Hello,
If this seems a bit jumbled, it's because it is. Like Elliot I'm just another faceless drone at a large company. Also like Elliot I have to earn a living, even though it continues to slowly kill my soul. I would love to work on this blog more, but I have to serve my corporate masters for 40 hours a week. I will work on this as I can.
I'm not big into hype, so please believe me with what I say next. "Mr. Robot" was one of the best pilots I've ever seen in my life. It's both hopeful and frightening, positive and negative, enlightening and scary as hell. In fact I'm not sure how this show was even made in the first place. One shouldn't bite the hand that feeds. "Mr. Robot" doesn't just bite the hand that feeds it, it chews it thoroughly.
The show follows the life of Elliot, a person that has a lot of scars. He grew up in an unsettled home and hasn't learned how to truly process feelings and the outside world. He purposely walks around in a hoodie with the hood up, it's his way to limit contact with humans. Elliot is self-sufficient and so he doesn't need much from anyone else. Although he's a brilliant hacker, he works as a drone in a faceless corporate America company. He tries to remain as obscure as possible.
The boogeyman in this show is E Corp, nicknamed Evil Corp, a large company that has it's tentacles in about 70% of the world's institutions. A nice twist is that Elliot works for AllSafe, the firm that is suppose to protect E Corp from hackers.
Elliot has more contact with people through their Facebook et. al profiles than with them in person. He's not big into bullshit. While he tries to be polite to people, he doesn't go out of his way to encourage extended interaction with those that he doesn't want to deal with. About the only person he wants to deal with is childhood friend Angela. In dealing with Angela's boyfriend, the boyfriend doesn't like the awkwardness in his and Elliot's relationship. However Elliot tells him that he's okay with the awkwardness, he doesn't want to be any closer with the boyfriend than he has to be.
Elliot and Angela make a connection at the end of the pilot. If this show wants to avoid cliches (please USA Network and creator Sam Esmail avoid cliches- you don't want to be like every other show) then these two should not get together! Although it was a nice moment after their weirdly awkward and intimate hug when they thought everyone in the room was looking at them. But they weren't they were looking at the TVs that was showing the breaking news that the CTO of E Corp was being arrested.
While this was a great pilot, it did feel like it went on a little too long. But on the other hand I didn't want it to end.
What exactly is Mr. Robot? Is Mr. Robot truly independent of E Corp, and others of it's ilk? Or is it just another part of E Corp to protect itself from hackers?
I've been trying to think who E Corp is it based on. Back in the day I would have said Microsoft, but they are so much less relevant than they use to be just a few years ago. At least that's what they would have us believe. I still have to use Windoze computers at work, in fact I've had at all of my jobs.
Anyway "Mr. Robot" is a solid show all around. In fact, I feel like I missed a lot while watching the pilot, so I'm going to watch it again. I give the pilot an A+. Now the trick is can they stretch that out through 10 episodes. Netflix's "Bloodline" was able to stretch out the quality of it's first season over 10 episodes, too bad it went for 13 episodes. Since "Mr. Robot" was renewed for a second season I'm hoping that's a sign that the storytelling remains compelling.
themusicaddict
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