“You only see what’s in front of you, not what’s above you.” The season finale of Mr. Robot was utter chaos, but the good kind. A slow start but once that freight train took off there was no stopping the crazy. At every commercial break I found myself asking what the f*** just happened? The show has its way of answering a few questions and throwing ten thousand new ones at us. However, we did finally learn the truth about Tyrell and stage 2.

Tyrell is really alive and well. He is not a figment of Elliot’s imagination. Sadly Elliot had to learn that the hard way.

Elliot discovered that Tyrell, Mr. Robot and The Dark Army are all in cahoots. He also learned that Stage 2 is a malware program and a very dangerous one. Tyrell shows Elliot a blueprint for a building and a disassembled firmware for an uninterrupted power supply. Come to find out that blueprint is for the E-Corp building where they are stashing all the paper records in order to rebuild their business. It just so happens that building is directly across the street from Tyrell’s safe house. Tyrell begins to execute the malware which is designed to override the safety limits of the UPS recharge battery, release hydrogen and use the brown outs to create a transformer spark causing an explosion that will level the building. HOLY S***!!!!!

Elliot immediately wants to shut down the malware and erase the backdoor to the program but is warned by Mr. Robot and Tyrell to step away from the computer. Mr. Robot pleads with Elliot to stop what he is doing as Tyrell grabs a gun and points it at Elliot. Thinking Mr. Robot is playing a trick on him, Elliot challenges Tyrell believing he is only an illusion. Unfortunately for Elliot, Tyrell calls his bluff and shoots him in the gut. Robot then flickers and glitches away, for now. Guess that is what happens when Elliot wanders outside his realm.

Luckily Elliot is not dead. He may be in a coma though. Tyrell immediately calls Angela after he shoots Elliot. Yes I said ANGELA. He tells her that he loves Elliot and she reassures him that he did what had to be done. She then heads to their location as she wants to be the first person he see when he wakes up. What the hell is going on? How long has Angela been involved? To what extent is she involved in this? How much does she know? What happened between Elliot and Tyrell during those 3 days?

The freight train just keeps on trucking down the tracks, full speed ahead. Surprise! Darlene is alive but Cisco is dead and no sooner does Dom snag Darlene and bring her in for questioning. Can’t the woman grieve?!

Apparently not. Especially if you are an enemy of the state. After many attempts to invoke the Fifth Amendment, Darlene is shut down and the evidence against her and F-Society is unloaded. Dom shows her a casing she found at the former F-Society headquarters. A casing from the gun she stole from Xander, her former lover. Darlene shrugs it off but Dom isn’t finished with her yet. She takes Darlene to a back room and throws down the hammer showing Darlene exactly what the FBI knows. And boy do they know a lot.

Darlene is bewildered and responds with an ever so appropriate “you’ve got to be f****** kidding me.” We then see the board and Elliot and Tyrell are at the center of it. No Whiterose or The Dark Army though. The question remains, was Darlene shocked by the FBI’s knowledge or the fact that Tyrell is involved? She wouldn’t have had any idea about his involvement as Elliot couldn’t even remember whether he was alive or dead. Dom then proceeds to tell Darlene that they only had one shot at the middle man; they had to lie in wait like a python. Which middle man is she talking about? Elliot or Tyrell? Who do they think the ring leader is and how are they going to get them?

Mobley and Trenton were also on the board. After the credits play Sam Esmail treats us to an additional scene. One where Mobley and Trenton are alive out West. Trenton divulges to Mobley that she has found something that can undue everything they have done. Unfortunately she most likely won’t get the chance as the two are greeted by Leon moments later. The Dark Army has sent him to do their bidding. Their time seems to be coming to an end. The Dark Army is always one step ahead of everyone, including Elliot and the FBI so it’s easy to see that they figured out what Trenton knows. Hence, Leon is there to tie up loose ends. May their death be swift and painless.

One of the less exciting twists of the night was the fact that Scott Knowles was the one sending gifts and calling Joanna. It wasn’t Tyrell at all. The last gift Joanna received from Scott was his deceased wife Sharon’s sonogram. Just when you thought Joanna was starting to feel bad for Scott she goes right back into her degrading and wicked ways. Saying she was glad Sharon was dead and that his fetus didn’t have to grow up with such a p**** of a father. Scott then proceeded to beat her to a pulp, which she kind of deserved. At least he was nice enough to call 911 after he realized what he had done.

This must have enraged Joanna even more. As she then goes on to devise a plan to have Scott framed for the murder of his wife. She uses her boyfriend Derek, who was working that night at the party where Sharon was murdered, as a pawn in her game of revenge. She wants to punish him and after a little pushing and prodding Derek is willing to tell police a new story about that night.

The finale closes out with a complete blackout and the crashing of cars. Did Tyrell initiate Stage 2? We’ll have to wait until next season to find out. However we do have some clues as to what’s to come.

Season 3 will be about “Disintegration” as Elliot and Mr. Robot split further apart against the nation’s recession. Will there also be a literal disintegration of the E-Corp building?

According to Deadline.com, Season 3 will involve a lot of 2016’s political events i.e. Donald Trump gaining the Republican nomination, terrorist attacks, etc.

“The sentiment and the outrage and the support of Donald Trump; the groundswell by which he rose to become the Republican nominee, that sort of atmosphere is going to be used in the Mr. Robot universe and amplified by this great economic collapse which is happening like a slow car accident. What you’re seeing is the events that stoked those (Trump-like) sentiments,” says Esmail who is heading back to the writers room soon and will continue to direct all of season 3’s episodes, just like he did in season 2. There will be a lot of overlap,” Esmail says about melding current events into Mr. Robot season 3, “the increased terrorism and domestic violence that has gone on, a lot of that will play into the Mr. Robot universe.”

There is definitely a lot to look forward to in Season 3 of Mr. Robot. I for one cannot wait!

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Meet the Aldersons! Mr. Robot gave us some nostalgia in “master-slave” last night [Wednesday, August 10^th]. The episode opened up with late 80s/ early 90s sitcom [think Full House, Family Matters or Married with Children but with a dark twist] saxophone, credits, old USA logo, laugh track and all. We got to see old school commercials from that era during the first commercial break, along with some 90s-style E-Corp branded commercials and Darlene playing with a Gameboy Color throughout the sitcom part of this interesting episode. This is the first time in a long time I actually paid attention to the commercials because of the homage to the era I grew up in.

A few special guests made appearances last night as well. Alf, from the 1986 sitcom of the same name, made a few cameos and ran over Gideon, who played a police officer in this acid trip. Tyrell also made an appearance as special guest “Man in the Trunk”. This world really threw Elliot and us as an audience, for a loop. Elliot was able to hear the laugh track while the other characters either ignored it or couldn’t hear it, driving him even more insane. The whole sitcom portion of the episode had many people, including myself, laughing at the absurdity of it all. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed watching an episode of this show. In an interview with the NY Times, director and show creator Sam Esmail discussed how they stayed true to Mr. Robot while also doing justice to 90s sitcoms:

The one thing I didn’t want to do was my warped version of the sitcom, although there is some [expletive] that happens that wouldn’t typically happen in a sitcom. We had to keep a little of the “Mr. Robot” tone in there. But at the same time we wanted to be really authentic to what those sitcoms looked and felt like. We researched how they shot them. We brought on a guy who does the laugh tracks for sitcoms. We actually hired the people that created the music not just for Full House, but for Family Matters and the rest of the T.G.I.F. lineup, including the T.G.I.F. theme song, which we created our own version of with Word Up Wednesday. We really tried to follow the model as close as possible.

I was really hoping that we would get to stay in the sitcom portion of this episode a little longer but it was time for us and Elliot to jump back to reality. Mr. Robot protected him from feeling and experiencing the beating but as Ray said, there is a lot of work to be done still. When Elliot comes to we see exactly how f***** up he really is; they guy can barely breathe. After a creepy comparison to his dog, Ray has Lone Star and another Thug grab Elliot and remove him from the hospital. He is then brought to a basement of some sort and we get the most heart wrenching scene between Elliot and his Dad (Mr. Robot). Elliot thanks his Dad for taking care of him, essentially thanking himself for actually giving a crap, and they hug. Christian Slater (Mr. Robot) and Rami Malek’s (Elliot) portrayal of those two characters in that scene are the epitome of perfection. They play off each other so well.

We also get a flashback of a young Elliot and a still alive, but dying Mr. Robot. After Elliot gets beat up at school his Dad proceeds to tell him that he is sick and has lost his job. Tasking his son with the burden of keeping his sickness secret from his mother and sister, Mr. Robot brings young Elliot to his new store and asks him to name it. He tells Elliot to think of whatever comes to his mind first and that is what the computer store will be named. A real sweet father/son moment becomes just a little sweeter when Mr. Robot promises to never leave Elliot. This is why Mr. Robot is a figment of Elliot’s imagination.

Cisco helps out Darlene and FSociety once again but this time pays for it. He gets his finger stabbed with a syringe by a member of The Dark Army. Angela meets up with Darlene and sees Cisco for the first time since her ex-boyfriend Ollie got that infamous CD from him. She then goes undercover to hack the FBI in an attempt to erase any evidence against herself and Elliot. Darlene sets up shop in a nearby hotel and walks Angela through the script after the wifi jams. Not having blown her cover yet, Angela is greeted by Dom. Is the jig up?

Next Week

How does Angela get out safely and not blow her cover?

Elliot learns the truth about Tyrell, 5/9 and the 3 days he lost after the hack. What did Elliot do?

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Mr. Robot season 2 premieres this Wednesday July 13^th on USA. This season has been expanded to 12 episodes. Season 1 only had 10. USA is also adding a live after-show, “Hacking Robot.” Mr. Robot stars Rami Malek who plays Elliot, a vigilante hacker and cybersecurity engineer at a firm called Allsafe. Last season he was recruited by a man known as Mr. Robot into fsociety, a group set out to change the lives of the other 99% by taking back from the 1 percenters. Inspired by events like the Occupy movement and groups like Anonymous, their goals included wiping out all debt and taking down E Corp, an Allsafe client that is the world’s largest corporation.

This season creator and director Sam Esmail explores the aftermath of the 5/9 hack. Viewers will also get to see Elliot’s on-going struggle with his mental health. According to the New York Times, Mr. Esmail sees the new episodes as the start of the second act of a story he expects to last four or five seasons. “The Mr. Robot reveal wasn’t the ending; it was the setup,” he said. The real story of the show is Elliot’s journey to resolve a convulsive identity crisis and make some sort of sense of himself.

Esmail will be directing every episode, using a block shooting schedule, commonly used in feature films. This means all the scenes in a given location are shot in a chunk, despite which episode they appear in. The New York Times also gave some insight into behind the scenes action of the USA drama. Off-camera technical advisers whisper keystrokes (“typing, typing, mousepad, click, click, click, return … ”) and a writer’s assistant wirelessly reads Elliot’s continuing internal struggle. In voice-overs Malek is coached through code used in the series line by line.

This show is quickly becoming a modern classic because of its eerie realism. Here’s hoping season 2 will continue to raise the bar.

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