TV Series Review: "Mr. Robot"

Mr Robot, Season One (2015)

TV-14

4.5 Stars out of 5

Series Creator                   Sam Esmail
Director (Pilot)                  Niels Arden Oplev
Writer (Pilot)                      Sam Esmail

Rami Malek                        Eliot Alderson
Carly Chaikin                      Darlene
Portia Doubleday             Angela Moss
Martin Wallström             Tyrell Wellick
Christian Slater                  Mr. Robot
Frankie Shaw                     Shayla

Note: I give complete credit with regards to learning about “Mr. Robot” to my brilliant niece Samantha Sofka and her clever recap/reviews at Nerdist.com. See the following for the first of such recaps: http://nerdist.com/mr-robot-pilot-review-usa-network/

Since the turn of the century, American television has been undergoing a new golden age; this time the gold is in the form of quality writing. From the days of “The Sopranos” (1999) to “The Wire” (2002) to “Breaking Bad” (2008), to “The Walking Dead” (2010), a very strong argument could be made (and has been made by some critics) that the best drama written and produced in America, is now made for television and not for the cinema. Up until the spring of 2015, most of these high quality programs could only be found on HBO or AMC. There has been at least one that I favor on Showtime, “Dexter” (2006). Now the USA Network can be added to the list with Sam Esmail’s “Mr Robot”; a show he has created, written and functions as the show runner since March of 2015. “Mr. Robot” is a devious thriller that borrows themes from previous movies like “Fight Club” and TV series like “Dexter”. That being said, Esmail has created with his star Rami Malek (in the lead role of Eliot Alderson) an important message to America and the world: corporations may have a legal status as a person (it’s complicated), but they certainly don’t act or have the limitations of actual people. Mr. Robot as a series sets out to demonstrate both sides of this statement about corporations, the good and the bad.

“Mr. Robot’s” first season consists of 10 episodes; the pilot or episode 1 is far and away the best. So, if you watch one and one only, watch this episode. Within the pilot, Esmail establishes the nature of Elliot Alderson. Elliot is played to physical and theatrical perfection by Rami Malek. In fact, the writing aside, it is pure joy to watch Malek (most especially in episode 1) play the evidently socially anxious, pop-eyed, hoody-wearing Elliot. The program’s advertising describes Elliot as socially anxious, and he certainly displays a marked aversion to speaking directly to people or being touched. But Elliot’s problems are deeper and more disturbing. He has a psychiatrist but frankly her character is one of the weaker parts of the story; she seems quite incapable of helping herself let alone someone like Elliot. And as the series progress through episode 10, it becomes increasing clear that Elliot is really much closer to being described as schizophrenic than merely socially anxious. However, like Dexter with his combination of skills as a forensic scientist/mass murderer and his personal demons, Elliot too has demons and a useful skill set: hacker. Also, like Dexter, Elliot has a personal goal to help society. While Dexter eliminated criminals wrongly freed by an incompetent legal system, Elliott helps those incapable (by Elliot’s definition anyway) of helping themselves.

But the real vision that Esmail is bringing to “Mr. Robot” goes beyond the clever “Fight Club-like” manner in which Elliot is portrayed or the way in which he talks to the audience as if they were yet one more part of his splintering mind. The subtext of “Mr. Robot” is where its true value as a work of art lies. And that subtext is as devious as the manner as Elliot’s mind is displayed for the audience. Esmail has created a show where he has set up his flawed hero Elliot in an apparently doomed quest to fight the largest corporation in the world, Evil Corp. Not very subtle in its name, but determined in its inhuman pursuit of profits at the expense of anyone, including many of its top executives, and certainly at the expense of any minor employee or customer. Elliot has decided to push his role as a modern Don Quixote past the point of helping innocents like his psychiatrist and start helping everyone that has been hurt by Evil Corp – such innocents would include his now deceased father and the deceased mother of this childhood friend, Angela (Portia Doubleday). Angela and Elliot work together (courtesy of Angela’s influence) at Allsafe, the anti-hacker company hired by Evil Corp to protect Evil Corp.’s IT infrastructure and data.

Elliot does not appear to come directly into his wind-mill tilting exercise aimed at Evil Corp. He is recruited by Mr. Robot (Christian Slater). Mr. Robot has assembled a team that includes the remarkably anarchic Darlene (Carly Chaikin). Angela with her demure, soft voice and sweet personality is in a sense a literary foil to the acerbic Darlene. These two women orbit Elliot and bring out the details of how he stands outside society in terms of manner and appearance. However, they are not the only feminine influence on Elliot – he also as a beautiful, drug pushing neighbor, Shayla (Frankie Shaw). In the pilot, it is far from clear which of these unattached women will play the leading lady role (or indeed if any of them will) in Elliot’s life. By season’s end, the viewer will learn that each of them will and has played critical roles in Elliot’s development from a young boy to the tortured adult he has become by the time of the “Mr. Robot” story.

One last character exists in the “Mr. Robot” story line: Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallström). Tyrell is one of the senior VPs at Evil Corp, and seems very determined to not only replace his boss as CTO, but to truly live up to his company’s name. Tyrell plays at times a role that must surely be inspired by satanic influences. He is the personification of the role Evil Corp plays in Esmail’s argument against corporations in general. We will watch Tyrell through the course of season 1 commit one heinous act after another – from little things (surely little to Tyrell) like marital infidelity, passively permitting the false planting of evidence against the boss he hopes to replace, to actual murder. Tyrell’s story arc quite frankly follows a familiar path; it will come as no surprise that he does not get what he seeks. The irony in “Mr. Robot” does not lie with the Tyrell character, but rather with the corporation concept itself. Because as evil as Evil Corp is, it still plays a role in facilitating modern society. As Evil Corp starts to stumble near the end of season 1, we see that innocent people like those basically decent souls working at Allsafe will stumble right along with Evil Corp. Everyday people will lose their jobs, their IRAs, both their concept and place in a functioning society. If we all (mostly all of us) really want to live in a modern, technological society, do we, have we made a Faustian deal with the demons amongst us, the Tyrells and the companies they run? Must we tolerate concepts like “too big to fail”, or permit Evil Corp to run roughshod over us, in order to live our modern lives?

Esmail uses season one to set the stage for season two. The revelations that concern Elliot’s nature are revealed midway in the season, and the denouement of his plan with respect to Evil Corp takes place near the end of the season, but not at the end. The end is instead a preview of the effects of losing Evil Corp and its contemporaries. The initial images of their passing are not sanguine. These are worthy questions that Esmail is asking. Using the splintered mind of Elliot as his unreliable narrator adds some cleverness to his tale, and Elliot’s fractured mind, his confusion about the correctness of what he has done provides a good metaphor for the big question. Even though corporations have been established legally as persons, that they rarely seem to work for the public good in any direct manner seems abundantly clear. But is there a real, painfully needed social function that we must obtain from them in order to live in a technologically advanced society? Do we really have only the soulless, nearly enslaved life we now live in thrall to such corporation as Evil Corp as our only alternative to some grim life in a cave? It will be interesting to see how Esmail tries to answer these questions in season two.