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Thursday, March 28, 2024
The Observer

'Mr. Robot' season finale preview

MrRobot_Web copy
Eric Richelsen | The Observer
Eric Richelsen | The Observer

For the vast majority who have missed out, now is the time (especially before classes go into full-swing) to binge-watch your new favorite show, “Mr. Robot.” Premiering on USA Network, the show might not have had all the fanfare of an AMC show — “Better Call Saul,” “ Fear the Walking Dead” — or premium shows on HBO — “Ballers” and “True Detective.” What “Mr. Robot” lacked in promotion, it repaid 10-fold in quality.

The show centers around Elliot Anderson: computer security engineer by day, hacker-vigilante by night. Elliot deals with social anxiety and regularly sees a psychiatrist, but his advanced knowledge of computer exploits and uncanny hacking abilities make him naturally predisposed to figure things out for himself. This leads him to self-medicate his social anxiety, which means abusing morphine that he obtains illegally from his neighbor. This adds an interesting element to the storytelling: since everything is told from his point of view, it is not always easy to discern and trust what the viewer is watching — some of it may just be drug-induced hallucinations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug4fRXGyIak

Despite these drug-induced hazes, Elliot proves himself more than capable of extraordinary feats. In the season premiere, he single-handedly saves Allsafe Security from a potential hack, which was planted by an anonymous hacking group, “fsociety.” In a whirlwind of events, Elliot joins fsociety in an effort to launch a digital revolution that would essentially free society from all its digital debt.

However, as one can imagine with Elliot's tendency to self-medicate, things are not always as they seem. The members of fsociety might conceal alternate identities and motives, and enigmatic characters are (literally) in constant motion — one minute they're talking to Elliot, the next Elliot is talking to himself. It becomes increasingly difficult with every episode to discern if Elliot is simply losing his grip with reality or if the entire world is moving around him so fast that he just can't keep up.

The characters are excellently developed, which is a breath of fresh air when recalling a disappointing second season of “True Detective” that had too many storylines to cover in such a limited amount of time. In “Mr. Robot,” the characters always seem to intersect and build off of each other, which only makes the central and peripheral plots so much more life-like and exponentially more interesting.

An important note is that the season finale was supposed to take place last Wednesday, but in light of the awful and tragic shooting that took place in Virginia, USA Network demonstrated exemplary sensitivity and decided to push the finale to this Wednesday.

Find the time to catch up on the show, and if you can, tune in on USA Network at 10 p.m.