Mr. Robot is all about our vulnerabilities. Whether it’s a daemon or a bug, everyone has a weakness to hide, and the only way to truly know — and potentially control — someone is to learn their quirks.

Even though episode five is titled “Exploits,” a nod to the caper Elliot and FSociety hope to pull off at Steel Mountain, the title’s secondary meaning revolves around exploiting those weaknesses to break down a person, akin to a hacker accessing a system or network and then exerting total dominance.

Fernando Vera wasn’t smart enough to hide his drug dealings and other crimes — “This isn’t the imitation game,” his lawyer tells him. “The code is not that complicated” — and for the sake of efficiency, he is now facing decades in prison (potentially at a super-max). Fernando likely would have preferred the old-fashioned way of dealing, keeping his name off social media and firmly in the streets, but his younger brother, along with Elliot’s anonymous tip, led to his downfall. “You know how much money we saved last year?” his brother asks Fernando. “Made our whole operation way more efficient.”

Fernando’s sense of the universe is full of checks and balances, making sure each action is satisfied with a countermeasure. He promises someone will get hurt — “That’s how we get square with the universe” — and it doesn’t take much pacing about his cell to figure out who lodged the tip. Shayla is the only real character who has accessed Elliot’s human side, and Fernando’s cosmic retribution doesn’t bode well for the budding couple.


In upstate New York, Fernando is far from Elliot’s mind — he’s about to orchestrate the breaking in and legendary hack of Steel Mountain, Evil Corp’s data-storage center. The facility’s tagline is “Impenetrable,” but as Elliot is quick to note, “Nothing is actually impenetrable. A place like this says it is, and it’s close, but people still built this place, and if you can hack the right person, all of a sudden you have a piece of powerful malware. People always make the best exploits.”

Elliot says he’s never had trouble hacking people, and his latest hack — Bill Harper, Steel Mountain’s level-one sales associate — never stood a chance. Elliot uses and abuses Bill in his quest to plant the raspberry pi and manipulate the facility’s temperature settings, analyzing Bill’s weaknesses (his need to be liked) to get Elliot the access he needs. “Think about it, Bill,” he says. “If you died, would anyone care? Would they really care? Maybe they’d cry for a day … but no one would give a shit. The few people that would feel obligated to go to your funeral would probably be annoyed and leave as early as possible. That’s who you are. That’s what you are. You’re nothing.”

One of the show’s hallmarks has been its use of camera angles. Sam Esmail and the other directors love to frame Elliot, and the other characters, off to the side or in the corner of the shot, and the wide angle creates a cinematic feeling. It’s also a bit unnerving — Elliot in this scene, or Fernando in the opening, are thrust into the viewer’s space — and the angles during Elliot’s vicious takedown, alternating between wide and long, are among the hallmark aspects of episode five.

Despite a few hiccups (the expected supervisor never materializes, so Romero and Mobley have to improvise), Elliot is free, a humanoid malware ready to infect Steel Mountain until Tyrell, visiting for the day, surprises him.

It’s still unclear whether Elliot himself doesn’t exist and is a version of Tyrell — a scenario some have suspected and the show has alluded to throughout the season (and even during the episode, when Elliot says, “I’m talking to you right now and you don’t exist) — and it’d be the sort of twist that would elevate the show into the pantheon of series debuts. There is some merit to the theory.

Elliot is a composite of those around him: Like Mobley and Romero, he is a glutton and control freak, and the tenets of FSociety appeal on some level to Elliot. Even the characters we know are real, like Angela or Gideon, have some connection to both Tyrell and Elliot, who might just be the interim CTO’s hacker persona — in the midst of puking in the bathroom, Elliot wonders if he is Tyrell’s malware — that needs to be reined in before he can take over the company. (Why else would Tyrell invite Elliot to join Evil Corp?)

“Seems like we both had the idea to work on-site for the day,” says Tyrell conveniently.

But what is clear is that Evil Corp is, well, legitimately evil: Before getting lunch, Tyrell hangs with his besties, a pair of financiers for Hezbollah and ISIS. During lunch, Tyrell shows a similar affinity for hacking people, intoning about the waiter, “I wonder what must he think of himself? His life’s potential, reached at $30,000 a year salary, an economy car he still owes money on … I couldn’t bear … the life of an ordinary cockroach whose biggest value is to serve me salad.”

Rami Malek’s facial expressions have been on point throughout the season, but they really are amplified this episode. When the security officials visit Tyrell and Elliot during lunch, Malek’s face undergoes a wide range of emotions — from “shitting his pants” nervous to “stay cool” calm — in just a few seconds, convincing me that there’s no other actor who could play Elliot, someone who could convey an emotional state without the crutch of music or script.

Elliot realizes his rendezvous with Tyrell has brought him to Steel Mountain’s level two, and he installs the raspberry pi before Tyrell interrupts him. Like a know-it-all (another trait he conveniently shares with Romero), Elliot has already listed his weaknesses — doesn’t like being outside and likes morphine too much — but perhaps Tyrell is just much better at hacking people, and he quickly highlights Elliot’s bug and monster, which we’ve known all along is his father.

“I know you framed Terry Colby,” says Tyrell. “Your father worked at Evil Corp before he died … I just wanted to know your weakness, and now I do. Revenge. How ordinary. It’s like our water. But even extraordinary people, and I believe you are, are driven by human banalities, and unfortunately we are all human. Except me, of course.”

Tyrell flies back to NYC in Evil Corp’s helicopter to meet with Scott Knowles (Brian Stokes Mitchell), who appears set to displace Tyrell as CTO, and Sharon (Michele Hicks), his wife. It’s a classic blackmail tag-team, with both Tyrell and Joanna attempting to find an entry to exploit. The men talk business and the women talk interior design, but it’s rocky at first. He tries to pitch himself as Scott’s right hand, who is justifiably suspicious that Tyrell knows of his promotion at all: “I was beginning to wonder why you set this dinner. Four people in the world know about my conversations. Somehow, you’re No. 5.”

Once the group retires to the living room, the seduction — which becomes literal — goes more smoothly. Joanna pretends to be interested in Scott’s oenophilia, and Tyrell, after making an off comment to Sharon (“How do you not blow your brains out being married to him?”), guesses right: Sharon is bored, not to mention tired of her husband’s flirting. Tyrell follows her to the bathroom, and although no words are exchanged — she on the toilet, he standing in front of her — she falls for Tyrell’s play, who has now found how to exploit his rival, which, for someone as manipulative as Tyrell, could mark an early end for Scott’s CTO tenure.

All FSociety needs to bring down the worldwide conglomerate and right society’s inequalities is the Dark Army, a deal that Darlene is on the verge of completely destroying. Chatting with the "world’s most dangerous hacking crew" in an IRC, Darlene learns FSociety is on its own. The Dark Army has backed out, which Cisco tells her wasn’t a snap decision. “Face it, Darlene, it’s over,” he says. “Between us, they were out before you ever got to Steel Mountain. I know you had your heart set, but for real this time, let go.”

The notion that Darlene, more so than anyone else in FSociety, wants to bring down Evil Corp is one I wish the show would further elaborate. Why does Darlene care so much? It is understandable why Elliot and Angela harbor such ill will, so did Darlene similarly lose a parent? Did Evil Corp inflict some previous pain on her or her family? I hope there is some explanation in future episodes, because her gung-ho hacking attitude just doesn’t make sense without any background.

Elliot’s road-trip crew return to Coney Island, where Darlene delivers news of the Dark Army’s reversal. At this point in the season, most viewers, including myself, are convinced Mr. Robot isn’t real but instead a figment of Elliot’s imagination. But the goal of this episode is to convince us that Mr. Robot exists. He swipes a Steel Mountain security card; he coaches Elliot through the cavernous complex; he argues with Darlene and destroys equipment — the first time all season where there is definitive interaction with a character other than Elliot.


This episode forced me to alter my viewpoint, and I believe that since Elliot is our guide to this world, Mr. Robot is real when Elliot needs him to be. That is to say, there are scenes when Mr. Robot isn’t actually there: the hotel room during episode four’s detox, or even in the car giving Elliot pointers on how to break into Steel Mountain. Mr. Robot is always in the backseat of the car, out of view of the other characters, and he exists only in Elliot’s mind.

But then there are instances where Elliot fades from view and he transforms into Mr. Robot. These are the scenes, like at the end of this week’s episode, when he sparks interaction. At the arcade headquarters, Elliot is at the back of the room, letting Mr. Robot, his daemon take over. We see Mr. Robot, but Darlene and the others see Elliot (or at least that is how I think Esmail is proceeding). This is the first instance in which we’ve seen Elliot become Mr. Robot — it is still a bit Tyler Durden–esque, but with a twist.

Additional Thoughts

I am not a fan of the Shayla kidnapping plot thread. I think I understand why it was introduced — there needs to be a real threat facing Elliot — but I can’t imagine how it’ll be resolved. It feels forced.
A brief note on Angela and Ollie: She moved out and broke up with Ollie, who’ll likely be fired as the malware stemmed from his computer terminal; Angela visits her father and ends up staying with him; she finds evidence her father owes more than $25,000 to Evil Corp in insurance payments; she goes for a run and hits a fork, literally, in the road. What does the fork signify? Is it evidence she has to make a choice about those ulterior motives mentioned last week?
There were a few mentions of Obama in this week’s episode, from Shayla explaining why she quit “pharmaceutical sales” (Obamacare) to the portrait hanging over Tyrell and Elliot during lunch.
The show continuously breaks the fourth wall during its voice-overs, but Mr. Robot has also accomplished this by the commercials featured in the past two episodes. Last week had a commercial for Evil Corp, and this week had one for Steel Mountain.
I know I talked about camera angles already, but I have to note the angles used during the dinner party. The scene was framed beautifully, conveying the suspicion, boredom, dominance, and fawning happening throughout the scenes. It's safe to say that many people will love this episode. Broken up into two major set pieces — one a twisted parody, the other a heist — and with a touching final scene to boot, "eps2.4_m4ster-s1ave.aes" is designed to break from convention, cut up the monotony of Mr. Robot's texture and rhythm, and illustrate the tricks showrunner Sam Esmail and his team have in their back pockets. It shifts between multiple modes and propels the action forward, all while luxuriating in the surreal. On paper, this kind of episode is a slam dunk because it demonstrates a creator's willingness to go for broke. It demonstrates a desire to avoid predictable patterns and reach for something new. It demonstrates ambition.

And yet, I pretty much hated the first 20 minutes.

A forced shock to the system, Mr. Robot drops the audience into the cheesy world of a 1980s multi-camera sitcom. All the signifiers of such a world are present: the oppressive laugh track, the cheap backdrops, the bare-bones sets. Elliot and Darlene are in the car on an Alderson family road trip, with mom and dad sitting chipper in the front seat. Elliot freaks out while everyone cracks wise and hints at the scene we witnessed last week — Elliot is getting beaten to a pulp by Ray and his goons.

Of course, Elliot's reality begins to seep into the sitcom world. Their mother burns Darlene's arm and slugs her until she's unconscious, a suggestion of the domestic abuse in the home. Elliot's father coughs up blood and cheekily refers to the cancer that will soon kill him. Angela works at an E Corp convenience store and strives to rise through the ranks, illustrating the gulf in their friendship. Gideon shows up as a cop who gets run down by ALF (yes, you read that correctly); the camera lingers on his bloodied corpse to remind both the audience and Elliot of his unjust murder. And the kidnapped businessman stuffed into the trunk conjures the specter of Tyrell Wellick, whose absence hangs heavily over this season. Elliot keeps trying to break free while his father (or is it Mr. Robot?) keeps soothing him, determined to hold him in the fantasy for as long as possible.

We quickly learn that Mr. Robot threw Elliot into the comforts of a sitcom to protect him from the beating he received at the hands of thugs after he tried to do the decent thing. "When the truth is painful son, a lie is the only remedy. Too much truth, too much honesty, it'll kill ya," he says after Elliot realizes what he's done. In short, it's a dead father reaching out to his troubled son in a moment of terror. So far this season, Esmail has painted Mr. Robot as a terroristic monster trying to get Elliot back into a terminal to follow through on the revolution they started. But this time, he paints him as a sympathetic figure, a character devoted to saving Elliot from utter collapse.

While that thematic thread plays out beautifully in the rest of the episode, especially in the episode's last scene, the sitcom parody feels like an aggressively forced attempt to inject weirdness into the series, a sub–Adult Swim dive into surreal pop culture. Though episode writer Adam Penn and Esmail admirably commit to the aesthetic, which includes an opening-credits sequence familiar to anyone well-versed in sitcom history or who has seen "Too Many Cooks," it can't save the sequence from being DOA based on its premise alone. Every time Penn/Esmail wink at the audience with purposefully stale punchlines ("On the plus side, I hear jumpsuits are in these days!") or with the twisted truth of the real world, it reads as a desperate, unfunny attempt to throw off the audience while playing into their television knowledge. Visual schema aside, the scene plays out like the majority of the scenes between Elliot and Mr. Robot this season: a battle between two conjoined minds, even if this one ends in understanding rather than a stalemate. Mileage will definitely vary here, and I can imagine plenty of people will find the sequence's dark humor to be a fresh change of pace, but it read to me as an example of the series' worst kind of self-indulgence and faux-cleverness.

Fortunately, the rest of the episode works like gangbusters. The heist sequence that dominates the second half showcases Esmail's slick direction, complete with an epic tracking shot that calls attention to itself a little too much (like when Esmail pushes the camera "through" the bottom of a cubicle instead of just making a cut à la Birdman) but ultimately still impresses. It begins with Darlene expertly breaking into a hotel room to coach Angela while she confidently walks onto the FBI's floor to plant the bug. Penn adds some tension-building sequences that work well to throw off the scene, like an unexpected bathroom visitor and a conversation with an aggressively flirty FBI agent, but Angela wholly succeeds in her mission, even though both Mobley and Trenton had trouble teaching her how to hack just a day prior. That is, until the Wi-Fi cuts out and Darlene needs Angela to get onto a terminal and bring it back up. While she's in the midst of pulling off another hack, Dom walks up to her desk and wants to talk. Penn and Esmail leave us on that moment of uncertainty, capping off an extended action sequence with a nicely timed cliffhanger.

Although the heist contains some great thrills, the emotional acuity of the episode's final sequence stands out. After Elliot tearfully embraces Mr. Robot in the present, it flashes back to a scene from Elliot's childhood when Elliot's father brings him home from school, presumably after he was beaten up. Scored to Television's phenomenal "Guiding Light," Elliot's dad comforts him and gently reveals that he was fired from his job because he missed time for cancer treatments. Christian Slater has rarely been better than in this scene, as he illustrates the tender side of Edward Alderson's relationship with his son. "The world isn't gonna get rid of me that easy," he promises with a cheerful smile, tipping the metaphorical hat in the process, and showcasing how someone like Elliot could hold onto a memory for so long that it ends up dominating his head space. The episode ends with young Elliot coming up with the name for his father's new computer store, smashing to black on the realization that will haunt him well into adulthood.

"eps2.4_m4ster-s1ave.aes" showcases Mr. Robot at its worst and at its best. The series frequently frustrates with its lack of subtlety and its oft-excessive stylistic tics, but it's still commendable that it tries. The best thing about it is its confidence, even when things threaten to go off the rails, and this episode demonstrates the pros and cons of that approach. Mr. Robot seeks not just to walk to the beat of its own drum, but to create the drum from scratch. There's no better proof than this episode, which fails and succeeds just minutes apart.

Orphan Code:

    Ray shows up in Elliot's hospital bed to monologue about his dead dog and the horror of accepting that everyone needs a master. It's … okay.
    The source of the sitcom sequence might be the result of an ALF episode playing on the hospital TV, but this answer begs the question: What kind of hospital is playing ALF reruns in 2016?
    Cisco gets tortured by the Dark Army for asking questions, then later gets recognized by Angela. I'm sure this will play out down the line.
    The song that recurs during the heist is "Gwan" by the neo-soul group the Suffers. It grooves.
    Other elements in the sitcom sequence: a nod to the USA network and "Word Up Wednesday," and an ’80s-era Evil Corp ad straight out of Reagan's America.
    In honor of Esmail's good soundtrack choices, listen to Marquee Moon tonight.

On last week's episode of Mr. Robot, Elliot's protective fantasy came crumbling down and reality opened in its wake. As predicted, Elliot is not living at his mother's house, but rather stuck in prison, living such a painful lifestyle that his mind designed an alternative world for him. Many were frustrated by Esmail's twist (including Vulture's Matt Zoller Seitz, who used the opportunity to break apart "twisty" screenwriting), and argued that it signaled a reliance on storytelling gimmickry. Personally, I was mixed on the development, finding it somewhat irritating but still emotionally consistent with Elliot's character. Still, I hoped that the series would move away from mind chess and back into the cyberthriller elements, which worked like gangbusters back in the first season.

"eps2.6_succ3ss0r.p12" delivers on this idea in spades, depicting a separate fantasy as it crumbles to the ground, while externalizing the paranoia and fear into a tense, thrilling episode. It follows FSociety as they hack a damaging FBI conference call, confirming that the Feds have been spying on millions of Americans — only for E Corp general counsel Susan Jacobs (Sandrine Holt) to bust Darlene, Mobley, Trenton, and Cisco using her home as home base. As the group scrambles to figure out what to do now that she's blown their cover, they turn to infighting as the reality of their actions crashes down upon them. It's clear that the FBI is hunting them, a high-ranking corporate official is tied up in the basement, and the city is in shambles. Naturally, the key members of FSociety start to think as individuals and less as a unified brain trust.

To put it bluntly, it's satisfying to hear series creator Sam Esmail even pay lip service to internal doubt regarding the Five/Nine attack, let alone inject it into the narrative. While FSociety are dyed-in-the-wool revolutionaries, and that undoubtedly comes with a certain share of arrogant self-superiority, their smug attitudes often grated, especially since Esmail frequently depicts the world that they have created: a chaotic, terrified place where people are willing and eager to turn on each other. So when Mobley finally comes out and says the obvious — "What we did was colossally fucking stupid and we can't afford not to realize that anymore" — it lands like a much-needed verdict, especially after so many lines have been skirted and so many shoes dropped. It's rare for insurgent groups to remain ideologically connected for this long; it's even rarer when their actual safety is at risk.

However, their uncertainty doesn't change the physical reality of Susan Jacobs returning home without any warning. While tied up in the basement, she tries to mealy-mouth her way to freedom and eventually gives herself a severe head wound when she tries to attack Trenton. The rest of the team searches for information to blackmail her, but Darlene has a different idea. She wants to look Susan in the eye and explain why this is happening, why FSociety infiltrated their secret, shadowy world: It's a personal vendetta. When Evil Corp was cleared of any wrongdoing for the toxic-waste leak that killed Edward Alderson, Darlene saw Susan laughing in the courtroom. She may have been four years old, but she remembers it very well, so well that she doesn't hesitate to kill Susan by capitalizing on her heart condition and zapping a stun gun at her heart. She lies to the rest of the group, claiming self-defense, but Mobley and Trenton know immediately that they are in the presence of a murderer.

Susan's murder becomes the schism within FSociety. Darlene sends Trenton and Mobley away while she and Cisco wipe down the apartment and dispose of the body, but it's effectively an act of disintegration. Darlene has forgone all trust within the group by placing them in this situation, Mobley and Trenton are already looking for a way out, and Cisco has plans of his own despite his relationship with Darlene. With the writing on the wall, paranoia sets in among the group. Mobley has a pizza guy deliver his food into the apartment to see if anyone is waiting for them. Trenton nervously watches a car speed off outside of her parents' place. Darlene and Cisco nervously watch as cops patrol the train while they carry Susan's body in a duffel bag. Mac Quayle's score has always been a series highlight, but it becomes a dominating force in this episode, instilling every quick crosscut or tightly focused, dimly lit shot with palpable dread. Everyone's looking over their shoulders now.

One of the most purely exciting episodes of the series to date, credit goes evenly to Esmail (who directed the episode), credited writer Courtney Looney, and editor Franklin Peterson, all of whom had a hand in devising an hour fueled by controlled anxiety. Part of the episode's success is its narrow focus — it mostly stays with FSociety, except for cuts to minor story lines with Angela and DiPierro — but also because it's paced within an inch of its life, not wasting a moment and trusting the audience's history with the characters to do the heavy lifting. The tension derives equally from external factors and internal machinations, a cross section of bad luck and idealism gone wrong. Esmail relies on the claustrophobia of open space in Susan's apartment as well as New York itself, capturing how lonely and terrified his subjects feel even though they're surrounded by so much and so many. It's an ugly feeling in a series filled with them.

The episode only ratchets up the fear by the end, as things obviously get worse. Mobley is questioned by DiPierro, not for his high-level involvement in FSociety, but because of the End of the World Party poster found in Romero's apartment that tipped off his hacker name. DiPierro eventually lets Mobley go since the FBI can't justify holding a suspect for 12 hours without a warrant, but he takes this as a sign to jump ship, contacting Trenton to meet up so they can escape for good. Meanwhile, Darlene spends the night at Cisco's place and discovers he sold her out to the Dark Army, who are hot on her trail. We end on parallel shots of Trenton nervously looking at a coffee-shop door, waiting for Mobley to arrive, and Darlene bashing Cisco's face in with a bat. The world FSociety created in its own image has betrayed them, and it's only the beginning.

Orphan Code:

    The best scene in the episode, if not the season, is the cross-cut montage between FSociety hacking Susan's emails and Angela singing a cover of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World." It's a genuinely beautiful moment that conveys a dirty cocktail of emotions.
    Angela's B-story is a bit of a retread, but it demonstrates her conflicted feelings regarding her own job. When her father's friend berates her for being a corporate shill, she accepts the blow … but then turns around and insults his working-class job. She's playing both sides of the coin and doesn't know how to proceed, and she ends up with Duck Phillips from Mad Men.
    The guy Angela picks up a few episodes ago turns out to be an FBI plant, but he admits to DiPierro that she's a fortress. He can't see retrieving any incriminating evidence from her.
    Remember Ron's Coffee? The place Elliot infiltrated in the first scene of the pilot? It finally makes another appearance in this episode. It's where everyone meets up!
    Grace Gummer again gives a great performance as DiPierro, and even makes a reference to being a fan of Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion!

Near the end of "eps2.7_init_5.fve," Dom DiPierro forces her way into Angela's apartment to tell her about a dream that ended in disaster. One moment, she sees a beautiful woman, and the next, she's being held under water, gasping for air. Before she leaves, Dom reveals the message of her dream: As soon as she stopped struggling, she found a way to survive.

Almost every character in Mr. Robot is flailing underwater right now. The proverbial shit has hit the fan: Mobley and Trenton are AWOL. The Dark Army is seemingly offing FSociety members one by one. The FBI is hot on their trail. There's little else to do but freak out and make rash, desperate decisions. Elliot and FSociety hacked E Corp to change the world, and now they're truly reckoning with that change. But what if the chaos they're facing isn't as random as it seems?

After last week's tense powerhouse of an episode, it would be understandable if "eps2.7_init_5.fve" slowed down the pace or eased up on the tension. Instead, it pretty much maintains a steady boil as Elliot, Darlene, and Cisco contend with growing fallout while Angela tries to blow the whistle on E Corp's toxic-waste leaks. The episode is largely a success because credited writers Kyle Bradstreet and Lucy Teitler pare down the focus, which allows the narrative to keep moving at an eager clip. It moves so fast, it'd actually be easy to miss key information, especially regarding Phillip Price's complicated deal with Whiterose. This would be a problem for most shows, but oddly enough, it's a boon for Mr. Robot. The first half of the season spent too long spinning wheels; now, story lines are progressing at twice the speed, so the show feels more compelling.

Bradstreet and Teitler set aside time to spell out Elliot's exact situation in prison, but thankfully, it's relegated to a tightly edited pre-credits sequence. In short: Lenny, Krista's married boyfriend from whom Elliot stole a dog, had him arrested for felony theft and computer hacking. Though his lawyer promises to get the sentence reduced, Elliot decides to plead guilty to all counts and head to prison for 18 months. Ray is the prison warden and Lone Star his right-hand man. "That's everything you missed," Elliot tells us, and he's right. It's both a relief and one of the smartest moves showrunner Sam Esmail has made this season: At long last, Mr. Robot nails a sequence by cutting unnecessary fat and communicating in the bare essentials.

Meanwhile, Angela, frustrated that her risk-management position doesn't grant her access to E Corp's incriminating information, decides to take a play out of the FSociety handbook and hack the information herself. After concocting an excuse to distract a secretary, she sneaks into her boss's office and transfers the contents of his computer onto a thumb drive. She promptly finds her smoking gun and takes it to the authorities at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who confirm its worth. After waiting all day, though, Angela gets spooked when deputy director Phelps takes her down a long hallway and begins asking nosy questions. Paranoia has infected everyone, it seems, even the country at large. It's fitting that the episode is punctuated by brief brownouts, as if the world itself is struggling to maintain power.

But Angela's fear has nothing on Elliot's. After believing he's regained control of his mental faculties, Elliot discovers he's much worse outside of the hallucination he constructed in prison. He's starting to completely disassociate from Mr. Robot, often stuck watching him perform actions from the outside. (Or inside, as it were.) When he enjoys a moment of privacy in the bathroom of Cisco's apartment, he hears Darlene and Cisco fighting, only for them both to be quieted by Mr. Robot's voice. He opens the door to see Mr. Robot lecturing them about the next stage of the plan. The surreality only increases from there, as Elliot's whole existence literally flickers before his eyes, like there's a faulty connection in his head.

Although Elliot/Mr. Robot were tiresome in the first half of the season, mostly due to their repetitive arguments and overwrought exchanges, their relationship takes on a much darker, more frightening tone in "eps2.7_init_5.fve." Both characters fear the sudden, inexplicable changes to Elliot's psyche: Why has he gotten even more detached from the world just as he's reentering it? When Elliot sees Mr. Robot talking to Cisco in a subway car, it's a devastating moment of self-realization: Perhaps Mr. Robot has been operating unconsciously this whole time, devising hacks and plotting devastation without Elliot's knowledge. For a while, Elliot was the one who kept us in the dark. Now, he understands that he's right there with us — and he doesn't have a flashlight.

Bradstreet and Teitler all but confirm this in the episode's second-to-last scene. After Elliot hacks Cisco's Dark Army contact, Xun, he forces Cisco to arrange a meeting so he can figure out their intentions and learn more about the mysterious "Stage 2." When he's face-to-face with Xun, Elliot spooks them in order to get Xun talking on his hacked phone. He happens to be right, just not in the way he intended: While Darlene listens in on Xun's call, she learns that Elliot is the one behind Stage 2. In other words, Mr. Robot has been working with the Dark Army beyond Elliot's knowledge. He's the order behind the chaos.

Though Esmail and Co. frequently deploy cliffhanger twists, it's telling that they don't tip their hand too far here. This reveal works for two reasons: (1) It happens organically, and (2) it increases the general mood of distrust and fear that permeates the series. We could never trust Elliot, but we believed his unreliability would be limited by certain barriers of self-preservation. But now? He's a rogue element. He might even be actively working to sabotage FSociety from within. In total, it adds a new layer of intrigue to a season that's suffered more than its share of missteps.

Just look how far we've gone since the premiere episode: FSociety has fallen apart. Mr. Robot is working independently of Elliot. The FBI has been tracking Angela for months. The world of Mr. Robot is getting smaller and smaller, and our narrator's mind has revealed itself to be a total liability. As Elliot says, there is no normal anymore.

Orphan Code:

    We end with three unknowns: (1) Who is in Susan Jacobs's apartment when Cisco returns to retrieve Darlene's videotape? (2) Who is knocking at Cisco's apartment door? (3) Why is Joanna waiting for Elliot outside of his apartment?
    Another great soundtrack choice: Depeche Mode's "Walking in My Shoes" scores the end of the pre-credit sequence.
    Turns out the prison had old DVDs available for inmates. Before he got started on Seinfeld, Leon watched all of Mad About You and believes Paul Reiser to be a genius.
    One last prison detail: It seems like Elliot got early release from prison due to budget concerns in the wake of Five/Nine, though he suspects the Dark Army may have played a role.
    Whiterose pisses on the grave of the old E Corp CEO, which is delightfully absurd. All else aside, B.D. Wong is having a blast.
    In a key moment of self-awareness, Cisco criticizes FSociety's use of videotapes. "Why do you use them? Because they're cool?"
    Another episode, another Nancy Grace appearance. Almost seems like an inside joke at this point, doesn't it?
"You only see what's in front of you, not what's above you," Mr. Robot tells Tyrell in the flashback that opens "eps2.9_pyth0n-pt2.p7z." The line is meant to contrast Tyrell's shortsightedness with Elliot's long approach and that Tyrell will always play second fiddle to Elliot, even if they both become gods. But the line also functions as an critique of Mr. Robot's uneven second season, the idea that the series' relentless pursuit of forward momentum — more story, more intrigue, more twists, more, more, more — has missed the forest for the trees.

Though the action-packed second half of the season was stellar when it focused almost exclusively on how paranoia infects a person's psyche, the action itself relied upon the audience's knowledge of the characters and story. It didn't serve to pull the rug out from under us or pose more questions. It just twisted the knife.

But the two-part finale, which concluded tonight, forgoes any semblance of poetry or tension in favor of opening more doors, establishing more plot, and keeping plenty of options open for next season. The first part relied on stellar performances and a compelling, albeit derivative-as-all-hell dream logic that at least stabbed at something different, but "eps2.9_pyth0n-pt2.p7z" is just unfocused, poorly structured, and most of all, dull. It's the weakest episode of the season by a wide margin.

What actually happens? We learn Cisco was killed in the shooting and that Darlene was taken into FBI custody. DiPierro spends most of the episode struggling to get through to Darlene by first relating to her, then by scaring her with the mountain of evidence against FSociety, and then impressing her with the FBI map that lays out all the principals in the Five/Nine attack. Next, there's Joanna's meeting with Scott Knowles, CTO of E Corp, who turns out to be the guy sending her all the gifts that were supposedly from Tyrell. Why did he do this? Because he wanted her to feel the pain he felt after Tyrell strangled his pregnant wife, though he's racked by guilt and apologies. What does Joanna do? She calls Scott a pussy, mocks his dead wife and their "fetus corpse," and provokes him to beat her bloody. Finally, Elliot learns the true meaning of Stage Two: Mr. Robot and Tyrell plan blow up an E Corp facility that's storing the paper records needed to rebuild their database, and with it, the bloodline of the nation's private property.

Let's get one of these three out of the way: Joanna's story, like her involvement this entire season, primarily functions as a distraction from every other event. A pointless digression that tries to pin its emotional weight on a character with whom we're barely familiar, it functions to (1) reveal that Tyrell wasn't the person behind her gifts and (2) give Joanna a reason to stick around next season. It's bewildering that Esmail would spend as much time as he does on this story line, complete with an endless monologue about dead children, when there are other more compelling matters, like, say, the show's protagonist. Though it's possible Esmail is trying to delay audience gratification by relying on oblique side characters, he simply isn't a capable enough writer to pull off such a difficult gambit.

The most successful story is Darlene's face-off against DiPierro, mostly because Esmail mines the most tension out of their interactions. The episode gets a lot of mileage out of drawing a comparison between the two characters as lonely, goal-obsessed people who struggle with the meaningless of their existence. (If they're not special, then what are they?) Darlene rebuffs DiPierro's advances by telling her that they're nothing alike, but DiPierro understands that the only way into her heart is through flattery. Hence, the slow-motion walk to the FBI's strategy room, where she sees a wall filled with maps and lines that point to her, Elliot, Tyrell, Angela, and everyone else connected to the Five/Nine attack. Darlene whines that she isn't special, but she's at the center of a manhunt to bring down cyber terrorists. "You've gotta be fucking kidding me," Darlene says. We hear fear in her voice, and just a little bit of awe.

Then there are Elliot, Mr. Robot, and Tyrell, three peas in a splintered pod, struggling with various degrees of (mis)information. Elliot wonders aloud if all we ever perceive is a garbled reality, a fuzzy picture we'll never really decipher, which isn't an inaccurate observation given all he learns. In short, Elliot collaborated with the Dark Army to plan an attack that would level an E Corp building and kill a lot of people, all for some vaguely defined goals devised by the manic side of his brain. The confrontation between Elliot, Mr. Robot, and Tyrell should have been the emotional fulcrum of the episode, a moment of clarity for Elliot where he realizes the extent of his unconscious actions, but because Esmail basically limits their story to three scenes, it never comes together organically. This race-to-the-finish approach limits the emotional effect of Elliot's revelations about Mr. Robot: He operates against their best interests and embracing him only pushed him to work underground. All we're left with is Elliot's foolish belief that Tyrell is another illusion, and the subsequent bullet in his gut after he's proven wrong.

Either Esmail was trying to briefly fake us out with the possibility that Tyrell wasn't real — which doesn't make sense creatively or within the reality of Mr. Robot — or he was attempting to illustrate the consequences of Elliot having full control over his own life. Whichever it was, he completely missed the mark. Esmail's choice to push Elliot to the side makes little to no sense, beyond the simple fact that there wasn't enough story left to retain focus on him. Despite how far Mr. Robot has come by developing of FSociety, bringing the FBI into the fold, and introducing corporate intrigue within E Corp, its primary reason for existence is still Elliot, an alienated kid desperate to remake the world in his own image. When you keep shoving Elliot out of center or trapping him in an endless internal battle with a one-note character like Mr. Robot, it breeds inconsistency and weak conflict.

For better or worse, Esmail keeps plenty of avenues clear for next season. Darlene is possibly working with the FBI. Angela has apparently been warped by Whiterose and now communicates with Tyrell. As seen in a post-credits sequence, Mobley and Trenton are alive out West and scheming to get everything back to normal. Elliot's alive, but possibly in a coma. Stage Two hasn't been derailed. But what does this mean in the long run? The plot engine keeps on chugging, but its emotional impact is nullified by the show's many wrong turns. If this season demonstrates anything, it's that Mr. Robot is at its best when it's pared down, when it keeps the focus narrow and not spread out among too many characters and too many vaguely defined plot threads. The closing sequence proves that Esmail wants to keep posing questions that are designed not to have answers. They just lie there.

In the end, "eps2.9_pyth0n-pt2.p7z" is an especially frustrating finale because we know Mr. Robot can be good. Great, even. But when it gets caught up in its own head, it fails to see what's in front and what's above.

Orphan Code:

    At least the soundtrack is good. Kraftwerk's "The Hall of Mirrors" off of Trans-Europe Express plays over the credits. Esmail likely chose the song for its on-the-nose lyrics: "The young man stepped into the hall of mirrors / Where he discovered a reflection of himself" and "Sometimes he saw his real face / And sometimes a stranger at his place."
    Oh, and Kenny Rogers's "We've Got Tonight" plays over the end credits into the final scene with Mobley and Trenton.
    This episode also features some of Esmail's most strained writing, including that Burn Notice analogy the FBI agent makes and Darlene's "conniving cunts" rant.
    Joanna's fling has a Tom Cruise poster?
    The poem that Tyrell's father used to repeat was written by William Carlos Williams: "so much depends / upon / a red wheel / barrow / glazed with rain / water / beside the white chicken." Depending on your perspective, it could be powerful or meaningless. Sounds like Mr. Robot.