Mr. Robotdrove us insane in season 2.
Thats not a criticism.
This was the premise of the madly meta Mr.
Credit: Michael Parmelee/USA Network
Robot sitcom, when Mr.
He freaked and demanded his immediate release, a hair-pulling panic that might have spoken for us, too.
Each of them had ideas for how to make the world great again.
Each of them made a hash of the truth and screwed up bigly.
And now, nervous anticipation, as the season prepares to play its trump card.
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Season 1 ofMr.
Robotwas a many-minded marvel.
Its important to acknowledge that these shows are often sketchy representations of psychological disorders.
Some critics took issue withMr.
The drama lives at the fraught intersection of social and psychic, objective and subjective.
Robot, the world suffers the price for the individuals unchecked, uncorrected incoherence and fraudulence.
In season 1, Elliots discontents crashed the operating system of civilization the economy.
It ended with the world sliding into dystopia and our stressed-out hero with a dirty heavy soul.
How would he respond to the problem with his blurryfaced brokenness?
Robotwould follow-up head-trip with clarity was grossly mistaken:Mr.
Season 2 continued the shows skeptical rumination on redemptive heroism by exploring various strategies for personal and social transformation.
Elliot tried to save his world by unplugging from it and trying to delete Mr.
Robot from his operating system.
He wasnt hiding out in his mothers house; he was in jail.
Friends dont let friends let their delusions destroy the world, you know.
Elliots deception indicted his punitive redemption quest as flim-flam and cowardly escapism.
He was his own fiery F God!
critique, a distant, neglectful, absentee landlord.
Here at the end, his prison rehab is flickering and failing.
His glitching mirrors the rolling brownouts afflicting the Eastern seaboard.
Hes still hiding secrets from himself, and hes still an out-of-mind, out-of-control mystery to himself.
His strategies for introspection and remedy remain tortured and disingenuous.
Last week, he used lucid dreaming to hack his brain and get into the head of Mr.
Robot, i.e., himself.
Elliots escape from reality impacted others, and his story was mirrored in others, too.
Their arcs diversified the seasons reflection on different modes of cultural engagement.
Darlene (Carly Chaikin) tried to save the world by furthering the revolution Elliot launched last season.
Further subverted by unresolved anger over the past, Darlene spiraled into moral horror.
She got others hurt.
She may have gottenherselfkilled, though not before veering back toward humility and humanity.
Angela (Portia Doubleday) wasnt exactly in her right mind this year, either.
Like Elliot, she could recognize her bugginess, but chased dubious strategies for correction.
She was gaming herself, even molesting herself, and setting herself up for further abuse.
Her self-help program was in service of building up her nerve for her own risky heroic project.
This season, her frustrated search for truth left her bothered, bewildered, and nearly riddled with bullets.
Will she survive the season?
Or will she lose herself for good with one last journey into mystery?
Mr. Robotscorporate overlords and the invisible hand ruling elites ofMr.
Robotwerent immune to flux and frustration, either.
Robot, cultural revolutions dont topple regimes, they just get absorbed, internalized, neutralized, and homogenized.
Yesterdays scary counter-culture punk is todays top 40.
Still, the vagaries of Five/Nine dystopia challenged their delusional belief in their own supremacy.
Exacerbating their angst: mortality.
(That strange feeling in his chest… could it be… a crush?)
His primary objective, though, was to secure a trillion dollar bailout to finance a legacy project.
He was referring to the Biblical command that humanity subdue the Earth.
Price doesnt exactly resemble some good steward or shepherd.
He resents even husbanding lowly sheeple.
Hes on a mercenary chase of his own glorious transfiguration.
Perhaps on this show, time really is a flat circle.
She andTrue DetectivesRust Cohle would be quite the double date.
Whiterose had two sensational scenes in season 1, but Esmail dialed up her presence in season 2.
Her growing significance to the plot and mythology and B.D.
Wongs evocative performance reminds me of the game-changing impact that Michael Emersons Ben Linus had onLostduring its second season.
Ben wasnt supposed to stick around, but Emersons performance captured the imagination of the writers and viewers.
He was a happy accident that changed the direction of the series.
Perhaps Whiterose was always part of Esmails vision.
Regardless, her mystery and carefully phrased utterances have flooded our attention and focus.
She so owns us, the way she owns Angela right now.
Like Price, Whiterose is deeply invested in a legacy.
Her history contains the histories of other characters, too.
For decades, shes been working on a project.
The lethally leaky Washington Township nuclear power plant is either key to it or is host to it.
She likes to talk about the psychological symbolism of doors.
She likes to ruminate in alternate realities.
Her dual (and maybe dueling?)
male-female identities symbolize many paradoxes.
Shes establishment and revolutionary.
She suggests fluidity, yet her perspective is overly deterministic.
What treasure is buried at Washington Township?
A super-collider to harvest dark matter and access parallel universes?
A double-making, alt timeline-producing time machine?
A quantum computer capable of reprogramming reality?
I wouldnt make this observation if it wasnt for the fact thatMr.
He presides over beginnings and endings and movement between them.
Birth and death, trade and travel, war and peace.
His defining feature: two faces, one looking to the past, one looking to the future.
(Ill let the upcoming Starz seriesAmerican Godstell that story.)
Robot, Im reminded of (brace yourself for pretentiousness) Kierkegaard.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
In retrospect, the season has a compelling clarity to it here at the end.
But in the midst of it, the journey was turbulent and the destination was unclear.
The show was clearly aware of its taxing potential.
All those car rides were metaphors for the showrunning and show-following.
There was even one set to song Guiding Light by the band Television.
led to a funny beat in which Elliot spied on Mr.
Robot as he tried to solve a cipher.
Whiterose shared a secret* with Angela an answer to a mystery that assuaged Angelas anxiety.
But Whiterose wanted something in return.
I dont want your proof, she said, referring to evidence that could expose and derail her ambitions.
I want your belief.
Angelas mother is alive or Angela has been made to believe shes alive.
Of course, Whiterose may have bent Angela to her will by brainwashing her, too.
Was Tyrell really sending her mementos to bolster her confidence during the ordeal of his absence?
Or was someone messing with her, gaslighting her?
I never felt Esmail was trying to trick us.
He made us suspicious of the hallucination ruse and gave us clues to see through it.
Season 2 had flaws, for sure.
The second half of the year everything since Elliot got out of prison was stronger.
Yes, I struggled with season 2.
But Ienjoyedthe struggle, too.
Part of it is just me.
I enjoy grappling and playing with mysteries that grip and play with me.
But I look back on the season and see beauty in its audacity and meaning in the madness.
The visual storytelling was often exhilarating and the commitment to innovation is important to growing the medium of TV.
And Malek continues to be a magnetic marvel.
The center holds, andMr.
Robotdoes not fall apart, because of his imaginative, committed, humanizing performance.
Robotgoes into the off-season, I suspect it will have to make some critical choices about its future.
Will Esmail continue to direct every episode?
(I hope so.)
How long does it stay on the air?
(like, USA, donotmake this show last any longer than it should.)
What are its best strategies for entertaining an audience?
Can it keep up with the unreliable narrator storytelling?
And will it should it push intoFringeterritory?
Here, my mind is as divided as Elliots.
Part of me wants to see theSlaughterhouse-Fiveversion of this show.Listen: Elliot Alderson has come unstuck in time.
For realz!At the same time, I dont want to seeMr.
Robotbecome how did Elliot conspicuously put it at the beginning of the season during his roast of religion?
a poorly written sci-fi franchise.
Was that line coyly foreshadowing an embrace ofStranger Things?
Or was that a sly assurance that no matter how weirdMr.
Still, where you go,Mr.
Robot, I will follow.
You have the wheel, and my belief.
