Mr. Robot: eps2.9pyth0n-pt1.p7z
September 14, 2016 9:23 PM - Season 2, Episode 11 - Subscribe
Whiterose is into retro gaming. Elliot learns to surf the dissociation. We the complicit observer and friend to Elliot are encouraged to say WTF.
The episode opens with Elliot telling us he's going to be dreaming. I think we should believe him. Angela's interrogation (and her journey there) were all dreamlike. I don't think all the scenes were him dreaming (such as the ones with Dom), but anything with Angela was. Especially with no explanation how she ended up in the van - how'd they abduct her on the subway and drag her to a van? (although my initial inclination was that she had been wearing a wire when speaking to Elliot on the subway and the driver and passenger were FBI - but it ended up she clearly didn't know them). And she never asked to use the bathroom in her four hours plus in the room.
Another indication of it all being a dream: Elliot's voice can be heard in the background saying "Body asleep, mind awake" when Mr. Robot returns.
posted by ShooBoo at 11:28 PM on September 14, 2016
Another indication of it all being a dream: Elliot's voice can be heard in the background saying "Body asleep, mind awake" when Mr. Robot returns.
posted by ShooBoo at 11:28 PM on September 14, 2016
It'll be interesting to find out what the taxi driver was saying, in what I presume was Arabic. If Elliot was dreaming, and assuming he doesn't understand Arabic, I would expect the taxi driver to be speaking just some random Arabic Elliot had heard in the past.
posted by ShooBoo at 11:59 PM on September 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by ShooBoo at 11:59 PM on September 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
Yeah, I think the show is going to shift into full sc-fi next ep. Is there an html tag to obscure spoilers unless highlighted/whatever? I have theory, but it's pretty far out there.
posted by Fiberoptic Zebroid and The Hypnagogic Jerks at 12:59 AM on September 15, 2016
posted by Fiberoptic Zebroid and The Hypnagogic Jerks at 12:59 AM on September 15, 2016
Sepinwall's review. Like me, he seems to feel that this will play much better in future rewatches, or if it had aired the same night as next week's episode, than it does on his own. This felt like it threw a few extra balls in the air along with the existing ones and so more of them need to be caught for a satisfying season finale... But that said, I really did like the episode's weirder moments. That conversation between poor Dom and Alexa was great.
I also found her boss' revelations fairly chilling. And on a tech nonsense note, I'm glad during the weirdo dream sequence with the BBQ menu that it wasn't just a ROT13 but something on top of that.
But also: Jesus, White Rose, was giving Angela the Voight-Kampff act really necessary? I'm not sure. I ... kind of like the notion that White Rose would see getting Angela on her side as the start of causing trouble for Price after their recent flare ups. If she's been doing her homework on Elliot's associates, both before and after the hack, and on E-Corp's shenanigans, it makes sense that she'd notice Angela popping up all over the place.
I wonder if this means Angela's sort of leveled up in a certain sense. Last season she gained access to the inner workings of E-Corp. She's now somewhat unintentionally parlayed that into access to the inner workings of the Dark Army? A kind of access Elliot and crew would never get anywhere near. We'll see I guess.
I'm not sure what I think about theories that the show is about to get all Lost on us and go "full sci-fi." I was one of the people that was sort of hoping the end of the first season of True Detective would end up being more supernatural than it was likely going to be, and finding myself in a similar position here... At the moment, I hope it stays more on the grounded side of things.
posted by sparkletone at 1:03 AM on September 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
I also found her boss' revelations fairly chilling. And on a tech nonsense note, I'm glad during the weirdo dream sequence with the BBQ menu that it wasn't just a ROT13 but something on top of that.
But also: Jesus, White Rose, was giving Angela the Voight-Kampff act really necessary? I'm not sure. I ... kind of like the notion that White Rose would see getting Angela on her side as the start of causing trouble for Price after their recent flare ups. If she's been doing her homework on Elliot's associates, both before and after the hack, and on E-Corp's shenanigans, it makes sense that she'd notice Angela popping up all over the place.
I wonder if this means Angela's sort of leveled up in a certain sense. Last season she gained access to the inner workings of E-Corp. She's now somewhat unintentionally parlayed that into access to the inner workings of the Dark Army? A kind of access Elliot and crew would never get anywhere near. We'll see I guess.
I'm not sure what I think about theories that the show is about to get all Lost on us and go "full sci-fi." I was one of the people that was sort of hoping the end of the first season of True Detective would end up being more supernatural than it was likely going to be, and finding myself in a similar position here... At the moment, I hope it stays more on the grounded side of things.
posted by sparkletone at 1:03 AM on September 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
I didn’t realize that Grace Gummer is Meryl Streep’s daughter. It seems so obvious in retrospect.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 4:59 AM on September 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by 1970s Antihero at 4:59 AM on September 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
Ah, that's why the name Gummer is familiar! I kept thinking of Judy Garland/Frances Gumm.
I thought, even though it was overplayed and oddball, the scenes with Angela made sense in the context of Whiterose testing her, even down to the kid. The photos in the hallway with taped-over faces was too practical (and creepy) to be a dream.
I'm more concerned that Tyrell is a replacement/alternate to Mr Robot, since Elliot couldn't get a coherent answer from the taxi driver.
posted by tracicle at 7:36 AM on September 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
I thought, even though it was overplayed and oddball, the scenes with Angela made sense in the context of Whiterose testing her, even down to the kid. The photos in the hallway with taped-over faces was too practical (and creepy) to be a dream.
I'm more concerned that Tyrell is a replacement/alternate to Mr Robot, since Elliot couldn't get a coherent answer from the taxi driver.
posted by tracicle at 7:36 AM on September 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
Reading between the lines, it seems someone (Darlene?) is alive, because Dom said "Promise me you'll let me do the interview," and I don't think she'd want to interview some random person at the restaurant. Still no sigh of Trenton or Mobley, but this was a very Angela-centric episode, in a very tense way.
ShooBoo: It'll be interesting to find out what the taxi driver was saying, in what I presume was Arabic.
Reddit: Everything the driver was saying.
More random information - here's what was on the Commodore 64 floppy:
The hex numbers were 32 35 31 41 53 45 43 52 45 54 21, which convert from hex to text to become 251ASECRET! Which could be 251-273-2738 (thanks Dial ABC, I was lazy). But that's a number in either Mobile or Citronelle, Alabama. I may call it later, if I haven't found a comment from Reddit or elsewhere who tried it.
One more from Reddit: a screenshot of text that is copied from H.P. Lovecraft's The Book.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:45 AM on September 15, 2016 [11 favorites]
ShooBoo: It'll be interesting to find out what the taxi driver was saying, in what I presume was Arabic.
Reddit: Everything the driver was saying.
More random information - here's what was on the Commodore 64 floppy:
ANGELA MOSS "PINK SHIRT BOOK" "----------------" "LAND OF ECODELIA" "----------------" "UGLY RED BOOK" "----------------" "BLUE BOOK" "GREEN BOOK" "MANIAC MANSION" "----------------" "PITFALL" "----------------" "TAN BOOK"
- Pink shirt book is The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC
- Land of Ecodelia is "a reference to a relatively obscure scholarly argument that psychedelic drugs should be regarded as a technology that gave rise to the era of computers" (via GQ recap)
- Ugly red book, Blue book, Green book, and Tan book are all from the Rainbow Series of computer security standards and guidelines published by the United States government in the 1980s and 1990s.
- Maniac Mansion is a graphic (visual, not text-based) PC game from 1987, where the player uses text commands to move the story forward
- Pitfall is a time-limited platform game, in which you have 20 minutes to recover 32 treasures.
The hex numbers were 32 35 31 41 53 45 43 52 45 54 21, which convert from hex to text to become 251ASECRET! Which could be 251-273-2738 (thanks Dial ABC, I was lazy). But that's a number in either Mobile or Citronelle, Alabama. I may call it later, if I haven't found a comment from Reddit or elsewhere who tried it.
One more from Reddit: a screenshot of text that is copied from H.P. Lovecraft's The Book.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:45 AM on September 15, 2016 [11 favorites]
Jesus, White Rose, was giving Angela the Voight-Kampff act really necessary?
Well, the show is called Mr. Robot, after all.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 7:53 AM on September 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
Well, the show is called Mr. Robot, after all.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 7:53 AM on September 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
I have been super digging the Mr. Robot subreddit, and for this episode, the most compelling prediction I saw there was that White Rose won Angela over by resurrecting the fish. It just feels so right to me that I will be seriously bummed if that isn't right.
posted by prefpara at 8:33 AM on September 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by prefpara at 8:33 AM on September 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
Resurrecting the fish - did I really miss that? Or is that a prediction for the next episode? Their scene ends with this:
White Rose: Do you ever think that if you imagined or believed in something, it could come true... Simply by will?
Angela: Yes. Actually, I did believe that. But I'm slowly having to admit that's just not the real world... Even if I want it to be.
White Rose: Well, I guess it all depends on what your definition of real is.
In the background, the fish is still dead. Then we see Angela talking to the lawyer, telling her "I need you to forget about that voice mail that I left you" and "Don't call me anymore."
One Second Before Awakening: I think this show's about to go sci-fi on us. It's been building up to it with mentions of "Operation Berenstain," White Rose's conversation with Dom about alternate timelines, etc
I hadn't thought much about the name Operation Berenstain until you mentioned "alternate timelines" -- which made me think of The Berenstein Bears Switcheroo and talks of Universe A and Universe E. And while re-reading the transcript, I came back to this line from White Rose: "That they were a trade, a sacrifice for the greater good, that they gave their lives to take humanity to the next level."
I think Esmail is slowly prying open a larger view of this world. If White Rose had stopped with "greater good," I could have written that off as her talking about greed and maximizing corporate gains, but "take humanity to the next level"? That's sounding like the opening to a sci-fi plot for the next season.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:10 AM on September 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
White Rose: Do you ever think that if you imagined or believed in something, it could come true... Simply by will?
Angela: Yes. Actually, I did believe that. But I'm slowly having to admit that's just not the real world... Even if I want it to be.
White Rose: Well, I guess it all depends on what your definition of real is.
In the background, the fish is still dead. Then we see Angela talking to the lawyer, telling her "I need you to forget about that voice mail that I left you" and "Don't call me anymore."
One Second Before Awakening: I think this show's about to go sci-fi on us. It's been building up to it with mentions of "Operation Berenstain," White Rose's conversation with Dom about alternate timelines, etc
I hadn't thought much about the name Operation Berenstain until you mentioned "alternate timelines" -- which made me think of The Berenstein Bears Switcheroo and talks of Universe A and Universe E. And while re-reading the transcript, I came back to this line from White Rose: "That they were a trade, a sacrifice for the greater good, that they gave their lives to take humanity to the next level."
I think Esmail is slowly prying open a larger view of this world. If White Rose had stopped with "greater good," I could have written that off as her talking about greed and maximizing corporate gains, but "take humanity to the next level"? That's sounding like the opening to a sci-fi plot for the next season.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:10 AM on September 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's a prediction - as far as we have seen, the fish is dead. Related note: I miss Qwerty!
posted by prefpara at 9:31 AM on September 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by prefpara at 9:31 AM on September 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
That musical theme that comes in at the end of the White Rose scene is just masterful. Also the voices chanting at the beginning with the smash cut to the baby. I've been totally with this show since season one, I hope Esmail doesn't compromise one bit with next season.
I also think that the living room rug that Angela passes through was a direct Twin Peaks black lodge reference. Nothing in Mr Robot is by chance.
Also someone on reddit pointed out that when Angela visits her lawyer, the tv repeats the broadcast from several seconds prior. I'm sure this means something. If you watch the scene with the idea of Angela revising a conversation that's gone bad, the alternate reality/time jump theories make more sense. (And if that's the case, how interesting will it be to throw a split personality unreliable narrator like Elliot into a world like that?)
posted by Catblack at 7:29 PM on September 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
I also think that the living room rug that Angela passes through was a direct Twin Peaks black lodge reference. Nothing in Mr Robot is by chance.
Also someone on reddit pointed out that when Angela visits her lawyer, the tv repeats the broadcast from several seconds prior. I'm sure this means something. If you watch the scene with the idea of Angela revising a conversation that's gone bad, the alternate reality/time jump theories make more sense. (And if that's the case, how interesting will it be to throw a split personality unreliable narrator like Elliot into a world like that?)
posted by Catblack at 7:29 PM on September 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
I'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned the fact that two of the songs on tonight's soundtrack were featured in Back to the Future: the music when Angela's first shown in the van [Night Train - Marvin Berry & the Starlighters] and then the song over the closing scene with Elliot and Tyrell [Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine) - Marvin Berry & The Starlighters].
posted by komara at 8:14 PM on September 15, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by komara at 8:14 PM on September 15, 2016 [5 favorites]
Angela standing in her lawyer's doorway while the lights flicker -- chills. Yes, very Black Lodge.
posted by trunk muffins at 8:26 PM on September 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by trunk muffins at 8:26 PM on September 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
I also think that the living room rug that Angela passes through was a direct Twin Peaks black lodge reference.
Yes, and Angela repeatedly saying 'who are you' in the trippy dream room was a direct reference to the The Prisoner. As indeed was much of the tone of her scenes.
posted by roolya_boolya at 8:56 PM on September 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
maybe White Rose is actually running some kind of transhumanist project
Ha nice, with all of that talk of mortality and turning back time, maybe Whiterose is eyeing up Angela as a potential host.
posted by Paragon at 9:19 PM on September 15, 2016
Ha nice, with all of that talk of mortality and turning back time, maybe Whiterose is eyeing up Angela as a potential host.
posted by Paragon at 9:19 PM on September 15, 2016
As indeed was much of the tone of her scenes.
Yeah, I think it was the AV Club reviewer that made heavy reference to Lynch regarding them and they're not wrong exactly, but The Prisoner is the thing I kept thinking of during those scenes.
I'd rather ride around in a black SUV than one of those bouncing bubble capture things.
posted by sparkletone at 12:22 AM on September 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
Yeah, I think it was the AV Club reviewer that made heavy reference to Lynch regarding them and they're not wrong exactly, but The Prisoner is the thing I kept thinking of during those scenes.
I'd rather ride around in a black SUV than one of those bouncing bubble capture things.
posted by sparkletone at 12:22 AM on September 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
Wow, now that you guys pointed it out I can definitely see Meryl Streep in Grace Gummer. I liked her character, as underused as she was, in The Newsroom.
posted by numaner at 9:44 AM on September 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by numaner at 9:44 AM on September 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
Since we're doing predictions...
Oh man, if the universes from Mr. Robot and Orphan Black were somehow to combine, I would lose my fucking mind....in the best of all possible ways.
posted by Fizz at 2:36 PM on September 16, 2016 [3 favorites]
Oh man, if the universes from Mr. Robot and Orphan Black were somehow to combine, I would lose my fucking mind....in the best of all possible ways.
posted by Fizz at 2:36 PM on September 16, 2016 [3 favorites]
Last season was Fight Club, this season is The Matrix. Next season?
posted by Justinian at 4:38 PM on September 16, 2016
posted by Justinian at 4:38 PM on September 16, 2016
I'll probably need to watch this episode a second time, because I sure didn't much care for it the first time. We just managed to come back to consensus reality last episode. Eliot's finally back in the real world, the story's moving forward. Then we go back to bizarro-land and I wasn't quite willing to go along for the ride. Also while the Black Lodge scenes with Angela had their own interior beauty, I didn't think they intercut very well with the other stories.
I sure hope they don't do a sci-fi Twist and it turns out the Washington Township event was really some portal between two parallel universes. But they've set up a really nice set of dualities. Eliot/Tyrell has always had dualism about them, now doubly so with the most recent weirdness in the cab. Whiterose/Zhang is an obvious duality in a single person, albeit integrated. The Black Lodge stuff ties Angela's experience directly to Cooper's in Twin Peaks. Perhaps Angela's dual is Darlene? And it's impossible to ignore the weight of the phrase "Operation Berenstain", at least for anyone who's read the essay.
Anyway, that's all just thematic dualism, a common enough character development device. I'd be bummed if they try to make the dualism literal.
posted by Nelson at 7:08 AM on September 17, 2016
I sure hope they don't do a sci-fi Twist and it turns out the Washington Township event was really some portal between two parallel universes. But they've set up a really nice set of dualities. Eliot/Tyrell has always had dualism about them, now doubly so with the most recent weirdness in the cab. Whiterose/Zhang is an obvious duality in a single person, albeit integrated. The Black Lodge stuff ties Angela's experience directly to Cooper's in Twin Peaks. Perhaps Angela's dual is Darlene? And it's impossible to ignore the weight of the phrase "Operation Berenstain", at least for anyone who's read the essay.
Anyway, that's all just thematic dualism, a common enough character development device. I'd be bummed if they try to make the dualism literal.
posted by Nelson at 7:08 AM on September 17, 2016
Something I picked up off of Reddit; the number cipher Mr. Robot solves is literally the first part of the DEFCON 22 badge from 2014. (Every year DEFCON has a hacking challenge around badges.) The show basically stops after Step 1; Step 2 is calling that 251ASECRET phone number and decoding the Morse code that it played. There's more.
I'm laughing because I thought that whole number cipher thing was really, really dumb in the show. More of a kid's puzzle than a Super Secret Mr. Robot code. Which in a way I guess it is, the DEFCON badges are meant to be a fun puzzle, not an unbreakable system. Anyway, neat of the show to pick it up and use it.
posted by Nelson at 8:04 AM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
I'm laughing because I thought that whole number cipher thing was really, really dumb in the show. More of a kid's puzzle than a Super Secret Mr. Robot code. Which in a way I guess it is, the DEFCON badges are meant to be a fun puzzle, not an unbreakable system. Anyway, neat of the show to pick it up and use it.
posted by Nelson at 8:04 AM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
I'm surprised that no one has yet mentioned the fact that two of the songs on tonight's soundtrack were featured in Back to the Future: the music when Angela's first shown in the van [Night Train - Marvin Berry & the Starlighters] and then the song over the closing scene with Elliot and Tyrell [Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine) - Marvin Berry & The Starlighters].
Two others - "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" that was on the radio in the van with Angela was also playing on the jukebox when Marty entered the diner.
And "Time Bomb Town" by Lindsey Buckingham from the cab with Elliot was also playing on the Marty's clock radio when Doc called to wake him up.
posted by bluecore at 3:04 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
Two others - "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" that was on the radio in the van with Angela was also playing on the jukebox when Marty entered the diner.
And "Time Bomb Town" by Lindsey Buckingham from the cab with Elliot was also playing on the Marty's clock radio when Doc called to wake him up.
posted by bluecore at 3:04 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
filthy light thief : thanks for explaining the contents of the c64 disk! I did not realize that the varicolored book filenames were actually referencing real computer-security things. I read the ecodelics/Land of Ecodelia theory in the GQ review too, which might point us in a transhumanist/Nick Bostrom-type direction - or just turn out something one of the writers read on the internet / through their research and decided it sounded cool.
Also, what you said about 'I think Esmail is slowly prying open a larger view of this world. If White Rose had stopped with "greater good," I could have written that off as her talking about greed and maximizing corporate gains, but "take humanity to the next level"?' : hmm. I like the idea of unpacking the levels of the show's current alternate reality (hey, by virtue of the 5/9 hack we're already in one), unraveling its machinations and moving parts just as the Wire did with its season 2 (the shipping and illegal int'l freight business), s3, s4 (origins: how the school system failed everyone from the start), and so on for 'the Dickensian view', as that one asshat newspaper guy kept putting it. Season 2 seemed like an unnecessary derailment for so many Wire viewers, but was ultimately needed to reconstruct the big picture - an aerial view of how the drug game worked out on a global level, not just confined to a bunch of 'street thugs' in Baltimore. (FTR, I've really enjoyed Mr Robot s2 so far! I just was telling a friend 'if the radioactive Washington Township plant/Whiterose's deal/whatever the hell Mr Robot & Tyrell call Phase 2 all boils down to a) time machine b) actual robots, like androids c) mutants because radioactivity d) the infinite improbability drive e) some singularity bullshit WITHOUT SATISFACTORY RETROACTIVE EXPLANATION I will seriously throw things at the tv'
oh man, that whole Angela interrogation sequence freaked me the fuck out. Those questions! The total quiet with only the disk reboot sounds on the old Commodore computer. The fish tank visibly running out of water! Angela's mini-me (what a great kid actor btw). The emphasis on the 'Is the key in the room' question (from the little girl, shown repeatedly on the monitor, from voice on the phone leading her through an old-school text adventure, little girl again); Angela is only able to answer satisfactorily once she glances at the paperback copy of Lolita on the table, looks up like she's had an epiphany & gives a direct quote from the book: 'the key was in my fist. My fist was in my pocket.' A lot's been made of the context of that line - originally 'And she was mine, she was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, she was mine.' (Humbert Humbert, having secretly dosed Lolita with sleeping pills & locked her in his hotel room while he wanders downstairs to get a drink.) Odd, as Esmail tends to reference Kubrick's version of Lolita rather than the novel.
Then Whiterose steps in, and reveals that the ostensibly-abused kid was just a fake-out to test Our Girl Angela's 'empathy. Or gullibility. Or both' (I loved that line). (BTW: the number of posters who have been on reddit or whatever going 'why didn't Angela touch the little girl's scars' - wtf? If some little girl shows you super-realistic (WR doesn't cut corners) marks of abuse, says she's being beaten, who's been asking you freakily age-inappropriate questions about sex in a monotone voice...most people, in that situation, would probably not touch a potentially (sexually-)abused child, let alone wipe her down for fake scars. Angela's just been kidnapped and brought to this Lynchian hellhole by obviously powerful people; who knows what else they're capable of? Maybe I'm gullible, but I'd also be more likely to go along with some bizarro Buzzfeed personality test Qs and a dying fish if it meant the kid wouldn't get hurt again ('...and if they could do that to a child, what could they do to me?') Hell, I'm not sure Elliot would do anything of the sort either, although he might peer at the girl more closely or ask her some extra questions. (Ange seemed somewhat externally devoid of reaction at this: then again, she's perfected this impervious ice-queen mask (and I do believe it's a mask, mantras & all) to get through her E-Corp strategy of gaining power (and evidence) from the inside.)
I mean, I read the 'key' question-and-response as signaling 2+ things:
- Angela wasn't shown trying much to escape from the closed-room scenario. We only see her try the door once (altho who knows what she was up to whilst waiting for WR for 4 hrs). WR asks mockingly, 'And you let a locked door stop you?' But Angela has been made to realize: 'the key was in my fist' all along. Does she possess a (metaphorical) key? Is she the key? Price certainly seems to think so; certainly WR wants to find out and/or elucidate Our Girl Angela's importance by virtue of her mother's involvement in Washington Township.
- More interestingly: the complete key excerpt from Nabokov ('she was mine...') - that Whiterose now has Angela in her control – or is it the other way around? If Angela has so much power in this Whiterose/Price endgame mindgame (...and the hypothetical key): can she find a way to wield it?
Or the Wire put it – did Angela start off as the pawn who finally crosses over to become a queen?
posted by rallumer at 3:18 PM on September 17, 2016 [6 favorites]
Also, what you said about 'I think Esmail is slowly prying open a larger view of this world. If White Rose had stopped with "greater good," I could have written that off as her talking about greed and maximizing corporate gains, but "take humanity to the next level"?' : hmm. I like the idea of unpacking the levels of the show's current alternate reality (hey, by virtue of the 5/9 hack we're already in one), unraveling its machinations and moving parts just as the Wire did with its season 2 (the shipping and illegal int'l freight business), s3, s4 (origins: how the school system failed everyone from the start), and so on for 'the Dickensian view', as that one asshat newspaper guy kept putting it. Season 2 seemed like an unnecessary derailment for so many Wire viewers, but was ultimately needed to reconstruct the big picture - an aerial view of how the drug game worked out on a global level, not just confined to a bunch of 'street thugs' in Baltimore. (FTR, I've really enjoyed Mr Robot s2 so far! I just was telling a friend 'if the radioactive Washington Township plant/Whiterose's deal/whatever the hell Mr Robot & Tyrell call Phase 2 all boils down to a) time machine b) actual robots, like androids c) mutants because radioactivity d) the infinite improbability drive e) some singularity bullshit WITHOUT SATISFACTORY RETROACTIVE EXPLANATION I will seriously throw things at the tv'
oh man, that whole Angela interrogation sequence freaked me the fuck out. Those questions! The total quiet with only the disk reboot sounds on the old Commodore computer. The fish tank visibly running out of water! Angela's mini-me (what a great kid actor btw). The emphasis on the 'Is the key in the room' question (from the little girl, shown repeatedly on the monitor, from voice on the phone leading her through an old-school text adventure, little girl again); Angela is only able to answer satisfactorily once she glances at the paperback copy of Lolita on the table, looks up like she's had an epiphany & gives a direct quote from the book: 'the key was in my fist. My fist was in my pocket.' A lot's been made of the context of that line - originally 'And she was mine, she was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, she was mine.' (Humbert Humbert, having secretly dosed Lolita with sleeping pills & locked her in his hotel room while he wanders downstairs to get a drink.) Odd, as Esmail tends to reference Kubrick's version of Lolita rather than the novel.
Then Whiterose steps in, and reveals that the ostensibly-abused kid was just a fake-out to test Our Girl Angela's 'empathy. Or gullibility. Or both' (I loved that line). (BTW: the number of posters who have been on reddit or whatever going 'why didn't Angela touch the little girl's scars' - wtf? If some little girl shows you super-realistic (WR doesn't cut corners) marks of abuse, says she's being beaten, who's been asking you freakily age-inappropriate questions about sex in a monotone voice...most people, in that situation, would probably not touch a potentially (sexually-)abused child, let alone wipe her down for fake scars. Angela's just been kidnapped and brought to this Lynchian hellhole by obviously powerful people; who knows what else they're capable of? Maybe I'm gullible, but I'd also be more likely to go along with some bizarro Buzzfeed personality test Qs and a dying fish if it meant the kid wouldn't get hurt again ('...and if they could do that to a child, what could they do to me?') Hell, I'm not sure Elliot would do anything of the sort either, although he might peer at the girl more closely or ask her some extra questions. (Ange seemed somewhat externally devoid of reaction at this: then again, she's perfected this impervious ice-queen mask (and I do believe it's a mask, mantras & all) to get through her E-Corp strategy of gaining power (and evidence) from the inside.)
I mean, I read the 'key' question-and-response as signaling 2+ things:
- Angela wasn't shown trying much to escape from the closed-room scenario. We only see her try the door once (altho who knows what she was up to whilst waiting for WR for 4 hrs). WR asks mockingly, 'And you let a locked door stop you?' But Angela has been made to realize: 'the key was in my fist' all along. Does she possess a (metaphorical) key? Is she the key? Price certainly seems to think so; certainly WR wants to find out and/or elucidate Our Girl Angela's importance by virtue of her mother's involvement in Washington Township.
- More interestingly: the complete key excerpt from Nabokov ('she was mine...') - that Whiterose now has Angela in her control – or is it the other way around? If Angela has so much power in this Whiterose/Price endgame mindgame (...and the hypothetical key): can she find a way to wield it?
Or the Wire put it – did Angela start off as the pawn who finally crosses over to become a queen?
posted by rallumer at 3:18 PM on September 17, 2016 [6 favorites]
I'll probably need to watch this episode a second time
I'd say wait and see how it plays when watched back to back with the second half after it airs next week. A lot of my enjoyment is contingent on that other part settling things out for the end of the season well.
posted by sparkletone at 3:24 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'd say wait and see how it plays when watched back to back with the second half after it airs next week. A lot of my enjoyment is contingent on that other part settling things out for the end of the season well.
posted by sparkletone at 3:24 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]
Also, I saw a comment on Reddit (I'd have to go back to link to it; I can't recall whether it's the same thread that devolved into a zillion gross comments about WR's gender identity) where someone posited that the Tyrell/Elliott cab sequence at the end is actually, in the timeframe, the start of the infamous Missing 3 Days. Tyrell isn't in disguise*, like it's nbd that he's the most wanted man in America, wearing a very Tyrellish suit, and the dialogue is nebulous enough that it could be a flashback. Elliot was trying for lucid dreaming, after all - maybe he's dreaming about something that already happened. They get in a cab, out the cab, Tyrell does a Bogie impression of 'Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship' - is that something you say after you've been doing some clandestine stuff together for 3 days + working in tandem however long it's been after 5/9? (Yeah, he says Phase 2 is already built, but when Darlene intercepts the Dark Army's text messages all it says is that Phase 2 is starting. Like it could've been primed to go whatever; it just remained to flick the switch).
I think this would be a fascinating way to kick into the 3 day reveal - if it's not shown, that'll seem like a real cop-out.
* Doesn't explain the distinctly different (more American, and somehow just rather off from the Tyrell we've been used to) vocal inflexions he's got here. Some people have said they hear it as Martin Wallström doing an impression of Christian Slater; I'm not sure enough of my American accents to be sure - opinions? Sam Esmail seems to keep such a tight hold on things that I don't see this as anything but an intentional choice.
(Speaking of which, Kitty Stardust made a comment in the last episode thread which made me crack up - that Joanna's clearly shown applying MAC lipstick (which surprised me, too! you'd think cinematographically they'd go with a fancy-casing-YSL-type - but her funds are tight, MAC make great reds, and with the CZ-earring story in this ep, she places more value on how her material objects are attained than their monetary value. Joanna's chipped nail polish vs WR's immaculate blue manicure were a fun, if probably meaningless, stylistic choice as well.)
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um also not to kill the thread with all this tl;dr but does anyone think Dom's 7 am meeting is going to be Important? She asks Alexa to wake her at 7 and then starts into a distracting exploration of existential angst with her chirpy but ineffective interlocutor, and doesn't bring up the 7 am alarm clock again.
posted by rallumer at 3:48 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
I think this would be a fascinating way to kick into the 3 day reveal - if it's not shown, that'll seem like a real cop-out.
* Doesn't explain the distinctly different (more American, and somehow just rather off from the Tyrell we've been used to) vocal inflexions he's got here. Some people have said they hear it as Martin Wallström doing an impression of Christian Slater; I'm not sure enough of my American accents to be sure - opinions? Sam Esmail seems to keep such a tight hold on things that I don't see this as anything but an intentional choice.
(Speaking of which, Kitty Stardust made a comment in the last episode thread which made me crack up - that Joanna's clearly shown applying MAC lipstick (which surprised me, too! you'd think cinematographically they'd go with a fancy-casing-YSL-type - but her funds are tight, MAC make great reds, and with the CZ-earring story in this ep, she places more value on how her material objects are attained than their monetary value. Joanna's chipped nail polish vs WR's immaculate blue manicure were a fun, if probably meaningless, stylistic choice as well.)
-
um also not to kill the thread with all this tl;dr but does anyone think Dom's 7 am meeting is going to be Important? She asks Alexa to wake her at 7 and then starts into a distracting exploration of existential angst with her chirpy but ineffective interlocutor, and doesn't bring up the 7 am alarm clock again.
posted by rallumer at 3:48 PM on September 17, 2016 [3 favorites]
More interestingly: the complete key excerpt from Nabokov ('she was mine...') - that Whiterose now has Angela in her control – or is it the other way around? If Angela has so much power in this Whiterose/Price endgame mindgame (...and the hypothetical key): can she find a way to wield it?Nabokov is such a great reference to bring up at this point with respect to issues of narrative control. Obviously, we have some kind of Humbert-Lolita relationship being hinted at here (and Angela, it seems, knows her Nabokov, so the placement of the book can hardly be a coincidence). But of course, Humbert is ultimately not in control, and this set of references will start anyone who knows the book nosing around for possible Quiltys.
By the way, on the subject of intergenerational shared consciousness or upload, has anyone had any thoughts on why Angela is such a fan of relatively obscure early Sonic Youth?
posted by Sonny Jim at 5:50 AM on September 19, 2016 [1 favorite]
rallumer: Odd, as Esmail tends to reference Kubrick's version of Lolita rather than the novel.
This could be another "alternate universe" nod/ injoke. As you noted, with the 5/9 hack, this is the "what if" version of (television) reality.
I'm surprised no one already mentioned this: First-time nominee Rami Malek won [the] best drama actor [Emmy] for his role as on USA's Mr. Robot as delusional hacker Elliot Alderson. "Please tell me you're seeing this, too," Malek quipped before noting there was probably a bit of the alienated Alderson in all of us.
"Please tell me you're seeing this, too" made me squee a bit, as did his full big-eye, hand over opened mouth "oh shit, I won" moment, but the last quip "there's a little of Elliot in all of us" made me cringe, after he gave a nod to the real-world Elliots out there. Still, he beat Kevin Spacey and Bob Odenkirk! Damn.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:20 AM on September 19, 2016 [4 favorites]
This could be another "alternate universe" nod/ injoke. As you noted, with the 5/9 hack, this is the "what if" version of (television) reality.
I'm surprised no one already mentioned this: First-time nominee Rami Malek won [the] best drama actor [Emmy] for his role as on USA's Mr. Robot as delusional hacker Elliot Alderson. "Please tell me you're seeing this, too," Malek quipped before noting there was probably a bit of the alienated Alderson in all of us.
"Please tell me you're seeing this, too" made me squee a bit, as did his full big-eye, hand over opened mouth "oh shit, I won" moment, but the last quip "there's a little of Elliot in all of us" made me cringe, after he gave a nod to the real-world Elliots out there. Still, he beat Kevin Spacey and Bob Odenkirk! Damn.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:20 AM on September 19, 2016 [4 favorites]
rallumer: Odd, as Esmail tends to reference Kubrick's version of Lolita rather than the novel.Nabokov, of course, once described the relationship between Kubrick's film and the source novel as being like "the swerves of a scenic drive as perceived by the horizontal passenger of an ambulance." Which rather nicely describes the way in which Esmail filmed Angela's van trip to the suburbs. And, indeed, the relationship between Angela's—and our—perception of events and the wider narrative she's part of and we're bearing witness to.
posted by Sonny Jim at 9:42 AM on September 19, 2016 [2 favorites]
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posted by One Second Before Awakening at 11:02 PM on September 14, 2016 [3 favorites]