of the episode to computer terms, but rather than make me view the episode in a different way, it feels forced, unsubtle, and cheesy. The daemon theme was ofttimes confusing, and it did not add to my experience of the episode. I'm concerned that hacking will be used as a plot device now. We saw some of the fsociety members steal a car by hacking it. There was no attention to detail or exploring the preparation that needed to be put into place to steal this car. We are just expected to go along with it because they are hackers so that means they can do anything. That's very poor storytelling, we need to understand how this stuff works and the effort required to make it work, or else the show will be increasingly susceptible to using hacking as an unsatisfying plot convenience to solve problems. The Unknown: Will Elliot's plan work? Will they be able to execute it before the backups are created? What will be the consequences of Angela uploading the CD? Did she do it on Ollie's computer? Will they be punished for it? Will Darlene get involved in Cisco's blackmail attempt of Angela? How will these stories connect? What the hell was Elliot's drug trip? What was the symbolism of the key supposed to mean? What does it open? What is Elliot's monster? Why is he afraid of it? What does it mean? Is his identity not what he thinks it is? What happened to the house in his flashback? Why is it missing? Is this meant to symbolize that a part of his own memory has been removed? How did this happen? Who did this? Is it post-traumatic amnesia? Who was the little girl? Why was Qwerty talking? What was the significance of Elliot proposing to Angela and her telling him not to go through with it? Does this suggest that Elliot wants to pursue Angela but is afraid of doing so? What other purpose is there to this sequence? It should be noted that Mr. Robot didn't have any significant interactions with anyone throughout the episode outside of during Elliot's dream sequence. Does he really exist? The show is being delightfully ambiguous when dealing with this question. Best Moment: Elliot's trippy sequence was really well executed. The directing was exceptional and there was a sense of wild fantasy, mystery, and unease the entire time. There's plenty to analyze and speculate on, and I am a sucker for such interesting out-of-body experiences like these. I'm sure once we get to the end of the show we will be able to look back and see some amazing foreshadowing and set-up in this sequence. Character of the Episode: Elliot. None of the other characters have stood out enough yet. Conclusion: The first weak episode of the show. The side characters still haven't made a mark on me, and the storytelling in this episode was slow-paced and uninteresting. The visual presentation of the show remains excellent, but now the story is starting to lag behind. Score: 55
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
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