So I started watching The Americans, and there will be a write-up of that eventually, but Mr. Robot's second season has begun, and I managed to see the premiere (on the USA Network website. Sometimes the answer's so simple it takes you forever to think of it.)
Mr. Robot has a big challenge in its second season. The first season was definitely one of these cohesive wholes that banked on big twists and reveals, and built itself all around one major future event - the hack to destroy EvilCorp's debt records.
The revelations toward the end of the season - not just the most telegraphed twist (which Eliot even angrily accuses the audience of withholding from him,) but several others that either got revealed out of the blue or set up greater mysteries.
Before I go on, I'm going to do a spoiler cut just in case.
Season one ends with reveals and major events - Eliot realizes not only that Mr. Robot is a figment of his imagination, but that he's also simply a mental projection of his own dead father. He also realizes that Darlene, the most inappropriately-familiar member of fsociety is actually his own sister (so actually totally appropriately familiar, quite literally.)
We also witness the culmination of Tyrell Wellick's life-tailspin, where after he is fired under suspicion of murdering his rival's wife (which, you know, he totally did,) he winds up apparently joining fsociety and implementing the Steel Mountain hack before he disappears.
There's even a tease of a further twist that I really don't know how to interpret, which is that Johanna, Tyrell's wife, speaks to Eliot in Swedish - suggesting she might already know him (the most batshit idea being that Tyrell is actually another personality of Eliot's, though that theory has a lot of big plot holes in it.)
So after the hack goes through and Eliot is left unsure what exactly went down that night, where do we find ourselves?
First off, Eliot has attempted to live a simple, analogue lifestyle to prevent himself from doing anything else destructive. He goes back to live with his mom and simply sleeps, watches the local basketball game, talks with what I assume is a childhood friend (who only just discovered Seinfeld!) and goes to a church support group.
And he listens to Mr. Robot berate him constantly and even shoot him in the head with an imaginary gun. Eliot hopes that his bland routine will allow him to control his life, and hopefully help him seal away Mr. Robot. We'll see how well that works.
Darlene has become something of a leader for a lot of fsociety bandwagon-hoppers. They saw the balls off the bull statue near Wall Street (when I was in college, I had a classmate who made a short film that included taping a twenty-dollar bill to said balls and filming the reactions of people passing by.) They take over a smart house owned by E-Corp's top lawyer by driving her out via hacking, but it has become clear that none of the huge societal change they were looking for has actually happened, and at this point her followers just want to have fun and celebrate even though nothing has been accomplished. Darlene is the leader of the revolution, but she's also finding herself disillusioned with it.
Fsociety hits ECorp again, this time using ransomware to force one of their executives to go into Battery Park and burn 5.9 million dollars - a drop in the bucket for a company like theirs, but "bad optics."
Angela finds that working at EvilCorp has dulled her lust for vengeance. She sees it as a place where people - just people - are trying to do their jobs. Yet if there's any question of whether she's really happy there or not, we then see her getting up after a one-night-stand and watching some weird Affirmations instruction video in the middle of the night.
Johanna has distanced herself from her husband - whom the media believe to be the main instigator of the hack as well as a murderer. But then she gets a present on her doorstep. It's a music box, but taped underneath is a phone. Could Tyrell be reaching out to her? Or is it Tyrell?
Most tragically, Gideon goes to Eliot in the first part of the premiere. AllSafe is basically done - he claims he's trying to salvage it but admits that it's probably really just done as a business. He's under heavy suspicion for the hack, and he threatens that he's going to tell the FBI to go after Eliot. Eliot watches Mr. Robot slit his throat, but it's pure imagination. Eliot tells Mr. Robot to stop, but his alter-ego points out that it doesn't matter if he does it or Eliot does it himself - the distinction between them is moot.
And so, as he sits at a bar when the news of the ransomware hack is playing, a man walks over to him and start chatting him up. He declines the man's proposition - he's married after all - but it turns out the man can read him all too well. Gideon's husband has left him, and he's now become a minor celebrity - a tabloid subject. Gideon reiterates that he's a patsy, and the man agrees. Gideon makes a great patsy - he naturally elicits sympathy. And that, according to this strange man, is what makes Gideon such an effective "crisis actor," at which point he takes out a gun and shoots Gideon in the neck.
So Gideon dies, the victim of a conspiracy theorist who thought that he was "in on it," and we might consider what Mr. Robot said when he slit Gideon's throat (a fairly analogous lethal injury.) Neither Eliot nor Mr. Robot may have wanted Gideon dead, but it was their actions that led to his death. It's never easy to predict where a revolution will take you.
Eliot is approached by a man called Ray at the local basketball court who wants to employ his technical skills. Eliot blows him off very firmly when they first meet. The second time, though, Ray seems perplexed by Eliot's behavior. He met with Eliot the previous night - a meeting that Eliot does not remember.
So Eliot confronts Mr. Robot. Mr. Robot makes the horrifying but believable claim that of the two personalities they represent, it's him that most people see when they see Eliot Alderson. He's really been Mr. Robot all this time. But Eliot decides that he still has a card to play - he's going to retain this dull, analog lifestyle unless Mr. Robot tells him what happened to Tyrell. He's already experienced being shot in the head (imaginarily, but it felt real enough,) and so Mr. Robot has nothing left to threaten him with. But Mr. Robot doesn't answer his question - it almost seems as if he can't. So Eliot tells him to stew until he can be useful and heads off to his church group.
And then, he nods off in his church group and wakes up holding a phone in his mom's house (I think.) On the other end it Tyrell Wellick.
There's definitely a strong theme of going deeper into the rabbit hole here. It calls to mind the Churchill quote: "this is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end. It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Yes, Eliot knows what Mr. Robot is, but he doesn't know how to control him or even how much of what is going on is really Mr. Robot's doing. We see Eliot reaching for the gun hidden in the popcorn in a way that strongly suggests he has killed Tyrell, but would a dead Tyrell allow Eliot to internalize him as an alternate personality on top of Mr. Robot (and arguably the audience?) Johanna has clearly seen him before, given how she spoke to him in Swedish in the finale last season. So what's the connection there?
Johanna gets that phone taped to the music box, and it's interesting that we see her miss a call not long before we see Eliot regain consciousness holding a phone receiver. Did he send her the phone? And is he actually just on the dead line after she missed the call when he thinks he hears Tyrell on the other end?
I'll definitely miss the Coney Island arcade setting from the first season, and I'm also sad to see that some of the other fsociety members have disappeared (particularly since they helped with the show's diversity.) It's a brave new world for Mr. Robot, and it's not necessarily a better one. But damn if I'm not excited for the next episode.
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