He’s gone. He’s gone. He’s gone.
At this point, I’m still confused and a lot of questions have been asked without any real answers. And still no Tyrell, which despite him being the villain, is a little sad for me.
Let’s start off this post with sharing an insight from somebody a lot cleverer than me: Brittani from Rambling Film. The reason she’s a lot cleverer than me is because she made a comment about Elliot’s routine lifestyle, which for her seems like a prison! I mean, we have a street with houses attached to each other (cells), we have a very minimal room where Elliot lives (a cell), we have the same place for breakfast and dinner (prison diner), and we even have a basketball court (prison yard) – even the red phone is attached to the wall! If that’s the case, and Elliot is reconstructing his own reality, then the tag line Control is an Illusion is even eerier and amazingly multi-layered for this season. And also, the fact that I didn’t put these things together, and didn’t think about it myself is just proof how well the show is made (nothing is too obvious, yet hints are around every corner), and how clueless I can be! Either way, now that I’ve started to think about Elliot’s reality as life in prison, I cannot not see it, and I can’t wait to see if it’s true or not. And I would be so proud if Esmail pulls it off, because that means the second season could be just as strong as the first one!
Anyway, enough about the prison theory for now, we’ll come back to it soon, but let’s continue on with the actual episode:
#203: k3rnel-pan1c.ksd
The aftermath of the events in season 1 are still affecting everyone involved. We get to see the rest of the hackers from Mr. Robot’s team, and one of them ends up dead. The FBI is of course involved, but it seems they still have nothing regarding the notorious hack. But the bigger question is, is somebody after the hackers? And if so, who? The danger is definitely there as the rest of the hackers feel a little uneasy, including Elliot’s sister Darlene (Carly Chaikin).
A lot of the episode focuses on Elliot trying to keep Mr. Robot away. He again turns to drugs, Adderall this time, to subdue his hallucinations and, for a short period of time, it works. Though he doesn’t sleep 6 days, he is Mr. Robot free, and feels a lot better, despite looking a little more crazy than usual. Of course the drug wears off and the result is a typical Elliot rant about all organized religion and God!
In the beginning of the episode, Ray (Chris Robinson) talks to an empty chair, later in the episode he reveals to Elliot that he started talking to his mother after she died, and now can’t stop. Ray also breaks the prison illusion by visiting a hacker at his home, who is unable to fix his site, something Ray asked Elliot to do but he refused in the first episode. But Ray has an office, so that makes me wonder whether he is the warden but I’m not sure. It still seems Elliot himself doesn’t really have much contact with the outside world, except those routine things he does day to day, that could easily be recreated to cope with his actual reality.
In the second half of the episode, Angela has dinner with her boss and other suits, and turns out the other men are behind the death of her mother and Elliot’s father. She gets handed a disc that would allow her to destroy these men, seemingly nice and friendly, as punishment for what they did. And yet, I’m still not interested in her story line that much.
There’s a lot more of Dominique Dipierro (Grace Gummer) who I skipped talking about in the first recap because her part was very minimal in those two. Well, she is the FBI investigator who is after the people who hacked E-Corp – in other words, she is looking for Elliot and others involved with Mr. Robot. From the first episode we already know she is a little different, yet in this one we see that she has trouble sleeping, and is very lonely. Despite this, she smart and resourceful, and in the end of the episode we see her tracking down her first main clue towards solving this case – f.Society’s arcade hangout.
Her case sort of shadows the prison theory though, because it raises a question about why Elliot could be in prison. His involvement with Tyrell could be the reason, especially since Tyrell is still in large, possibly alive, but that’s not certain yet. The whole locked up concept could also refer to a mental institution, because he doesn’t seem to have any visitors either. The idea that Elliot is locked up might be a little shaky at times, but I do believe he is somewhat recreating his own life around him, and trying to put himself into a more ordinary setting. That could also indicate that the men in suits attacking Elliot were orderlies, and his stomach was being pumped – after which he was sedated. At this point I’m not even sure what the hell is going on and how much of what we see we can believe to be real when it comes to Elliot. It will be interesting to see where this season ends up and weather this locked up theory really applies.
Anyway, can we just end this post with the fact that Rami Malek is great as Elliot and the fact that he was nominated for an Emmy is just a cherry on top. Malek also needs to win that Emmy because nobody else currently on television is delivering us such greatness. Sure, all the men in his category are great, but we can’t deny the fact that Rami Malek did something exceptional during Mr. Robot’s first season, and he is still doing it. He is still giving a performance of a lifetime, and I don’t see any reasons not to award him for that.
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