Request Timeout

Another episode title that matches well with the events.

The end of the 7th episode threw as all for a loop and much of Request Timeout is Elliot trying to wrap his head around the freshly opened wound of his childhood trauma. He now feels like a victim, guilty that he “let” his father abuse him. With Mr. Robot gone, he feels that much more alone. When he leaves Krista at the police station he asks her what other people do in his situation…he’s completely lost and doesn’t know how to process anything he’s feeling. She tells him they figure out how to continue on.

On his own, Elliot begins to see his younger self, who leads him to the Queens Museum. This is where he and Angela often played as kids and they stop at the panorama exhibit of NYC. Elliot breaks down, apologizing to his younger self for not fighting back. Young Elliot tells Elliot he didn’t bring him here to apologize or feel guilty and leads him to a hiding spot. Elliot digs around and finds his old bedroom door key. Along with creating Mr. Robot to cope with the abuse and shutting off the abuse he went through, Elliot doesn’t remember anything from this time. At first, he’s puzzled at why he would hide the key and realizes he did try to defend himself. By taking his father’s key to his room, it was a plan to keep him out and away from him. Some guilt leaves his conscience and Elliot can now see a sliver of light at the end of the tunnel, going from victim to survivor.

Young Elliot showing up seems like that could be the other personality we’ve been waiting for but looking back, that doesn’t add up. First, why would that personality show up to talk to Vera? Vera is a present-day Elliot problem, so young Elliot has nothing to do with him and would have nothing to say. Plus, going back to episode 2 of this season, we saw a flashback of young Elliot with his mother in a high rise board room. She says he can’t sit in the chair because it’s not his and this strange conversation happens:

“They’re not ready yet. We need to wait…for him.”

Elliot asks, “You mean, Mr. Robot?”

“No.”

“Elliot?”

“No. The other one.”

Clearly we have not met the other main personality yet and judging by that conversation, the Elliot we know might not have been in charge for nearly as long as we’ve thought. The young Elliot in that flashback is referring to an Elliot–not himself (what name does his mother call him, I wonder). It’s unclear if that “Elliot” is the Elliot personality we know. Is it a different one? So are we looking at four personalities that make up the person we’ve been watching? This personality has been around since childhood, the same as Mr. Robot, but Elliot just recalled that Mr. Robot has been around that long. Whoever this personality is, it’s been buried really deep since the beginning (and I have a feeling Whiterose knows this personality).

This mystery personality is tying theories into knots, but I think Young Elliot is just that, the lost childhood in Elliot. In order to protect his mind, Mr. Robot was created. He crafted Elliot’s past and now Elliot doesn’t know who he is at all. The abuse shaped his life entirely without him realizing it and now he doesn’t know what to do. Young Elliot appearing is, I think, the manifestation of his grief. He first comes to grips with the past, acknowledging it happened and going through the steps of grief with himself. This lets Elliot move forward to Mr. Robot.

Elliot stops blocking Mr. Robot as he’s coding for the Deus Group hack at the old AllSafe office. We’re down to an hour before the meeting and Elliot doesn’t know what else do with himself. Even though Elliot is talking to himself, he starts the conversation with a lie, he needs help for getting the hack ready in such a small amount of time. He’s afraid of going through this next mental step. Mr. Robot knows this and says this isn’t the real reason why you let me back in, do you want to talk about it? And they do. Mr. Robot apologizes and they basically make up. Elliot comes to realize that Mr. Robot isn’t a figment of his imagination, he is part of Elliot. He is who he is today because of Mr. Robot. He can’t lock part of himself up and function. He must be whole to continue on.

With the reconstruction of Elliot Alderson going on, Dom and Darlene are in Janice’s clutches. Janice starts turning the screws on them to get Elliot’s location and Darlene holds out as long as she can. Stabbed in the chest, Dom is dieing in front of her but she doesn’t relent until Janice goes after Dom’s family. Janice is not messing around and it turns out Dom has set up a hail mary. When Janice calls her goons at Dom’s mother’s house to start the murder fest, she gets no answer. Deegan “Lucky Irish Bastard” McGuire to the rescue! And who is that? I had the same question and I had to look it up.

In one of the biggest reaches of the show to get out of a pickle, Deegan first showed up in episode 2 of this season. The feds bust this guy (he’s gets criminals out of the country) and Dom is called in to interview him. Then in episode 5, in an email from one of Dom’ co-workers, we find out that Deegan has been released. So that means this guy is out and about for Dom to call on, and it’s this episode that she seemingly calls in a favor.

Janice talks to Deegan on Dom’s cell phone and is told why her people aren’t answering their phone. Deegan and his crew went to Dom’s mom’s house and rescued her family, killing all the Dark Army guys in the process. Apparently Dom did him a solid (getting released in episode 5?) and this makes them even. Using the shock of the situation, Dom yanks the knife out of her chest and pulls off a Jason Bourne level fight, killing Janice and her goons.

This is a paper-thin set up for sure and Dom contacting Deegan (I assume in the time after she knocked out Darlene and before Janice showed up) wasn’t put on camera to crank up the suspense and relief of this scene. So it comes out of nowhere but I’m not too upset because the set up is there (it’s not deus ex machina) and the pay off is awesome. It’s also a plot miracle that Dom made it through this scene with a punctured lung so let’s just keep moving.

And now we are left with Darlene able to get back to Elliot. We are literally looking at the deadline for this make it or break it hack to take down Whiterose. I am more than ready to see this finally happen. I think all the side travels are done (aside from where Tyrell is) and we’ll stick to the main plot points. Elliot needs to be unified with Mr. Robot for this…the big question is when will the mystery personality show up. That’ll be the major wrinkle.

Sleep Well My Prince for Tomorrow You Shall Be King

We check in with Ian in prison and things are a little rough with Mickey. They’re together so much that they aren’t driving each other crazy along with everyone near them who can hear their nonstop arguments. The start of this storyline is all laughs, the mayonnaise in particular, and it makes me wonder if we’ll get anything more out of these two in jail together. Ian and Mickey are fan favorites so it’ll be interesting to see where this goes. The audience has expectations.

Tami is recovering from surgery so that leaves Lip alone to take care of baby Freddy (“It’s the first name that came to me. I hope Tami likes it”). And when he turns to everyone for help, he gets a polite smile and a “welcome to parenthood” line of encouragement. Another funny line is from Liam who asks him why he’s so stressed out about Freddy since he has so much experience with raising kids. “I guess I wasn’t so worried if any of you died.”

Liam continues to struggle with his lack of identity. Since he’s the only dark-skinned person in the family, he feels like an other. His siblings say his skin color isn’t important, he’s a Gallagher, and he rightfully says I’m only seen as a Gallagher in this house, anywhere else I’m black and treated differently. He wants to get a DNA test to find out his ancestry and at the end of the episode, he asks Frank about the family history, how could he be born black and no one else? Frank says that one of Monica’s grandfathers had a mistress. “And she was black?” “She is black.” “What?” “She lives down the street.” They go to the house and when a man sees Frank, they are scared away with a gun. Liam has found his roots, he just needs to figure out how to get close to them.

Mikey is none too pleased with the fact that Deb is calling the shots in Frank’s home and works to shift the power levels. He follows her to her secret stash and extorts her to give up control. She gets the boys ATM cards, effectively giving them a $100 a week allowance (she’s not about to let what money they have disappear in 2 weeks) and tells Frank he can “take over” if she wants. Expect the house to turn into a toilet by the end of the weekend and Deb being asked to take the reins again.

Deb also hits her first “return the merch!” problem. She gets caught in the “I didn’t wear these $800 shoes” and the guy blackmails her to return the shoes. She ends up not doing the favor (which I didn’t find believable at all) but he end result is that she has to be way more careful with the merch. One thing is to not wait until the 30th return day as that is the first red flag.

Frank’s not the only one trying to make moves for himself. With a wrap on his military career, Carl has to go back to the rat race and heads right back to the shrimp joint where he’s welcomed back with open arms by his boss who loves him. While he was gone, a young woman (Hello, Anne!) was hired to take his place. It doesn’t take long for him to notice her drug side hustle. She’s selling vape pens with meals and Carl swoops in, bringing Liam in for the action. She pulls in the Hispanic kids, Carl the white kids, and Liam the black kids. By expanding the product and market place, they’ll make a ton of money.

Kev has given up his basketball dreams and packs up his new shoes to return them. A delivery guy comes in to pick it up and asks for a beer and a shot before running into the bathroom. A little later a patron finds the guy dead on the floor of the bathroom, due to some sort of stroke emergency. Miffed by the driver’s attitude of drinking on the (driving) job and doing something stupid in her bar, V agrees with everyone to raid his truck. They have a great time of going through the trucks and Kev takes it one step further, driving around the truck to pick up the returns on his route and selling that stuff on their own. When times are tough the people will take any advantage they can.

Of the plot lines going on, I’m the most interested in Liam and Lip. Lip’s stuff I’m sure won’t break any new ground but he’s one of my favorite characters. Liam’s story is just starting and they could go anywhere with it, so that’s the most exciting.

Proxy Authentication Required

In this daring episode, Vera digs into Elliot with the help of Krista. Layed out like a 5 act play, this entire episode takes place in Krista’s apartment with no movement on any other plot of the show. Once again, Sam Esmail pumps the breaks to focus on one single piece of the puzzle.

It’s safe to say that Vera is obsessed with Elliot, convinced that they can be and should be partners in taking over Manhatten. Vera has grand plans and he needs Elliot to do it. Now that he knows about Mr. Robot, he pivots that thought to Mr. Robot instead. By threatening Krista, he’s able to talk to Mr. Robot.

And Mr. Robot isn’t impressed. Vera, high on meth, doesn’t really have a plan. It’s very basic, just wanting to take things over and have everyone come to him for…drugs? He doesn’t offer up any scheme to do this, seemingly under the impression that Elliot can come up with the how to get what he wants. Mr. Robot scoffs at him for many good reasons (shades of Breaking Bad’s Walter White as Heisenberg) and pivots to the plan that’s already in motion–the one with the death clock ticking down. Help with Deus Group hack and I’ll hook you up with all the money you want to get your enterprise going.

While the hook does sink in (“Look at all those zeros!”) Elliot tries to get out of this with force only discover that Vera isn’t that stupid. He had his guys remove the bullets from his gun before they got to the apartment. So Vera goes back to his original plan and uses Krista to crack Elliot. What’s he hiding in there? Why does Mr. Robot exist?

And through deconstruction, we finally find out why Mr. Robot came into existence. Elliot and Darlene’s dad was not a “friend” as Elliot has always referred to him. Mr. Robot is Elliot’s protector from childhood sexual abuse. It’s a devastating realization for Elliot and it’s one that Vera can relate to. Vera sees his opening and begins to start his friendship with Elliot. He did say he’d never be able to work with Elliot with threats or fear, he’d rebel against that. They had do be on the same level for it to work. So as Elliot listens, Krista jumps at the opening and stabs Vera in the back.

A visual and acting tour de force, this was another riveting episode. Totally unexpected, I didn’t know where it was going and while a major plot for the show has been answered, there are still a ton of questions.

Elliot now has another dead body to deal with and he has to figure out what to do about it, and the 2 thugs Vera has with him wandering around somewhere outside. So the two of them have physical threats to deal with.

Next, Mr. Robot has seemingly left. He pleaded with Krista not to lead Elliot to the truth and his last words are “I can’t protect you anymore” and walks off the screen. Is Mr. Robot really gone? Will Elliot be forced to tap into that part of himself again to take out Whiterose’s empire? And how is Elliot going to even function after this?

A few hours have passed in the apartment. It’s night time at the end of the episode and since it’s the end of the year it’s somewhere around 4-5 pm. There is very little time left before the Desu Group meeting that Price forced to happen. Plus we have no idea what’s happened to Dom and Darlene with Janice and the Dark Army. That must be what we’re going to see next week.

And there wasn’t a single word about Elliot having another personality. I thought for sure we’d see that, and nothing. There’s no way Mr. Robot could have know what Vera wanted, that he’d find Krista and use her. So why would he lie about not being the one that talked to Darlene about Vera sniffing around two months ago? I’m completely lost on this thread.

This episode, for as good as it was, kept me feeling like we’re in limbo. There have been a lot of diversions with a few moments of world plot progress. While Elliot is on a severe time limit, and the show is too with only 6 episodes left, it’s like the show doesn’t know it’s on a time limit. I think this is the 3rd episode on Christmas Day, we’re hours away from ‘make it or break’ it time and it always feels like Esmail doesn’t think that’s important. Is he trying to cram too much into the final season?

Still, it feels like Esmail has a very clear vision of what he wants to accomplish this season. He puts incredible planning into this, I just can’t figure out what road he has us on. The reveal of Elliot’s father is huge. It also means we’re going to get an intense scene with Darlene about it. Was she abused too? I have so many questions, I hope most of them get answered.

We Few, We Lucky Few, We Band of Gallaghers!

We’re back with the Gallaghers a few months since Fiona left town and the new normal (which is never normal) has been established: Deb is in charge of the finances since Fiona left her the 50k. It seems like the most logical and safest bet considering Deb is currently the most trustworthy with finances. Or at least she acts like it. Everyone is pretty spread out at the start, so the opening episode establishes what everyone is up to now.

Ian is in prison and we don’t get to see him but the family is planning to go see him very soon. Fiona is shown calling Deb’s phone at the very start and they talk later so we know that the character hasn’t been sucked into a void. She’s not on the show for us to see and hear, but she’s still part of the universe. I’m sure this will fall to the wayside quickly (and they don’t need to show her on caller ID all the time) but I appreciate the recognition.

Deb managed to bring Liam back home by agreeing to some of his culture demands. He’s all about the black power education, growing his hair out naturally, wearing a dashiki to school, picking a new culturally appropriate name and going to classes with V about African heritage. You have to give the kid credit as he endures a beating at school for wearing the dashiki and otherwise not fitting in (which isn’t out of Liam’s life experiences so far in his young life). It’s great to see V travel with him on this journey and she cooks traditional African meals for them which seems to be the first real roadblock to his new lifestyle. Pig intestines aren’t high up on the tasty scale, apparently. Being a 10-year-old American has its limitations as one of the last things he says to V is about getting pizza.

Deb has everything charted on for the Gallagher finances. That 50k from Fiona is a major advantage for the family, something they’ve never had. She’s being careful to keep the household afloat, ahead of the bills for once and making repairs. Frank is offended Deb won’t give him any money and he’s incensed that she’s docked him $600 for a new couch. Frank’s leg has healed but living on the couch for 5 months destroyed it. So while Deb has put up a responsible front to everyone, she’s secretly bought a ton of expensive clothes. She’s rented a storage facility to house it all, she basically has her own secret bedroom in this thing. She’s keeping all the tags on it, has an elaborate system to return everything on time so technically she’s not spending money on all of this. It’s more of a loan. This is Shameless so there is no way this is going to work out. I’d say she has 10k worth of merchandise.

Frank, broke as he’s ever been and now without pain meds for his leg, kicks off his next hustle. He has a really funny argument with Deb about not giving him money, essentially saying every irresponsible thing about money and being an adult to her, and storms off. He can’t scam any more pills from the doctor so he figures out a way to steal some. On the run from his bait and switch, he runs into Mikey, his partner in crime from last season. He’s also working the scam scene and they end up hanging out for the day, stealing nice couch cushions from a hotel and doing some drugs. Frank now has a sympathetic ear to complain about his family to.

Kevin has air balled himself into a midlife crisis. He embarrasses himself at a pickup game of basketball and he’s mortified that his status as an athlete–as a man–has fallen into the trash. So Kev is on the hunt to get his mojo back. He doing weird diet stuff to get into better shape for basketball and he blames his old sneakers for holding him back. V shoots down buying $250 shoes because they are on a budget so he goes back to an old job to make some quick money: a dancer at a gay bar. He makes a quick pile of cash and gets the shoes he wants. Of course that does nothing since shoes don’t help your jump shot or make you run faster, or give you the knees you had 15 years ago.

Finally, Lip is navigating the very pregnant Tami. She’s super happy which is not Tami. Lip is thrown off by her sunny deposition and Brad assures him that once the baby is born, she’ll swing back to normal in no time. At work, Tami suddenly goes into labor, Lip gets her to the hospital and complications arise. She has to have an emergency C-section and while the baby boy comes through fine, Tami takes a sudden turn and is rushed away to surgery. Last season Lip went all-in on being a parent with Tami. She tried to run from him (literally) so many times that he wanted her to know that she wasn’t going to be a single mother. Her fear of that shouldn’t be what makes her determine what to do with the baby (adoption or otherwise). So on this momentus day of their future together, it’s possible that Lip will be a single father instead. I’m not sure if they are going to go through with killing Tami off the show and I’m not sure if I want them to. Either path leads to a lot of story possibilities and I don’t think they need to do something so dramatic just to be dramatic (of course this scenario is, unfortunately, a real one).

A solid start to the season.

Not Acceptable

This is an episode of moral quandaries and boy does it get rough. Elliot has always been an anti-hero. While he’s held the moral ground in most cases, a lot of his hacking is “for the greater good.” He’ll extort/blackmail people to get what he wants and now that he’s on an intense time table with no room for error, he’s never been more aggressive.

He needs more from Olivia so he goes to visit her again. Getting access at Virtual Realty wasn’t enough, he still needs the digital key to the door to get in so he needs Olvia’s boss to log into work so he can steal his password.

He left Olivia on good terms, she didn’t know what he stole from her so she has no reason to be wary of him. When we last left her, I even wrote that he met a kindred spirit. She’s been through things that Elliot can relate to and I came away from it noting that he made a personal connection with her (I’m ignoring the sex in this btw) which is rare for him. When he shows up at her apartment, coffee in hand, he cuts to the chase. He tells her what he did and what he needs her to do and in order to force her to do it ASAP, he’s spiked her drink with an opiate. If she doesn’t call her boss and get him to log in, he’ll rat her out and her kid will be taken away from her for good.

The fallout is intense, to say the least. Elliot tries to make himself feel better–justify his actions–my slandering her job. ‘What do you think offshore bank accounts for megacorps are for? You know you work for an evil company, you’re complicit.’ In many cases he Elliot doesn’t see what he happens to the people he leverages, but here he’s face to face with it and he now has to walk around with that guilt. This scene is one of Elliot’s worst.

As I said last week, the threads are coming together. First, Dom goes straight for Darlene and we’re in another horrific scenario of blackmail. Janice tells Dom to take Darlene’s phone to find Elliot (who they really need) and kill Darlene. She has until 3:30 to do it (a little more than an hour iirc) and Dom understandably freaks out at the thought, as does Darlene. This scene was the most intense of the night for me with some of the best acting on the show. At the end of it, we’re probably in an even worse scenario. Let’s just say Janice is very punctual.

Finally, we’re with Vera and Krista and this goes pretty much as I expected it to. There’s a ton of menace going on here as Vera simply wants the goods on Elliot. At one point she tries to switch the tables and use her profession on him but it doesn’t work at all. She had a glimmer of hope for about 3 seconds that she could get the upper hand on him but she was grasping at straws trying to get into his childhood. Vera is also wrong too but to a lesser extent. He thinks the two were a couple, which is completely wrong and at first he doesn’t believe it. It doesn’t take too long for her to figure out she has no leverage and gives up her files on Elliot. Vera is about to find out about Mr. Robot.

Out of everything that is going on, this plot seems the most like a tangent to the entire Mr. Robot universe. The big question is, how important is this really? If this wasn’t happening, would we miss it? There would be fewer episodes, that’s for sure. The only answer is where is this going and that’s tough to nail down. What’s Sam Esmail’s point with this?

The main point I can think of goes along with what Elliot just did to Olivia. Fallout and consequences. Now Vera is 100% a piece of garbage and I’m totally on Elliot’s side with what he did to Vera to get rid of him. Until now, just about everyone Elliot dealt with in this way, Elliot didn’t have to worry about. They were done. They were gone. Vera is now the opposite of that. Vera knows he can use Elliot as a tool for his own power gain now he’s forcing himself back into Elliot’s life. Vera is now the consequence of Elliot’s actions. In life, things don’t always have a clean end.

Plus, we have the plotline of Elliot having a third personality that was snuck in a few weeks ago in the episode where Mama Aldersonr dies. The personality that kept the news that Vera was back from Elliot. Clearly this plotline was made to give Sam Esmail something to explore with of Vera. He put that (complicated) seed in there for a reason. But what is it? Where is he going with this? Some kind of message about power struggles? The scourge of criminal violence and drugs? At this point, I think it’s impossible to say. We have to go with, In Esmail We Trust on this one.

Method Not Allowed

Hacking! Lots and lots of hacking!

It’s been a while since we’ve gone on an elaborate hack with Mr. Robot but gadzooks did Sam Esmail pull off another one. These episodes are always a ton of fun and some of the most riveting to watch. There’s some crazy direction going on in the entire hour (Esmail could direct a fantastic action movie) and I think there were all of five lines of dialog spoken. Some gap filling is done with text messaging but besides that, this was a kinetic episode right from the start that rarely slowed down. After last week’s slow moon groove, this was like holding on to a rocket ship.

Darlene finds Elliot right by the crashed Dark Army van and he hops in without a word–and without Tyrell. Zero word on what happened to him which is the biggest disappointment for me. The Alderson’s have a busy day ahead of them, so they speed off back to the city leaving the burning van far behind them…

With the Cyprus Bank servers located in a company called Virtual Reality, the siblings get to work at 11 am sharp. Being Christmas Day, there’s no one in there except for two security guards and a handful of people in the gym that’s right off the lobby on the main floor.

Darlene and Elliot’s plan is elaborate, to say the least. I won’t be able to do that half hour of screen time justice, you have to see it. I will say there are fake IDs, fingerprints, and a whole lotta fast typing and running involved. They do all of this without a word too, which worked surprisingly well. Considering what Elliot has been doing, it’s safe to say Darlene came up with most of the plan and by the time they drove up to the doors, they had the plan memorized to the second. They basically sprint to each step, knocking down each barrier as they come to one. The best was when Elliot wordlessly ran distraction for Darlene and she improvises her own way out.

In addition to getting this huge step done, other important plot progress is made:

• Price finds when and where the shareholder’s meeting is. The timer for that has started–8 hours.
• Vera finds Krista as she comes home from running errands. He’s going to get dirt on Elliot. How horrible he is to get it remains to be seen.
• Dom is ordered around by Janice, the world’s most chipper taxidermist/shadow organization handler. The Dark Army put her onto finding out what happened to their van and to do everything she can with her FBI credentials to cover up any evidence about them. When Darlene got Elliot away from the scene of the crime, she ran a red light, which took their picture. This puts Dom back onto a head-on collision with the Alderson’s.

A lot of plot threads are now being held by the same hand and are we’re beginning to see them be pulled together. Dom has been separated from Elliot for some time now and Vera has been out for a few seasons. It’ll be interesting to see how these roads intersect, the big question is when. Eight episodes are left and that’s quite a bit room to move around in. The obvious next event is the shareholder’s meeting. That’s just a few hours away in the show’s universe, so will we see that next week? Or will next week be devoted to Dom and Vera’s movements? I’m also wondering how far past Christmas this story will take us.

Elliot and Darlene are in the dark about Dom and Vera so they are going to be wildcards being thrown down. I don’t think Darlene really knows Vera, so when he shows up it’s going to send Elliot for a loop. Vera’s goal seems simple in comparison to what else is going on, he as no idea about the Dark Army. So will coming into Elliot’s orbit put him into the DA’s crosshairs? The go-to scenario for Dom is for her to work with Elliot and Darlene but with Janice on her tail, that’s going to be a challenge. There are a lot of possibilities.

Not Found

This was a ponderous episode. In a final season where every episode is precious, “404 Not Found” was seemingly a side show with very little plot progress. I’m confused about this approach after such a dramatic episode last week.

The show follows two trips: Elliot with Tyrell and Darlene looking for Elliot. We pick up right after the last episode ends. Elliot tells Tyrell they are being listened to by the Dark Army. Tyrell goes outside while Elliot keeps talking in his apartment and Tyrell ambushes the DA guy in the van with a solid bonk on the head. Tyrell thinks he killed the guy and they are pleased to find that the conversation he and Elliot just had wasn’t relayed to the evil powers. So the boys jump into the van and head upstate to get rid of the body. At a pit stop, the DA guy isn’t so dead and takes off in the van, stranding the boys who have to hoof it to the next town to get cell service. Positive that the DA guy has passed on the info that Tyrell is working with Elliot to bring down Whiterose, Elliot is panicked that Darlene is now just hours away from being killed. He has to warn her so he leads the charge into the woods, the so-called short cut to the next town.

Back in the city, Darlene calls Elliot to tell him their plan won’t work. Olivia Cortez doesn’t have the security clearance to get into Whitrerose’s financials. They’re going to have to beak in and enter a business to get access to the correct servers. Elliot is off with Tyrell– with no cell service–so she has to leave a message for him. She rants for three minutes about how awful of a brother he is, and when the voicemail service cuts her off for the time limit, she does it again but much shorter without the diatribe. She hides her feelings.

The information that Darlene gives us, is the only plot progression in this episode. The rest is character confrontation.

Elliot and Tyrell get lost in the woods (big surprise) and are forced to deal with each other because they have no other choice. Elliot is laser-focused, keep moving to that other town. Tyrell laments about his life. How is life focus on doing everything to climb up the enterprise later–stepping on everything and everyone in the way–hasn’t done anything to make his life better. His wife and kid are gone and his new job title, CEO of ECorp is meaningless. It’s one of the biggest companies on the planet but he’s nothing more than a puppet with a guillotine blade hanging over his head. All he has to show is his misery and the $6,000 suit he’s wearing in ankle-deep snow. He goes on to imply that Elliot’s life is much easier because he doesn’t care about anything, wearing the same clothes every day is like his armor to ignore everyone around him.

That statement shows how little Tyrell knows about Elliot. Elliot worries about everyone he knows, he just bottles up everything as a shield to the world. Right now in fact, he’s petrified for his sister and that’s his motivation. Tyrell keeps saying they should quit and Elliot shuts him down every time. He admits–without hearing Darlene’s first voicemail–that he’s a horrible brother and he has to do better. His admission to Tyrell is that his reason to live and keep fighting the hydra of ECorp is Darlene.

Darlene ends up traveling towards Elliot with a drunk Santa Claus named Tobias. While Elliot and Tyrell use each other as a shrink, Darlene opens up to Tobias. She’s mourning the death of basically everyone she knows. Elliot is her only anchor and she’s furious with him and at the same time, she’s petrified that he’s dead. It’s conflicting emotions that she’s having a hard time coming to grips with. As she talks to Tobias, he gets into his personal life and he’s having struggles of his own, so much so that it sounds like he’s suicidal.

Darlene spends just a few hours with Tobias and she comes to care about him. When she drops him off at home, she goes the extra mile to confront him, that his life is worth living despite his problems. It turns out that she misinterpreted most of what he said, he isn’t suicidal. Considering she’s been chased by the grim reaper for the past few months, it’s not surprising how she (and we the audience) turned his words based on her current perspective on the world.

Still, that was a very powerful conversation she had with Tobias. She doesn’t have anyone to talk to and lately, she’s terrified of getting close to anyone (a parallel with Dom’s small story this week). More importantly, as Tobias bobbles into his home, Darlene breaks down in the car and he has his own moment of great concern for someone he barely knows. He goes back to the car and gives her words of encouragement for her own life—another thing she hasn’t heard in a while.

At the very end, Tyrell and Elliot discover the van crashed on the side of the road with a dead deer nearby. The DA guy was well enough to drive away but a surprise road crossing by a stupid deer is a serious danger to everyone. Tyrell ends up getting shot in the stomach by the gravely injured DA guy and tells Elliot to leave him behind. This puts Elliot into a bind and cannot be the way Tyrell goes out. I can’t believe Sam Esmail would write out one of his best characters like this so I’m just going to have wait until Sunday to find out if I should rage about this or not.

Despite being a weird pump of the breaks in story progression, this episode still delivers memorable character moments and fantastic dialog (Darlene and Tobias have a string of highlights).

Forbidden

This week we got a rare look into Whiterose’s (known only as Zhi Zhang) past with a terrific cold opening.

In 1982, Whiterose and his secret lover–Chen–were working on behalf of the Chinese government, landing a huge partnership with IBM. On this trip in the US, the two were able to be together more openly, even if it was still behind closed doors. The Chinese government forbids homosexual relationships, so the men were using this partnership as a way to leave China. Zhi would parlay this success into a US Ambassadorship. With success in their grasp, Whiterose came out to her partner as a trans woman, showing her even bigger secret presumably for the first time. Chen didn’t hesitate to accept this revelation. It didn’t change his mind on anything, the love of his life was still there and they were planning a future together. But the plan didn’t work as expected. With such success, Whiterose was offered an even greater role in the Chinese government, meaning they wouldn’t be leaving the country. This news comes on the day of Chen’s arranged wedding day to another woman. Fraught with the realization that they’d never be leaving China, forced to keep themselves closeted and farther apart from each other. Whiterose tells him to be patient, that they’ll get away together and time, but Chen sees it as an admission of surrender. Unable to cope, Chen takes his life.

This devastated Whiterose in ways that still haunt her today. He uses Chen’s watch and inherited his obsession with time. His death–what Whiterose feels directly responsible for because of a choice she made–is most likely the cataylst for the plan that she’s been working on for more than 30 years.

When Whiterose is advised that Elliot and Page are probably in cahoots and they need to slow things down to keep an eye on them, she takes it as an admission of surrender. She demands that the shareholder meeting happen tomorrow (Christmas Day) to keep his adversaries from having the time to make something happen.

Elliot and Darlene are still under the gun, trying to figure out a way to get access to Whiterose’s financials when the shareholder meeting happens. They track down a contact of Susan Jacobs–Olivia Cortez–the only contact she had at the Cyprus Bank. Darlene is gung ho on helping Elliot with her and he won’t let her. He’s too afraid of putting her in danger and wants her to work on something else while he’s gone.

In typical Mr. Robot fashion, Elliot finds an in with Olivia. She’s divorced with a kid and she’ll lose custody if she gets caught using drugs again. With this leverage, Elliot is gung ho to simply blackmail Olivia into giving him her bank FOB so he can get the password into her work’s network. It’s impossible to get in without that FOB. Mr. Robot slows him down, saying he doesn’t need to go scorched Earth.

In one of the best character scenes in the show, Mr. Robot opens the door for Elliot to make a human connection. Something Elliot hasn’t done in a long time and is desperately needed because he’s extremely detached. Funny how the split personality, the one who isn’t actually a person, recognizes the value of not isolating yourself in order to truly fix things. Over the course of the night, Elliot discovers a kindred spirit and the keycode he needs.

Cue complications! On the way back from Olivia’s apartment, Elliot spots a Dark Army tail. He moseys back home in order to sell that he’s not up to anything only to find Tyrell Wellick in his apartment. The worst person to be caught with by the DA and he just starts running his mouth about stopping Whiterose.

While that is sending Elliot into a panic, the other side of the bear trap that he doesn’t know about is starting to shake loose. Vera is slinking around trying to figure out how to recruit Elliot to help rebuild his drug empire. He gets a whiff of Elliot’s problems with his ex-therapist, Krista Gordon. Just like how Elliot dug around Olivia to get leverage for what he wanted, Vera is doing the same to Elliot. It looks like the net of destruction around Elliot is about to get bigger.

Unauthorized

The final season primier wastes no time in setting the stakes and the level of danger that will spool out through the remaining episodes.

Starting right where we left off in season 3, a broken Angela talking to her father, Philip Price. Exploited and devestated by White Rose, Angela is angry and ignores her father’s pleas to leave things alone. Accept that she was used by a sociopath and move on with the rest of her life. Angela isn’t having it and dismisses her father, who when walking away removes a wire taped to his chest. He is passed by two Dark Army members who quickly assassinate his daughter. Price, now distraught, is quickly called by White Rose who does her awful best to smooth things over. Price didn’t everything he could to help Angela, she just wouldn’t listen. Now focus on the business at hand–migrating those ECorp servers to the Congo as fast as possible. White Rose’s endgame is now scheduled for the end of the year.

Elliot and Mr. Robot are doing everything he (they) can to stop the move to the Congo. He’s been tracking the Dark Army’s moves for months and has found a target for him to exploit, a lawyer that White Rose uses to launder money. Elliot does is old blackmail routine with limited results as his smooth talking isn’t as convincing as it used to be. The lawyer ends up dead and Elliot walks into a trap.

Meanwhile, Elliot’s sister Darlene is self–medicating over Angela’s disappearance. Darlene lost so much last year that she’s having a problem hanging on to reality. She thinks she saw Angela come out of a homeless shelter and begs Elliot to help track her down. Elliot says to stop that Angela is dead and Darlene doesn’t believe him. He hasn’t shown her the picture that White Rose sent him. Darlene is handling this so badly as it is, he’s afraid of showing her the explicit proof.

Dom is living with her mother and is also a pile of nerves. She’s so paranoid she pulls a gun on the guy remodeling her mother’s bedroom. Her mother tells her to get herself presentable as they are having a guest over for dinner. A woman comes over and the dinner gets rather uncomfortable as it’s clear Dom’s mother is trying to set her up for a date. You can’t blame her as Dom is in some serious need for human contact. Of course she doesn’t know what Dom has gone through, watching her partner get murdered, pulling her into the service of the Dark Army. Her heart is in the right place. But it turns out this woman works for the Dark Army. Dom has no reason to be paranoid…her head is in a vice and the handle is being spun to close it.

This episode had every element I love about this show. Drama and suspense out of the wazoo, awesome spy and hacking stuff, and a clear aim at what this season is about. I think every episode is going to be all killer and no filler. Sam Esmail is a fantastic writer and his direction remains top of the line. His eye for framing scenes is amazing. Even with the long break between seasons, Mr. Robot hasn’t missed a beat.

Baskets and Legion ended their runs this month and while the above posters make the shows look completely different, they actually have a lot in common.

Both are about men who are lost, a childhood irreparably damaged followed by adulthood fraught with failure and further trauma. Any effort to change things for the better never seems to pan out.

Baskets is the more grounded (and funny) of the two with Legion based on some of Marvel’s X-Men characters. Legion is able to go much farther into the surreal and is much more of a head trip.

That said, Baskets takes place in Bakersfield. California which offers its own levels of wild characters.

Through four seasons, Chip Baskets struggles for success. He fails out of a prestigious French clown school and his marriage disintegrates too. Clowning is his life’s passion and that profession is hard to get respect in even the best of circumstances. Being a starving artist is rough and when everyone thinks you’re a joke, having a healthy amount of self-esteem is even harder. Plus his love life is a failure too, so Chip has to crash back at home where his mother does her best to keep him going. In a constant battle with his twin brother Dale, Chip is always fighting for air. While Dale has seemingly done better at life that Chip, he has his own mountain of problems to overcome.

Always in the backseat of the decision making, season 3 saw Chip get real responsibility as the CEO of The Baskets Family Circus. He’s able to dabble in clowning as well as run the show. For a guy that’s struggled to grow up, it’s the most responsibility and control he’s ever had. He jumps at the chance to be seen as an adult to everyone around him. Season 4 sees that opportunity get difficult and he seeks council elsewhere with a life coach he finds (hijacks) from his friend from Martha.

All in all, Chip just wants to be independent. The ability to control his own life can come from that and he desperately wants it. So this guy who lost his father at a young age, always in the shadow of his mother and brothers, keeps fighting for it. For years he’s kicked as hard as he can to keep his head above water and in this last season, it all comes to a head. When he tries to save the rodeo and his mother takes control away from him, he breaks. It’s a testament to who he is that the people around him come to save him, they don’t let him drift away. There’s no clean ending to Baskets but we do get to see that Chip gets back up and continues to get his own pride, independence, and chance to be happy.

In Legion David also struggles for identity. His father abandons him as an infant, his mother dies when he’s very young and his sister does her best to raise him. Soon he’s diagnosed as a schizophrenic and institutionalized. He’s told that he’s crazy–that the things he’s seeing and the fantastic things he can do aren’t real–turns out that he’s anything but. As David discovers, he was inhabited by a powerful evil force when he was an infant and he’s a mutant himself. The son of Charles Xavier, one of the most powerful mutants, David has unfathomable powers.

Like Chip Baskets, David was drawn a bad hand from the start and his life is a struggle because of it. Resentful of his father abandoning him–left to deal with these terrifying powers and a legit monster inside of him on his own–for a long time David doesn’t know which way is up. He ends up killing a lot of people and harming the ones who at one point fought at his side.

The comic book origins of Legion offered the writers a lot of outside the box storytelling possibilities. This show frequently goes off into the deep end to show if it’s concepts and ideas. The production is unbelievable with it’s editing, set design, direction, and cinematography. There’s no other show on now that looks or tries to do the stuff that Legion does. The budget keeps the action scenes from being huge, but what they do is really effective (something The Walking Dead needs to learn from). It can get confusing to watch, there’s a lot of heady concepts being thrown around in untraditional ways (looking at you season 2). Now that the series is complete, I think being able to watch it all without having to wait will be a big help in understanding the story.

David’s story is one of redemption. He has terrible visions from a powerful being that makes him dangerous to others. He desperately wants to fix what’s wrong with him and on that journey, he finds out a lot of painful things about his past (things that he had no control over). His father let all this happen to him and his family and that makes the anger in him grow even more. Once excised of the demon, it doesn’t change his mentality. He starts a cult where he brainwashes everyone into loving him and it does nothing to help him. It’s all phony and he knows it. By using his powers to try and fix things, it’s made him just as dangerous as before, but now he can aim his powers where he wants them. A threat to mankind, his old friends come after him to shut him down. When all his plans to make his life better fail, David becomes obsessed with changing the past.

And that’s where David’s redemption comes in. In this last season, he finds Switch, a mutant with time travel powers. The end becomes a race between life, death, and morality.

Both of these shows are about a broken person and their relationships. They take very different paths in exploring their concepts but they both do extraordinary things with their character studies.

While Game of Thrones took up all the pop culture air space Barry was running right next to it delivering a much more satisfying story.

Barry balances all of its elements really well. Bill Hader carries this world on his shoulders as Barry and the way he can switch from comedy to intensity is something to see.

The second season sees Barry trying to hold things together. A series of murders from the end of last season has put him under tremendous pressure to not only keep lying to everyone around him but fight with the very essense of himself. He wants desperately to leave the hitman life behind and at every turn there is someone to pull him back in. With each body he drops it crushes his sense of self, he’s becoming increasingly terrified that he’s evil. He can only put on the mask of a good person.

Every single episode I’m impressed with the writing. They keep getting Barry and the people around him into wild scenarios, but it’s always grounded. They always manage to keep the stakes, the action, and the results beleavable. It’s amazing how well this show does dark humor.

These scripts also sing because of the cast. I’ve already mention Hader. On that list is Henry Winkler, doing some of the best work in his career. Sara Goldberg is perfect for standing on the other side of Barry’s teeter totter. She’s the gateway for the normal life that Barry wants and the whole time he’s hiding all this horror from her. It’s one of the most fascinating relationships I can think of in entertainment right now. Their story arc this year is really wel done. Anthony Carrigan is hilarous, just a brilliant character actor. I think Monroe Fuches is hands down Stephen Root’s best character of his career. I love to hate Fuches, he’s the absolute worst for Barry and watching that relationship unspool this year is fantastic.

Everyone who watches Barry loves it. More people need to see this, so stop whatever you are doing and check this out if you haven’t. This fills in The Americans void for me.