MR. ROBOT Official Discussion Thread (New Season starts Oct.6)

[playahaitian]

Hot Carla burning something in a Little Red Ryder Wagon

and that is EXACTLY what is written on the cover of Elliot's composite notebook journal.

 

[largebillsonlyplease]

I like how his routine is like the routine of a computer operating system every time its booted up.

its your routine you just don't realize it yet.

 

[playahaitian]

its your routine you just don't realize it yet.

stop f*cking with my head cuz.

 

[largebillsonlyplease]

stop f*cking with my head cuz.

how's your week any different from his week?
you woke up. you got the kids ready. you ate. you went to work. you ate lunch. instead of fresh air at the park you were at home watching him. you cleaned up a little bit. you ate. you went to sleep.
you woke up and then decided to backpack across...oh wait,

 

[playahaitian]

how's your week any different from his week?
you woke up. you got the kids ready. you ate. you went to work. you ate lunch. instead of fresh air at the park you were at home watching him. you cleaned up a little bit. you ate. you went to sleep.
you woke up and then decided to backpack across...oh wait,

 

[largebillsonlyplease]

your routine is so routinely that if you change it up, that becomes a routine.
the truth that we don't want to accept is that, the reason we have routines in the first place is because they're easy.
nobody has a difficult routine. it may be difficult to you because you're not doing it but its not difficult to them. to them...it's their routine.

shall i go on?

 

[playahaitian]

your routine is so routinely that if you change it up, that becomes a routine.
the truth that we don't want to accept is that, the reason we have routines in the first place is because they're easy.
nobody has a difficult routine. it may be difficult to you because you're not doing it but its not difficult to them. to them...it's their routine.

shall i go on?

 

[playahaitian]

http://deadline.com/2016/07/mr-robo...ebut-emmys-rami-malek-usa-network-1201786811/

 

[largebillsonlyplease]

The truth is, it's exhausting to be exciting. You need money, unless you've got a billion in a trust fund you need to work for it. that takes time and energy. after you're done working you might go out cause it's fun. but there will be a week you don't want to. there will be months where you haven't and then you'll say damn i haven't been here in a year.

how many new experiences do you have living in nyc?of all the places to discover in nyc, how many new experiences do you have every week?

this isn't a shaming exercise it's an exercise in being at peace with the things you have going on in your life, which is what elliot is trying to do.

to get rid of that projection, he needs to be at peace. he needs to not seek out adventure. he needs to be consistent. consistency is the only thing keeping you from being him.

 

[Give Me 3ft.]

what?

 

[MurderCity]

http://deadline.com/2016/07/mr-robo...ebut-emmys-rami-malek-usa-network-1201786811/

Well, breaking bad had ratings in the 1.0-2.0 range until the 5th season, and they won tons of Emmys in the first 4 years. Mr. Robot has won a couple big Emmys and has been nominated again this year, so hopefully USA sticks by it.

 

[Count23]

shit is heating up

 

[ansatsusha_gouki]

 

[playahaitian]

This Mr. Robot Reality-Bending Twist Theory Is Going Strong

Spoiler

Sam Esmail wants you to pay very, very close attention. The Mr. Robotcreator is directing every episode of his show’s second season, and he’s nothing if not detail-oriented, littering the screen and soundtrack with Easter eggs: references, callbacks, and call-forwards. As soon as last week’sseason premiere aired, viewers — including us — started to wonder if Esmail was already subtly planting the seeds of a big, reality-bending twist. But how does that suspicion fare in the wake of the taut second installment in the season? In short: very well. Let’s take a look at the new evidence. Spoilers below.

The theory is pretty simple: Although Elliot tells us that he’s living an unplugged life at his mother’s house, he’s actually living in the psych ward of a hospital. Episode two offered nothing to contradict the theory and plenty that synced up nicely with it:

The way the fsociety gang talks about Elliot.
In the premiere, fsociety hacker Mobley asked Darlene if she’d seen Elliot, to which she ambiguously replied, “That’s not important.” In tonight’s episode, the remaining members of the hacker collective — RIP Romero — talk about him in slightly greater detail. Mobley suspects that the Dark Army may have murdered Gideon and Romero, and that they knew who they were because Elliot ratted them out.

“State Elliot’s in —” Mobley says before Darlene cuts him off with a terse, “Don’t say what you’re thinking.” She says she’ll talk to him, which means she knows where he is (perhaps she helped him check himself in?). “I don’t trust her or her crazy-ass brother,” Mobley muses after she leaves. All of that dialogue fits very easily with the notion that their erstwhile leader is in the loony bin and they all know about it.

Everything with Ray.
Last week, we theorized that Ray might be a fellow patient, but it seems far more likely that he’s someone highly placed at the institution, probably some kind of administrator. We see him a few times in situations that would be happening in his life outside the hospital: dining at home and threatening a techie who appears to be working for him into some kind of criminal sideline gig. And although he talks to his dead wife, we later see him fully admit that he’s aware she’s gone, meaning he’s not hallucinating.

More importantly, he talks to Elliot in the manner of someone who has a good deal of information and authority over him. Remember how, last episode, he knew our hacker hero was computer-oriented? It would make sense that he’d have that information if he’s well-placed at the hospital. In this episode, he tries to coerce Elliot into working with him, presumably to replace the aforementioned techie.

He gets ahold of Elliot’s journal (which would be hard unless he were in close quarters with Elliot on a regular basis) and confronts him about it, confiding that he himself has also experienced a certain degree of madness in the form of his chats with his departed bride — just the kind of thing an emotionally manipulative psych-ward supervisor would do to win over a patient. He later calls Elliot into his office, which has the slightly run-down look and cubed-glass window of an institutional office. “You’re smart enough to know that keeping this inside isn’t gonna last," Ray says — could “inside” have a dual meaning? Is Ray offering Elliot some degree of freedom in exchange for some illicit work?

The saga of the pills.
Leon hooks our protagonist up with an obscene amount of Adderall, which Elliot starts popping to get rid of Mr. Robot. Such drugs would be plentiful in a psych ward, and although they’d be under lock and key, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume a crafty fellow like Leon might be able to get his hands on them. It seems especially likely if other employees are as morally compromised as Ray.

Once Elliot starts flying high, he has a vision of being abducted by men in black who cram a thick, grey paste down his gullet, forcing him to vomit up the pills. He then scrambles to pick them up out of his spew and swallow them again. This is pretty obviously a hallucination, and one that could definitely reflect an incident in some hospital bathroom or hallway: Elliot, under the influence of his Mr. Robot persona, puked, then got (relative) control of himself and reconsumed the goods. Pity the poor janitor tasked with wiping up.

The meeting.
Elliot returns to his group meetings, which we previously theorized were a kind of group therapy. But given how intensely religious and confession-based they turned out to be in this episode, could it be that they’re in-hospital Narcotics Anonymous meetings? And when Elliot goes on his rant against organized religion, nobody seems all that put off by his wild pattern of speech and his vehemence. Perhaps, given that this is happening in a psych ward, the listeners are used to patients losing it like that?

The Adderall-induced imagery.
While feeling his euphoric lucidity, Elliot starts to picture things a bit differently, and his visions get more hospital-y. While running up some steps, each one turns white, as they might be in a hospital. While cleaning some dishes, he notes how clean they look, and we see them in gleaming white — again, the color of a hospital. But the biggest clue comes in an eatery. Last week, we noted that the restaurant where Leon and Elliot meet up for the former’s Seinfeld thoughts looked a lot like an institutional cafeteria, with its trays and sleepy-looking diners. Elliot returns to it for chats with Leon and Ray this time, and while he’s bugged out on the Adderall, its look begins to change. The lights start to flicker, making it very apparent that they’re cheap fluorescents of the sort one might find in an institution. Perhaps, as his focus becomes more acute, reality was starting to peek in through the cracks of his hallucination.

 

[playahaitian]

How Sam Esmail Directs the Cast of Mr. Robot

Portia Doubleday is really tempted to turn her face and stare straight into Michael Cristofer’s eyes. “You know, like, what are you gonna do now?” says Doubleday, who plays Angela. They’re in the middle of filming the restaurant scene in Wednesday night’s episode of Mr. Robot, in which E Corp CEO Phillip Price, played by Cristofer, tries to intimidate her. But then, she thinks better of it.

“Michael would probably start laughing, and then I’d hear [director Sam Esmail] go, ‘Portia, no!’” says Doubleday, on the March night the scene was filmed at Zio, a restaurant in Manhattan's Flatiron district. “Sam actually screams when you’re not doing something right. He just goes ‘Portia!’ like that and you’re like, okay.” Esmail, the show’s creator, showrunner, head writer, and director of this entire season, doesn’t raise his voice out of anger, she explains — it comes from a place of passion. If Doubleday had seriously thought the move would enhance the scene, she would have tried it. “I trust Sam, and when you trust someone so implicitly, it gives you the freedom to take risks and be yelled at because," she explains, "at the end of the day, I might come up with something and he’ll keep it, or he might say it doesn’t work.”

In this scene from “eps2.1_k3rnel-pan1c.ksd,” Angela shares a semifreddo at an upscale Italian restaurant with Phillip and two other E Corp executives, a meal designed to manipulateher into seeking revenge for her mother’s death. Like the rest of the characters on the show, Angela finds herself at a crossroads after her life spiraled out of control last season. She’s taken a job as “Evil” Corp’s PR manager, but it’s unclear whether she’s fully joined the team or if she’s planning something more sinister.

Later, Doubleday’s scene partner takes a small acting risk that does pay off. The script called for Phillip to tell Angela he has evidence that can convict the other two dinner guests, hand her a CD, and walk away from the table. When she says she doesn’t trust him, the scene directions call for Phillip to walk back, stand in front of her, and tell her he thinks she’ll see it another way when she calms down. In the moment, Cristofer goes for a slightly different delivery — when he returns to the table, he leans into Doubleday, and whispers his lines into her ear: “You’re panicking right now. I understand. It’s a big decision you’re making because these men, their lives will be destroyed. But the minute you remove emotion from this, you’ll do just fine.”

“And cut! I love this!” yells Esmail, leaping out of his director’s chair. He walks over to the table at the center of the restaurant to ask Doubleday what she thought of Cristofer’s tweak. “It was terrifying,” she replies, her eyes wide. Esmail asks Cristofer to do it again, except this time more slowly.

Weeks later, Doubleday says, “I can feel it in my body right now. I remember it sent a shock through my body, as if I was paralyzed. His character is so unpredictable, and as much as she tries to figure out what his next moves are going to be, she can’t,” she says. “In that moment, she’s trying to keep her composure and not look weak. There was a part of me that wanted to laugh because it was so intense, it was so uncomfortable. And at the same time, I was really attracted to him, because I think Angela is really attracted to the qualities he has — the power — and she wants that for herself.”

“There is something personal going on,” Cristofer adds. “I felt that as much as he wants to manipulate her, he wouldn’t mind being manipulated by her. In the writing there was something that said, this is more than pushing a pawn around a chessboard. There is something intimate and sexual going on here. That’s what I played and what I incorporated into pretty much everything I did with Portia this season.”

Part of his job, Esmail says, is to let actors co-create their characters, which is why he encourages a collaborative spirit on set. “It’s strange not to allow the actor some input and breathing room into what was written on the page — it is their job to make it come alive,” he explains. “I thought what Michael was doing was odd, and when somebody does something unusual in life, it makes me notice. It was striking and it took me back. I live for little surprises like that in a scene.”

The showrunner surprised the cast when he announced that, in addition to all his other jobs on the show, he would also direct all 12 episodes of the sophomore season. Esmail, 38, who directed the indie film Comet and three episodes of Mr. Robot’s first season, says he’s spending as much time on set as he always did, but now he’s being more efficient. “I know when it comes to TV, the writer is king, but to me, the filmmaker is king,” he says. “It’s the entire thing — directing, cinematography, props design, production design. You have to make it all blend and work. And it’s really hard to do that if you’re not directing all of them because you’re continually having to translate the tone and message of each episode to other people.”

It also allows for Esmail and director of photography Tod Campbell to work even closer together on the show’s distinct visual style, which enhances a mood of isolation and confusion by placing characters at the bottom or to the side of the screen. “We frame things in an off-kilter way because it’s unsettling,” Esmail explains. “In the Mr. Robot world, that’s the norm, and it’s the norm for the point of view that we’re looking for, which is Elliot’s. With our compositions and our visual language and camera movements, it’s important to always evoke that unsettling feeling underneath every scene.”

Esmail isn’t the first creative to direct an entire season of TV, but he is the first showrunner and head writer in the U.S. to take on the additional, time-consuming role. Mr. Robot’s six writers, including Esmail, wrote the entire season from October to March. Then Esmail organized production in blocks so he could complete all of the season’s shoots in each location before moving on — an approach they didn’t take in season one. While this streamlines costs, it can be tough on actors because filming is done out of order.

“In our first week [of filming], I was on set with Sam at the end of shooting a very difficult scene in episode nine,” said the show’s star Rami Malek, who plays mentally ill hacker Elliot Alderson. “I grabbed him and asked if I could have a moment. We walked away from the monitors and I said, ‘I feel pretty confident in what I’m doing, but I would not want to be shooting a scene from so far down the line under any circumstances. Having you here gives me the resolve and it elevates me to say that I can do it.’ And that’s because I trust him so much. Sam’s one of the smartest and most talented men I’ve ever come across.”

Carly Chaikin, who plays Elliot’s sister, Darlene, says she struggled at times with the show’s nonlinear shooting. Chaikin recalls a day when they filmed scenes from three different episodes, and one required a drastically different frame of mind from the others. “That’s probably one of the hardest things I’ve had to do — going so deep into a mindset and then having to snap out of it and go into another so quickly,” she says. The benefit, Chaikin says, is having Esmail direct every episode. “Last year, when he wasn’t on set, you could feel his absence. The directors we had were absolutely incredible but the story and the world didn’t come from their minds.”

In these moments, it also helps that Esmail is willing to let the actors experiment until they feel they’ve hit the tone just right. While filming the restaurant scene in Wednesday night’s episode, Cristofer also plays with the idea of beginning his intimidation before Phillip hands the CD to Angela. Esmail felt this was “too much." They try it again, but this time when he walks away from the table, Cristofer can’t help himself: He throws a chair across the room. (Esmail was amused.)

“Somebody asked me what it’s like to work with Sam and I said, ‘It’s fucking depressing,’" Cristofer laughs. “It is so depressing every day to see this 38-year-old fucking genius writing and directing and imagining and getting it right the first time. Nobody should have to put up with that.”

 

[fonzerrillii]

Man this show is so good on so many levels. Sometimes you just cant even describe it. How can you even tell what's real on this show?

I just watch and absorb every single second.

 

[fonzerrillii]

There are little tidbits that I love like how Ray says that people can only withdraw $50 dollars a day or that the restaurant was fucking empty and people are required to pay upfront. I wonder how far society has truly fallen after the hack.

 

[playahaitian]

Comic Con: Rami Malek May Have Just Tipped Off the Best Storyline in Mr. RobotSeason Two

Considering how dour the mood can get on USA's Mr. Robot, watching the cast laugh and joke with one another on a stage at Comic Con is a kind of jarring experience. A special message from fsociety opened the panel before moderator and Nerdist King Chris Hardwick brought out the cast, and Rami Malek’s dad-chic Hawaiian print shirt was a far cry from Elliot Alderson’s standard issue black hoodie.

But of course, Rami Malek isn’t Elliot Alderson. Just like Christian Slater isn’t the angel of Doomsday, Mr. Robot, and Carly Chaikin isn’t Darlene, the hacker version of a manic pixie dream girl. But that’s sort of the genius of the show. It tricks you into thinking you’re watching real people, created from whole cloth, who are wreaking havoc on a parallel universe version of 2016 America.

But we digress. At Thursday’s panel, Malek, Slater and Chaikin were on hand with Portia Doubleday and series newcomer Grace Gummer to discuss the madness and magic of getting to play in the nerve twisting funhouse that Sam Esmail has built. They talked about Mr. Robot’s stellar use of music, character motivations, the role that technology plays in our daily lives and who in the cast plays Pokémon Go (it’s Slater), but the most interesting point of conversation came when an audience member asked who each of the actor’s would play on the show if they could pick any other role.

A version of this question comes up a lot in panels and round table discussions, but when Malek said he would play Doubleday’s character, Angela, it felt like he was foreshadowing a fascinating season for the show’s best sleeper storyline. After all, Malek gets to play Elliot, the dynamic and tortured star of one of the only truly surprising shows on TV. This is his Walter White, and his pick for second-most compelling role is his unassuming childhood friend.

And that actually makes a lot of sense. Angela’s narrative arc since the beginning of the first season has been the most drastic of any of the primary characters, even if it hasn’t been the most dramatic — yet. She’s gone from a semi-content office drone to a frighteningly ambitious power PR woman at the company, Evil Corp, she swore to help topple at the end of season one. Everyone else has explored the limits of their own crazy inMr. Robot, but in the case of Angela we are seeing a new kind of crazy emerge.

For example, Doubleday touched on her character’s creepy fixation with those positive affirmations we first saw in episode two of the current season, saying that, “I think that there’s something really dangerous to be said about her obsession with these affirmations. What that is stemming from is something quite explosive. I wanted to get more into what Angela struggles with internally. She’s a very troubling character. In a way she is unfortunately very malleable, which is exciting because you don’t know what’s going to happen with her.” And she finished with a tease, “What ends up happening, nobody will be able to predict with her storyline.”

Considering what a mind fuck Mr. Robot is week to week, we’re quite sure that we trust Ms. Doubleday when she says we have no idea what’s about to happen. And that we can’t wait to find out.

 

[dbrizzz]

Man this show is so good on so many levels. Sometimes you just cant even describe it. How can you even tell what's real on this show?

I just watch and absorb every single second.

I'm with on this brother. I need to go back and watch it again.

 

[Count23]

This Mr. Robot Reality-Bending Twist Theory Is Going Strong

Spoiler

Sam Esmail wants you to pay very, very close attention. The Mr. Robotcreator is directing every episode of his show’s second season, and he’s nothing if not detail-oriented, littering the screen and soundtrack with Easter eggs: references, callbacks, and call-forwards. As soon as last week’sseason premiere aired, viewers — including us — started to wonder if Esmail was already subtly planting the seeds of a big, reality-bending twist. But how does that suspicion fare in the wake of the taut second installment in the season? In short: very well. Let’s take a look at the new evidence. Spoilers below.

The theory is pretty simple: Although Elliot tells us that he’s living an unplugged life at his mother’s house, he’s actually living in the psych ward of a hospital. Episode two offered nothing to contradict the theory and plenty that synced up nicely with it:

The way the fsociety gang talks about Elliot.
In the premiere, fsociety hacker Mobley asked Darlene if she’d seen Elliot, to which she ambiguously replied, “That’s not important.” In tonight’s episode, the remaining members of the hacker collective — RIP Romero — talk about him in slightly greater detail. Mobley suspects that the Dark Army may have murdered Gideon and Romero, and that they knew who they were because Elliot ratted them out.

“State Elliot’s in —” Mobley says before Darlene cuts him off with a terse, “Don’t say what you’re thinking.” She says she’ll talk to him, which means she knows where he is (perhaps she helped him check himself in?). “I don’t trust her or her crazy-ass brother,” Mobley muses after she leaves. All of that dialogue fits very easily with the notion that their erstwhile leader is in the loony bin and they all know about it.

Everything with Ray.
Last week, we theorized that Ray might be a fellow patient, but it seems far more likely that he’s someone highly placed at the institution, probably some kind of administrator. We see him a few times in situations that would be happening in his life outside the hospital: dining at home and threatening a techie who appears to be working for him into some kind of criminal sideline gig. And although he talks to his dead wife, we later see him fully admit that he’s aware she’s gone, meaning he’s not hallucinating.

More importantly, he talks to Elliot in the manner of someone who has a good deal of information and authority over him. Remember how, last episode, he knew our hacker hero was computer-oriented? It would make sense that he’d have that information if he’s well-placed at the hospital. In this episode, he tries to coerce Elliot into working with him, presumably to replace the aforementioned techie.

He gets ahold of Elliot’s journal (which would be hard unless he were in close quarters with Elliot on a regular basis) and confronts him about it, confiding that he himself has also experienced a certain degree of madness in the form of his chats with his departed bride — just the kind of thing an emotionally manipulative psych-ward supervisor would do to win over a patient. He later calls Elliot into his office, which has the slightly run-down look and cubed-glass window of an institutional office. “You’re smart enough to know that keeping this inside isn’t gonna last," Ray says — could “inside” have a dual meaning? Is Ray offering Elliot some degree of freedom in exchange for some illicit work?

The saga of the pills.
Leon hooks our protagonist up with an obscene amount of Adderall, which Elliot starts popping to get rid of Mr. Robot. Such drugs would be plentiful in a psych ward, and although they’d be under lock and key, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume a crafty fellow like Leon might be able to get his hands on them. It seems especially likely if other employees are as morally compromised as Ray.

Once Elliot starts flying high, he has a vision of being abducted by men in black who cram a thick, grey paste down his gullet, forcing him to vomit up the pills. He then scrambles to pick them up out of his spew and swallow them again. This is pretty obviously a hallucination, and one that could definitely reflect an incident in some hospital bathroom or hallway: Elliot, under the influence of his Mr. Robot persona, puked, then got (relative) control of himself and reconsumed the goods. Pity the poor janitor tasked with wiping up.

The meeting.
Elliot returns to his group meetings, which we previously theorized were a kind of group therapy. But given how intensely religious and confession-based they turned out to be in this episode, could it be that they’re in-hospital Narcotics Anonymous meetings? And when Elliot goes on his rant against organized religion, nobody seems all that put off by his wild pattern of speech and his vehemence. Perhaps, given that this is happening in a psych ward, the listeners are used to patients losing it like that?

The Adderall-induced imagery.
While feeling his euphoric lucidity, Elliot starts to picture things a bit differently, and his visions get more hospital-y. While running up some steps, each one turns white, as they might be in a hospital. While cleaning some dishes, he notes how clean they look, and we see them in gleaming white — again, the color of a hospital. But the biggest clue comes in an eatery. Last week, we noted that the restaurant where Leon and Elliot meet up for the former’s Seinfeld thoughts looked a lot like an institutional cafeteria, with its trays and sleepy-looking diners. Elliot returns to it for chats with Leon and Ray this time, and while he’s bugged out on the Adderall, its look begins to change. The lights start to flicker, making it very apparent that they’re cheap fluorescents of the sort one might find in an institution. Perhaps, as his focus becomes more acute, reality was starting to peek in through the cracks of his hallucination.

yup

 

[Database Error]

This Mr. Robot Reality-Bending Twist Theory Is Going Strong

Spoiler

Sam Esmail wants you to pay very, very close attention. The Mr. Robotcreator is directing every episode of his show’s second season, and he’s nothing if not detail-oriented, littering the screen and soundtrack with Easter eggs: references, callbacks, and call-forwards. As soon as last week’sseason premiere aired, viewers — including us — started to wonder if Esmail was already subtly planting the seeds of a big, reality-bending twist. But how does that suspicion fare in the wake of the taut second installment in the season? In short: very well. Let’s take a look at the new evidence. Spoilers below.

The theory is pretty simple: Although Elliot tells us that he’s living an unplugged life at his mother’s house, he’s actually living in the psych ward of a hospital. Episode two offered nothing to contradict the theory and plenty that synced up nicely with it:

The way the fsociety gang talks about Elliot.
In the premiere, fsociety hacker Mobley asked Darlene if she’d seen Elliot, to which she ambiguously replied, “That’s not important.” In tonight’s episode, the remaining members of the hacker collective — RIP Romero — talk about him in slightly greater detail. Mobley suspects that the Dark Army may have murdered Gideon and Romero, and that they knew who they were because Elliot ratted them out.

“State Elliot’s in —” Mobley says before Darlene cuts him off with a terse, “Don’t say what you’re thinking.” She says she’ll talk to him, which means she knows where he is (perhaps she helped him check himself in?). “I don’t trust her or her crazy-ass brother,” Mobley muses after she leaves. All of that dialogue fits very easily with the notion that their erstwhile leader is in the loony bin and they all know about it.

Everything with Ray.
Last week, we theorized that Ray might be a fellow patient, but it seems far more likely that he’s someone highly placed at the institution, probably some kind of administrator. We see him a few times in situations that would be happening in his life outside the hospital: dining at home and threatening a techie who appears to be working for him into some kind of criminal sideline gig. And although he talks to his dead wife, we later see him fully admit that he’s aware she’s gone, meaning he’s not hallucinating.

More importantly, he talks to Elliot in the manner of someone who has a good deal of information and authority over him. Remember how, last episode, he knew our hacker hero was computer-oriented? It would make sense that he’d have that information if he’s well-placed at the hospital. In this episode, he tries to coerce Elliot into working with him, presumably to replace the aforementioned techie.

He gets ahold of Elliot’s journal (which would be hard unless he were in close quarters with Elliot on a regular basis) and confronts him about it, confiding that he himself has also experienced a certain degree of madness in the form of his chats with his departed bride — just the kind of thing an emotionally manipulative psych-ward supervisor would do to win over a patient. He later calls Elliot into his office, which has the slightly run-down look and cubed-glass window of an institutional office. “You’re smart enough to know that keeping this inside isn’t gonna last," Ray says — could “inside” have a dual meaning? Is Ray offering Elliot some degree of freedom in exchange for some illicit work?

The saga of the pills.
Leon hooks our protagonist up with an obscene amount of Adderall, which Elliot starts popping to get rid of Mr. Robot. Such drugs would be plentiful in a psych ward, and although they’d be under lock and key, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume a crafty fellow like Leon might be able to get his hands on them. It seems especially likely if other employees are as morally compromised as Ray.

Once Elliot starts flying high, he has a vision of being abducted by men in black who cram a thick, grey paste down his gullet, forcing him to vomit up the pills. He then scrambles to pick them up out of his spew and swallow them again. This is pretty obviously a hallucination, and one that could definitely reflect an incident in some hospital bathroom or hallway: Elliot, under the influence of his Mr. Robot persona, puked, then got (relative) control of himself and reconsumed the goods. Pity the poor janitor tasked with wiping up.

The meeting.
Elliot returns to his group meetings, which we previously theorized were a kind of group therapy. But given how intensely religious and confession-based they turned out to be in this episode, could it be that they’re in-hospital Narcotics Anonymous meetings? And when Elliot goes on his rant against organized religion, nobody seems all that put off by his wild pattern of speech and his vehemence. Perhaps, given that this is happening in a psych ward, the listeners are used to patients losing it like that?

The Adderall-induced imagery.
While feeling his euphoric lucidity, Elliot starts to picture things a bit differently, and his visions get more hospital-y. While running up some steps, each one turns white, as they might be in a hospital. While cleaning some dishes, he notes how clean they look, and we see them in gleaming white — again, the color of a hospital. But the biggest clue comes in an eatery. Last week, we noted that the restaurant where Leon and Elliot meet up for the former’s Seinfeld thoughts looked a lot like an institutional cafeteria, with its trays and sleepy-looking diners. Elliot returns to it for chats with Leon and Ray this time, and while he’s bugged out on the Adderall, its look begins to change. The lights start to flicker, making it very apparent that they’re cheap fluorescents of the sort one might find in an institution. Perhaps, as his focus becomes more acute, reality was starting to peek in through the cracks of his hallucination.

 

[Database Error]

 

[Database Error]

USA USA USA

 

[ansatsusha_gouki]

This show is great


Darlene and Angela

 

[playahaitian]

http://www.vulture.com/2016/07/stephanie-corneliussen-mr-robot-bondage.html

There were a lot of scenes that had viewers talking during the first season of USA’s breakout thriller Mr. Robot, and one of them involved a ball gag. Stephanie Corneliussen’s Lady Macbeth–like villainess, Joanna Wellick, demanded that her husband Tyrell strap her in for a BDSM session. Since then, we’ve seen the character played by the Danish actress get even more adventurous, engaging in knife play with a boy toy a few weeks ago, but we’ve also seen her get more complex. Joanna seems to be deeply in love with her hubby, yet is willing to cut him off and rat him out, and she’s doing everything she can to protect her and her child’s financial well-being. Vulture caught up with Corneliussen to talk about Joanna’s machinations, her willingness to get kinky on set, and the fact that she and Martin Wallström’s Tyrell aren’t actually speaking the same language to each other in their scenes together.

Have you guys wrapped shooting at this point?
Yeah, finally. We wrapped on the 19th, so actually four days after the season premiere.

Sam Esmail cuts it pretty close.
Oh yeah, absolutely. I don't know when that man sleeps. We've been doing this block shooting, where you can end up having four or five scenes in one day, and that can turn into 18-hour days. And I know he edits a couple of hours before and after a shoot day, so where are we at? He must have, like, an hour and a half of sleep. [Laughs.] I don’t even understand how he's still walking.


Speaking of Sam: When he recruited you, what did he tell you about Joanna?
I had such limited information about her. I think cold-blooded was one [word used]. Manipulative was one of them. Then, Sam and I had a conversation where Lady Macbeth popped up and we both had that thought about her. A lot of the composing posture you see in Joanna I actually took from Lauren Bacall from To Have or Have Not. I absolutely adored that movie as a kid and I just remembered this woman who was so statuesque, and I was like, I want to do that. I wanted Joanna to be like that. I want her to have that complete, cool-cucumber effect on people, as Lauren Bacall did in that movie. She was originally supposed to be Swedish.

She was?
I actually auditioned in Swedish — I speak Swedish as well, some Danes do. On set the very first day, Martin [Wallström] and I were speaking to each other. We speak Danish and Swedish to each other when we talk on set, and Sam comes over and he's listening to us for a second and he looks at us and goes, "Are you guys speaking the same language? It sounds different?" First off all, I was very impressed that he could actually hear that. I was like, "Actually, no: I’m speaking Danish and Martin is speaking Swedish." And he was like, "And you guys actually understand each other?" and I was like, "Yeah." For some people, especially if you live in Copenhagen and Stockholm, where Martin lives, we understand each other pretty well. Then [Sam] was like, "Do you want to do it in Danish? Do you want to make Joanna Danish?" And I was like, "Are you fucking kidding me, that would be amazing!" Sam asked if it would make sense, and I was like, "Yeah, I'd make sense, I have multiple friends who are Swedish and Danish and who are married."

So in scenes when Joanna and Tyrell are talking to each other, Martin’s speaking Swedish and you’re speaking Danish?
He's speaking Swedish and I'm speaking Danish, and then Martin and I decided that because they have been together for a long time, they are going to sometimes implement a little Danish and a little Swedish words to each other [instead of their respective native languages]. Some of the words are very different, so we decided that, if you're having a casual conversation with your spouse and you want to make sure that you're understood, if it's easier to slip in a Swedish word, or for him, a Danish word to me, so that I would guess exactly what he's saying, that's what they'd do.

We can't talk about Joanna without talking about bondage. When did you find out you’d be doing bondage scenes, and what was your reaction?
Well, that was the scene I auditioned with, the one where [Tyrell and Joanna] are in bed and she's in bondage. As an actress, I was really intrigued by it from the get-go. I was like, Who is this chick? If she is such a dominant character, why would she take the role of the submissive? Joanna is such a both/and character. There is no either/or with her. She has this complete obsession with control and power, and I don't think it's an actual obsession in her head — that's literally just how she is wired. And to be in that much control and power, those moments in the bedroom where she can relinquish control and be completely submissive, I think that's her escape. But at the same time, she is still calling the shots. It's odd, right?

It's what's referred to as “topping from the bottom,” or so I’m told.
I'm happy to have the lingo down. [Laughs.]

Do you feel especially exposed when you’re doing those scenes?
As Stephanie?

Yeah. Obviously, Joanna is into it. But how do you feel when you have your clothes off and a ball gag in your mouth?
It's a closed set. We've a minimum amount of people on set, and they do everything to make me feel comfortable. There's a person standing with a robe if I want to be covered. But I think this plays a lot into my culture and my background as a Dane. I am very liberal and fairly exhibitionistic. I don't really have a problem with nudity or anything like that. But also, I'm so in the mind-set of Joanna that it doesn't affect me personally. I definitely think that it's easier for me because of my nationality, where we don't fret too much about nudity and all that stuff. I think we were the first country to distribute commercial porn.

When you're getting slapped, is it all TV magic or is there any actual pain that happens?
Sometimes you'll have actors such as myself and a few other actors on the show who are willing to go to that extent that says, "Just for one take, slap me right." Sam's not crazy about that, but I mean, sometimes, to get into it and to feel it, we'll do it. I like to go and to push it as far as I can without it being dangerous, obviously, but it helps you as an actress.

Was that your thigh in the season premiere, when Derek draws blood with the knife, or was that a double’s?
No, that was mine. That was my leg. I have a wonderful double, but that was me doing it. This was a very intricate prop with like a little hose filled with fake blood. Sam is not really happy with putting us in real danger. I'm all for it. I don't think I would mind being cut a little bit.

In this week’s episode, Joanna offers to rat out Tyrell. Does she actually love him? That’s a shitty thing to do to someone you love.
Oh, she loves him absolutely and she misses him. The thing is, Joanna has a numero-uno objective, and that's her child. Something hormonally and biologically switches in Joanna as soon as she has this baby. It becomes her everything. Somebody of her mind-set will always have something that is to an extent an obsession. In season one, it's Tyrell. Now she has her baby, and she will go even further and through even more to protect this child. She's exploring every avenue to try to get a little better control over this mess she's in.

Speaking of love: Does Joanna love Derek, her sweet little boy-toy?
She says she does, but the thing with Joanna is we never really know what she means when she says something. I feel like a lot of the things that Joanna says that come out so forcefully, it sounds like this is exactly what she's saying, and it is, but it could also mean 7,000 other things. Is it real love? Is it her thinking, "Maybe I can change my life now and try something new?" We don't know yet. Only time will tell.

Joanna is probably the best-dressed character on the show. How does your mind-set change when you get into one of her outfits?
Kim Wilcox, who was our costume designer on the first season, and I initially had the conversation about Joanna's wardrobe. We could very easily dress her up in black and make her look very villainous, but I told Kim, “I want Joanna to be a wolf in sheep's clothing." Kim already had this idea of these light ethereal Scandinavian colors and that was the concept that we developed. You see this completely dominant, powerful, villainous character who's walking around in these beautiful, floral, light-beige colors. She looks so nice and accessible and approachable. She doesn't seem as intimidating until she stares in your eyes and tries to kill you.

In your mind, do you think Joanna comes from money?
We get a little bit of a taste in season one when she's talking about adopting away her first child. Then, when she's talking to the sweet boy-toy, Derek, in tonight's episode, she says to him, "You don't have any money, but I had all those things before." Putting the pieces together shows that coming from a family where teen pregnancy is unacceptable and talking about this wealth that she's had, I think she comes from a very prestigious and very privileged lifestyle. Now that Tyrell's missing, this is the first time in Joanna's life where she's actually struggling for money. Not having it is really frustrating to her and making her more dangerous in the sense that it's making her desperate.

One last thing: In the season-one finale, why does Joanna speak to Elliot in Danish for a few words?
I want to lead this into a multiple-outcome situation. It could be many things. It could be that she expects him to understand her, or when you're making a death threat to someone that you've just met, saying it in another language is just pretty ballsy. She knows he's not going to understand. Or is he going to understand? At this point I think that we will get more answers to that later on.

 

[bborn]

peace

There goes Denzel & Pauletta's daughter looking just like her Moms in the arcade playing one of the alphabet boys in 1st 15 mins of show.

Nice flashback too.

Lol @ Pimpin wanting/needing her skrilla......

 

[playahaitian]

​

 

[playahaitian]

https://www.whoismrrobot.com/massacre/

​

 

[geechiedan]

she looks like a skinnier version of kat dennings...

 

[The Technician]

http://deadline.com/2016/07/mr-robo...ebut-emmys-rami-malek-usa-network-1201786811/

I'm in this group. I can't get into this show. I wanted to like it too. I forced myself to watch the first three episodes of the 2nd season, but I'm not being convinced to come back for the fourth.

 

[playahaitian]

I'm in this group. I can't get into this show. I wanted to like it too. I forced myself to watch the first three episodes of the 2nd season, but I'm not being convinced to come back for the fourth.

I understand why its not for everyone but that's my crack.

 

[geechiedan]

I'm in this group. I can't get into this show. I wanted to like it too. I forced myself to watch the first three episodes of the 2nd season, but I'm not being convinced to come back for the fourth.

let me get you thru your issue...its fight club for geeks.
its kinda obvious that mr robot is in elliots head and its kinda slow moving

yeah i felt the same way.. but once you get passed the fourth and fifth episode things pick up and they go deeper than just tyler durden for nerds..elliots got A LOT of issues that come up much later... hang in for a few more eps and see how you like it..

 

[playahaitian]

let me get you thru your issue...its fight club for geeks.
its kinda obvious that mr robot is in elliots head and its kinda slow moving

yeah i felt the same way.. but once you get passed the fourth and fifth episode things pick up and they go deeper than just tyler durden for nerds..elliots got A LOT of issues that come up much later... hang in for a few more eps and see how you like it..

I like that...

 

[Winslow Wong]

I understand why its not for everyone but that's my crack.

One of the things that I find good about watching a weekly series is that it allows you time to ponder what you watched, mull it over and sometimes days later ..that Ah ha moment kicks in. Mr Robot was like that a lot in the first season. I think it would have been different binging it on Netflix, one episode after the other getting to the end and not understanding that its not the destination but the journey that is enjoyable. Season 2 is all about aftermath both externally and internally after the F Society succeeded in what they wanted to do. Success is not all its cracked up to be and the realization between winning battles and winning the war both internally and externally.

Finally, USA is basic cable meaning that are just a nudge above regular network but Mr Robot is pushing the envelope to HBO level storytelling.

 

[The Technician]

let me get you thru your issue...its fight club for geeks.
its kinda obvious that mr robot is in elliots head and its kinda slow moving

yeah i felt the same way.. but once you get passed the fourth and fifth episode things pick up and they go deeper than just tyler durden for nerds..elliots got A LOT of issues that come up much later... hang in for a few more eps and see how you like it..

I like that analogy "Fight Club for geeks". I guess it won't hurt to give it a little more time.