The definition of insanity.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
The plot thickened this week with mentions of "Operation Berenstain," the return of Whiterose and her mysterious partnership with Price, and Elliot's final surrender to Mr. Robot after realizing that resistance was, indeed, futile.
"eps2.2_init1.asec" had several key moments, all riddled with paranoia and mental distortion. Now that episodes creep across our skin for more than an hour -- yes, these Season 2 chapters are ambitiously hefty and long -- scenes can be as long or short as needed. Hell, they can even gloriously ape the loopiness of Raising Arizona, as with Elliot's dream sequence where he imagined a perfect future filled with both corporate destruction and easy social interaction.
Kicking things off though was, in a sense, the birth of fsociety itself. Like last week's origin tale of the arcade, this week gave us the mask and the very seeds of the idea to take down Evil Corp - flashing us back to one fateful Halloween with Elliot and Darlene and the re-watching of an old slasher flick called "Careful Massacre of the Bourgeois." There, for the first time, Darlene witnessed Elliot transform while wearing the mask (and a Mr. Robot jacket). His delusions hadn't fully developed yet, but he had started to experience lost time. Lost time with violent outbursts.
So, given that flashback, it made sense for Darlene to finally be the one to really get Elliot back in the game. Her being in danger - either from the Dark Army or the Feds - has brought Elliot out of his own self-exile and back into the aftermath of the chaos he instigated. The clean-up he himself, as proto-Robot, said would be the most integral part, execution-wise.
So who's out to wipe up fsociety? Tyrell? Whiterose? Is it someone we've met or someone new? Or, could it even be Elliot himself, unaware of the drastic measures his alter ego is taking? Whatever the outcome, Season 2 is filled with more than a few mysteries, giving this summer's story a much different and richer texture than Season 1.
I like that Ray comes off more cool and friendly than dangerous, but that also there's always that undercurrent of sinister politeness. When he left Elliot with his thug at the end, you got the idea that Elliot may have made the wrong deal with the wrong guy, despite the fact that Elliot finds much more solace in Ray than he does with his actual therapist. Yes, Ray's words resonate with Elliot and his advice on how to move forward emotionally, for the most part, is sound, but right now Ray is this angel on Elliot's shoulder who's really a devil in disguise.
And what's going on with Angela exactly? For a brief moment she seemed to find a crack in Price's armor, suspecting that she was being coddled and cared for because of some huge secret in the class action lawsuit. But he didn't balk. After giving her so much, he held firm when she demanded more. Even if she was right about everything. Maybe he's just counting on her new love of money and power to conquer any inclinations she might have regarding doing further damage to him and the company.
The chess match between Elliot and Mr. Robot was a great sequence, though I did feel a bit teased in the end. Sure, I know that one side winning would mean Christian Slater would have to take a break for a while, and that seemed unlikely, but there was such a huge build up to this showdown that the resolution, ultimately, seemed flat. Basically it was the same conclusion Elliot came to last week, that the two of them must co-exist and there's no eliminating the other. This was just a much more showy way of getting to that end point.
The Verdict
The Tyrell mystery took a backseat this week (though we did see Joanna grow low on funds while paying off the parking lot attendant) as intrigue ramped up regarding the possible undoing of fsociety. Flashbacks, dream sequences, and chess battles for supremacy of the mind filled this episode with layers and mystery, making for a great chapter.
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