Mr. Robot
Season 2
(SPOILERS) I
suspect my problem with Mr. Robot may
be that I want it to be something it isn’t, which would entail it being a much
better show than it is. And that’s its own fault, really, or rather creator and
writer-director of umpteen episodes Sam Esmail’s, who has intentionally and
provocatively lured his audience into thinking this really is an up-to-the-minute, pertinent, relevant, zeitgeisty show, one
that not only has a huge amount to say about the illusory nature of our socio-economic
system, and consequently the bedrock of our collective paradigm, but also the
thorny subject of reality itself, both of which have been variably enticing
dramatic fodder since the Wachowski siblings and David Fincher released a
one-two punch at the end of the previous millennium.
In that
sense, Mr. Robot’s thematic conceit
is very much of a piece with its narrative form; it’s a conjuring act, a series
of sleights of hand designed to dazzle the viewer into going with the flow,
rather than focussing on how it has nothing up its sleeve. Esmail has accordingly
revealed himself to be running on fumes at a far earlier stage than that
previous showrunner of mystery box must-see TV, Damon Lindelof (who has at
least partly rehabilitated himself with the outstanding The Leftovers, which doesn’t even attempt to provide the answers to
everything).
Rami Malek justly
won an Emmy for his outstanding lead performance (although, I would caveat that
with questions about his range, given his less compelling attempts to do Mr
Robot in the final episode), but I’ve been getting ominous flashbacks to an earlier TV titan who held court at the
centre of a show that reached its zenith two decades ago, one also given to portentously
pompous, presumptive self-importance; Mr.
Robot may be turning into the modern era’s The X-Files, with Elliot as a rebooted Fox Mulder, a waffling
windbag who, instead of waxing less than lyrical on ETs and the nature of the
universe in a jaundiced, vaguely bored quasi-philosophical tone, is stuck on
repeat about the dictated mode of reality we doom ourselves to.
Referencing
that show, caught twixt old and new, self-contained and serialised dramatic
styles (as the recent revisit sadly evidenced, it’s an antiquated approach when
dusted off today), Mr. Robot seems
victim of exactly the malaise that afflicts the now de rigueur ongoing
narrative form for TV drama. Which is, I emphasise, is generally far
preferable. The trouble is, we’ve had getting on for two decades to get used to
this approach, so simply winging it for a season and then the truth catching up
with the audience, that the show’s mastermind doesn’t really have any idea
where he’s taking it, doesn’t so easily wash as it once did. Lindelof got away
with it for five runs of Lost. Battlestar Galactica managed to complete
four seasons despite hinging on Ron Moore having a big reveal he hadn’t planned
in advance. Esmail may know where this one ends, owing to devising it as a
movie, but what’s in between is less certain; Mr. Robot has no place to go with the repercussions of Season One’s
climax.
So it
ignores them for the most part. We are told obliquely of things getting
hazardous, but we don’t even witness the easy-going diluted global meltdown of James
Cameron’s Dark Angel. Life is going
on pretty much as normal, except when occasionally (2.10, or 2.9 where Elliot
is told his credit card is useless out there now, or the limit on cashpoint
withdrawals, or Esmail appropriating presidential speeches like he’s Robert
Zemeckis) there’s a nod to changes, but there’s nothing pervasive as it’s too
big an imaginative (and budgetary?) leap on the parts of the writers to explore
the likely domino effect of the hack. One might argue that it reflects the
grimly hanging on of a bankrupt financial system, but the show is set in a reflective
universe (of our own), where that one last card really ought to bring down the
house.
Season Two
of Mr. Robot thus got off to a tepid
start that emphasised this uncertainty about what to do and where to go. It has
kicked into gear at various points, but this year’s Elliot reveal redux
suggests the makers are putting the twist before the horse. Do they really want
a show that’s all about attempting to
annually pull wool over our eyes, and to what ultimate end? So Elliot was in
prison all along. Well done, you’ve just trodden water for seven episodes. In
and of itself, the twist was well wrung, and for me at least less obvious than
the first season’s although entirely less significant. But it’s also much more
potentially damaging, as it gives the series an unfortunate ‘boy who cried wolf’
vibe.
It suggests
Esmail doesn’t really know how to get from A to D/E (D/E being season 4/5)
without acres of filler. 2.10 illustrated just what a first rate director he
can be, with a sustained final sequence of intercutting between Elliot hacking
at Joanna’s behest as the net closes in on Darlene and Cisco, and ending in a
flawlessly executed long shot shootout, but as a whole, it sort of shows that,
for all the show’s hacking prowess, it leaves a lot to be desired in the
plotting stakes.
The episode’s
opening, with Phillip Price announcing he’s doing everything he’s doing to be
the most powerful person in the world, is disappointingly banal, and even the
caveat that there are two individuals more powerful than him doesn’t really
satisfy a series couched in paranoia and suspicion. Is that all? Is this just
another show with a wicked head cheese at the top of the ladder? Working for a
big bad country that’s – oohhh,
China? One has to wonder just what the thinking is, since it seems, without any
nuance to suggest otherwise, to be as lazy as 24’s parade of Middle Eastern terrorists (not that BD Wong isn’t
absolutely dynamite, and, rather effortlessly steals Michael Cristofer’s crusty
thunder).
The first
few episodes are especially unpersuasive, with sub-Fight Club pranks (cutting the balls off a statue bull) and
Elliot’s attempts to avoid Mr Robot (“He
shot me in the head again”). The ongoing striving for a coolly referential
soundtrack (The Parallax View in 2.2,
some Pino Donaggio in 2.7) don’t always quite come off, while the inclusion of
Operation Berenstain only raises a glimmer of interest because the stain/stein
conundrum is cited as a Mandela Effect residue (certainly not for what it is in
the show itself, another faintly passé surveillance scare; as with its limp
controllers of the world, Mr. Robot
should be assuming the worst to have real crazed cachet, and positing the
monitors as already scooping every single thing they need).
It wasn’t
until 2.5 that an episode grabbed my attention as thoroughly as anything in the
first year, most notably for Whiterose’s expansive conversation that hits (Philip
K) Dickian levels of discourse (“Some
believe there are alternative realities playing out… other lives we are
leading…. other people we have become…. The contemplation moves me deeply”).
2.6 meanwhile scores points for featuring ALF, much less so for thinking it
could sustain its sitcom self-parody for 15 minutes (The X-Files, despite the comparison I drew above, this ain’t, either
performer- or malleable format-wise). Still, some of the better plotting has
revolved around Angela’s deal with the devil and being put in tense situations
that enable her to prove her mettle. Certainly more than comatose Elliot, who
aside from eating his own vomit or morphing into Mr Robot (2.9) has only really
sparked as a character when put in the position of entertaining Joanna’s man
servant and showing his effortless tracing skills.
2.11 made
little very much lucid, such that the difference between Emsail’s writing and
the much vilified Damon Lindelof couldn’t be clearer. With The Leftovers you have a series that promises not to provide
answers, but is mesmerising and compelling, Lindelof knows innately how to
master the kinetics of mystery plotting. Esmail just drops things in, without
providing us sufficient reason to care about their whys or wherefores.
Some
elements, such as E-Coin/Bitcoin suggest he’s surfing the web for conspiracy
theories to manage (he could be on Ben Fulford’s mailing list), yet his actual
depiction of a conspiracy theory is anodyne (some reviews have compared Price
to the Illuminati, which entirely underlines how rote a depiction the show’s evil
mastermind). Now, I could be wrong, and Mr.
Robot could pull an almighty reveal out of its hat (such as this all being
an AI construct, as some have mooted), what with its Tyrells and characters’
investment in artificial friends (Dom in this episode), but the show has
managed to eke out such a baseline of soporific intrigue and deception that it
becomes difficult to really care no matter what they do. As a result, Esmail
has managed to jade viewers. Or at least, a fair portion of them (ratings have
been down).
Other areas
of 2.11 further emphasise these crutches on which the show is wearily
supported: that when you make messing with reality the norm, it leads either to
viewer disavowal or ceases to have much lustre. I found myself unfussed as to
whether Tyrell in the back of the cab is real or not (obviously, Elliot made much
of this point subsequently), or the extent to which “Mind Awake, Body Asleep” might have resulted in most of an episode
in Elliot’s head (all those Back to the
Future tracks).
And
pilfering, or homaging, only really works if you make it your own. I’ve seen it
said that the Angela questionnaire was Lynchian, but no, not really. Studied
weird isn’t really weird, and Mr. Robot is so studied (“Is the key in the room?”) that it’s no
more than faux-Lynchian. Esmail appears to be dropping lots of would-be tantalising
clues but I’m not biting, from Whiterose’s convenient fascination with Angela (“Why are you so special to Philip Price?”)
justifying not killing her, to the leading statement that her mother and
Elliot’s father “gave their lives to take
humanity to the next level” (“Well, I
guess it all depends on what your definition of real is”).
And so the
finale. A number of sites were proclaiming a shocking twist, so I was left
wondering what, exactly, was this startling revelation? It must have passed me
by. Unless it’s the inverted “surprise” that Elliot isn’t in fact Tyrell, which
is hardly a shocker (an anti-twist). Or that, like George Lucas bringing back
the Death Star, the best Esmail can come up with for Stage 2 is that, instead
of a cybercrime, they’re going to blow things up (more Fight Club). So this is
how you stretch out a movie into a multi-season arc. With that, the mystery of
Angela’s cool-headed call from Tyrell, and Darlene being shown the agency board
by Dom, it ended up a bit of damp squib, and should probably be less smug about
the cheeky references to Burn Notice
as an example of “fake” TV (as if that show ever
showed anyone successfully invoking the Fifth Amendment).
The way
this is all going, and with lines like ‘You’re
only seeing what’s in front of you. You’re not seeing what’s above you’ I
shouldn’t be surprised if a Mr. Robot
season at some point ends with Elliot casting his eyes heavenwards, the
outlines of the grid materialising before them. But I fear that it will be all
much too late by then, and most of us will have been carted off in the
multi-faceted red wheelbarrow of oblivion.
So perhaps the problem with Mr. Robot isn't me; it's that, as a
self-respecting E-Corp product, it only flirts with anarchy in order to
sell it. It’s actually deeply traditional and derivative, just
distractingly enough in its emperor’s new hoodie to be labelled innovative.
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.