Anticlimax? They pull off the hack, collapse major banks, and it’s largely intimated that it was orchestrated by the banks to begin with. Yeah, what a letdown :)
Not to mention the big mystery surrounding Tyrell, the veiled threatening scene with Mrs Wellington, Angela in the den of evil, Elliot embracing (?) his psychosis and the entire final scene. Yep not much to see here, move along… Maybe if the replace Esmail with Michael Bay we can get some explosions to spice things up.
I do agree that the 1st season set the bar really high for season 2. IMHO, Mr. Robot is one of the most engaging tv shows Ive seen in quite awhile. So, yeah season 2 has its work cut out for it.
Banking collapse sounds dramatic, in the same way that an asteroid hitting the earth sounds dramatic (to take Michael Bay as an example). But those things only matter insofar as they affect the characters. The end of the jailbreak episode and the episode in which Eliot ends up in a cemetery (sorry to be coy, I’d feel bad about chance spoilers for a show this good) is way more impactful than this banking collapse, which happens mostly to everyone else. (Weird that the finale didn’t touch on the impact this hack had on Angela and her father, since they’re the only debt-ridden characters we know.)
The Tyrell mystery isn’t uninteresting, but it’s also contrived. The suspense is imposed on the narrative by the writer, instead of emerging from it with the writer’s help. Not so big a deal in any episode but the season finale.
You know, thinking about it, I’d like the show to explore what a post-banking-collapse world might really be like in Season 2 - turning it almost into a near-future s-f sort of thing. IOW, I’d like it to go into speculative, uncharted territory.
Yeah, my biggest worry about the series going forward is that Elliot mental issues will be used as the plotting get-out-of-jail free card any time the writers need a twist or a complication. “Crap, we need ideas for two more episodes for the season.” “Hmmm, OK, halfway through, Eliot has another blackout and finds himself in Cincinnati. We can get at least two episodes out of the bus ride back!”
There’s an interview on Vox where the creator indicates that he had originally envisioned this as a feature film, and what we’ve seen is the first 30 minutes of that film. This great change is the climax to this season, but it’s just the setup to the rest of the story. I feel a lot better about things where there’s more or less a complete solid story line in mind for 4-5 seasons of a show (plus or minus some side paths), instead of writers making it up as they go along.
Really good first season. However, I can’t say the season finale has me eager for a second. Having pulled of an amazing hack (even if there are rumors about who really did what) I am not sure how they top it.
Somehow a show about life after the bankoplyse just doesn’t seem very interested to me.
That’s why I think they should really push the envelope and transition into more of an s-f, almost dystopian movie (not dark, cliche dystopian, still sun-baked, but exploring the reality of what might actually happen post such a hack as that - and not totally dystopian, but also exploring good things that might happen as a result).
Just finished last night. Amazing first season. I was pretty sure Mr Robot was not real until I started seeing him solo interacting (no Elliot around) with other people. Then after explaining this theory to an ex-coworker, I started to think “wait, it’s passing curious that Elliot isn’t around in those cenes” and so talked myself back into it and it was all still “fuuuuuuuuuck”.
That’s a pretty amazing cliff hanger, on a number of fronts. It could be anybody knocking on Elliot’s door. It could be the cops (going back to the opening scene; also I love how that guy is trying to blame Elliot for all of his own mistakes and problems). When China originally backed out of the first pass I was wondering if they had something up their sleeve (after all, if you could secure the only existing hard-source of data of a corporation like that, you’d have an amazingly powerful bargaining chip). So the post-credits scene was really interesting as well.
There were so many wonderful moments during the season. Like I think it was the ep 6 ending where Elliot gave his speech to Krista about hacking her, not dissimilar from a bunch of other speeches he’s given only it turned out to be he was monologuing those times. Only this time he was saying it out loud (one of many signs of his unraveling). Carly Chaikin was unrecognizable to me. I didn’t watch a lot of Suburgatory but I watched enough that I spent a week wracking my brain trying to figure out where I had seen the actress only to realize it jsut before I was going to give in and check IMDB. She did a fantastic job, about a million miles away from the robo-cheerleader mean girl type she played in Suburgatory. I thought Portia Doubleday was really good too, and I especially liked the shell shocked terror that she’s wearing after the Evil Corp CEO tells her he’s glad the EVP of whatever is dead. A shout out to Bruce Altman who always plays these sorts of characters and is so good at it.
But Rami Malik inarguably drove the season and was the best player among some really strong performances. God he’s amazing.
I just watched this, and the thing I am trying to work out is…
spoiler
All signs point to Tyrell being Elliot or something similar. The weird encounter with the wife, where she tries to speak Swedish at him. The voice over hints like “she knows what I’m thinking” and so forth. And it explains why Tyrell could meed Mr Robot. At least half the Tyrell encounters can be written off as imaginings, like Tyrell first walking up to him and talking about Linux. Or Tyrell being in the meeting and only speaking to the guy who got fired and framed near the beginning. Of course, I’d have to write off half the scenes with Tyrell as completely imagined by Elliot - like when he gets fired.
Look I don’t see the similarity with Fight Club when I watch it, but the similarity that I do see is American Psycho. Tyrell for a large part of the series, talks in that bland way and acts in a way, that reminds me of the Christian Bale character in AP. It was no surprise to see him strangle the wife of the new CTO.
And all the complaints about the shot framing I don’t see myself, I never noticed it and have no problem with it. These days I’m just glad when I’m not watching one of those shows where they do close ups all the time where you see 90% of the face (can’t name any offhand). Okay, even thinking about when I am watching something like that I can understand the frustration with continual use of framing that you don’t like.
Its not so much stylistically like Fight Club but the thematic commonalities are pretty clear. I can also see the stylistic tie to American Psycho. Tyrell is an intriguing character and its entirely possible that your spoiler is true. Theres not enough evidence to completely buy into the theory yet but if it is true then once again, how one views the show changes completely.
That’s an interesting theory, regarding Tyrell. I spent a good portion of this morning pondering it. But a friend reminded me that Tyrell’s secretary didn’t recognize Elliot.
Tyrell also had a lot of direct interactions with Elliot’s boss, with the boss going to Evil Corp offices to meet with him to convince him not to pull the plug on their contract.
Personal theory
But… I do think that some of the Tyrell interactions may be in Elliot’s head. Especially their interactions in episodes 8 and 9 (I think). Like Tyrell became another personality split and the one that was in charge when Elliot kicked off the script. If his dad is one of his personalities, why not someone else that he knew in real life?
I don’t think I’ve ever encountered such a precipitous drop from how much I enjoyed a pilot to how little I enjoyed a finale. About one-third of the way through, this season just petered out episode by episode, losing track of what was good (hacking, Elliott’s real relationships) and indulging what was not (Tyrell, Eliott’s psyche.) Quite a huge letdown for me.
What I fear is that the “gimmick” is good enough to support one season of tv, but several seasons of it? It’s going to be tiring.
Once exposed, the “gimmick” is no longer the driving force it was in season one. I do not think that the plan is ( or at least I hope it isnt ) to have that “gimmick” driving the second season. Now that things are established they are going to have to hang their hats on something else. Fortunately, the aforementioned “gimmick” is now more of a character development. It should still be evident in driving Elliot’s actions but they have developed the other characters substantially as well as the world building of their scenario to the point that Elliot’s personal psychosis no longer needs to be the driving force.
This article, which may contain some Season 2 spoilers, says that Season 2 will focus more on Elliot’s emotional journey and less on the plot. I thought the show was excellent. My only gripe was that the pilot made it seem like Angela was really important to him but she was sort of a footnote in the last half of the season. Is there any scene where she’s not the “victim?”
The entire season had Angela being pretty disconnected of Elliot and his main plot, she basically was the “sideplot b” of the season. It gave me the feeling of a character that is there for what’s planned in future seasons.
considering how they positioned her at the end of season 1, I agree 100% I think she will be far more important going on.