Mr Robot: Season 2

Fsociety has carried out the biggest hack in history, bringing E-Corp to its knees. But the world economy is crumbling as well, sparking a crisis. Whilst Fsociety plans its next move, E-Corp sees an opportunity in the chaos to consolidate its own power. Whilst all this is happening, Elliot has gone off the grid, living a simple life without a computer in sight...but still troubled by the memories of his dead father.

At one point in the Season 2 finale of Game of Thrones, the character of Stannis Baratheon says of an enemy after he has shown his hand, "He has played his little trick and he can only play it once." At the end of Season 1 of Mr Robot the show's creator, writer and main director Sam Esmail unveiled the mother of all plot twists on his audience, one worthy of The Sixth Sense and Fight Club. It was handled well and (in retrospect) foreshadowed expertly. But, just as M. Night Shyamalan found out in his latter career, you can only really do that kind of thing once or twice before it risks getting stale, as the audience tunes in to find out what trick you're going to play next rather than focus on the character or story, and the lengths you go to one-up yourself get increasingly ludicrous and, before you know it, the psycho trees have shown up.

Esmail makes exactly that kind of mistake in the opening episode of the second season. He plays another trick on the audience and this is not made fully clear until more than halfway through the season. It's well-done and entertaining, but it's a clever gag that really should have been revealed at the end of the first episode (by which time it's already pretty clear what's going on). Dragging it out for half the season damages the show's already languid pacing and makes you wonder if the director-producer is a bit too pleased with himself for coming up with a second twist idea. It's all a bit tiresome and the pacing and structure of the second season is completely shot to hell as a result. The fact this is a longer season (12 hours rather than 10, although the first episode is double-length) doesn't help with that issue either.

Fortunately, the show survives. Whilst the Elliot storyline goes on an extended trip to tedium for the first half of the season (enlivened only by an amusing experimental episode which recasts Elliot and his friends in a 1980s sitcom, complete with studio laughter track and a guest appearance by ALF), the rest of the characters pick up the slack. His sister Darlene (Carly Chaikin) takes over Fsociety and has to orchestrate their moves as they try to follow up on success of the hack but face problems from their erstwhile Chinese allies in the Dark Army. Angela (a superlative performance from Portia Doubleday) has been hired by E-Corp and ingratiates herself with its ruthless CEO, Philip Price, whilst working with Darlene to help bring the company down from the inside. Joanna Wellick (a devastatingly intense turn by Stephanie Corneliussen) is hunting for her missing husband and will let absolutely nothing stand in her way. Particularly impressive is new character Dominique DiPerro (Grace Gummer), who starts off as a fairly generic FBI character but rapidly gains added dimensions and depth as the season progresses, as well as a couple of excellent action scenes (shot in Esmail's typically off-kilter style).

It's this accumulation of more interesting secondary characters and storylines which really keeps the show's head above water until Elliot's storyline re-synchronises with the rest of the cast and things can move forward (Elliot even sits out an entire episode and I didn't realise it until after it was over). I wouldn't say that erstwhile star Rami Malek is wasted in these opening episodes - his performance is absolutely outstanding, as normal - but once you realise his storyline is designed to keep him on ice for half the season it does feel a bit pointless. But once Elliot is back in the game the pacing and intensity of the show kicks up a notch and the last few episodes of the season are excellent, once you get over your annoyance when you realise that after 12 episodes we really haven't moved very far from the end of Season 1 at all.

As with Season 1, the characterisation is subtle and clever, the soundtrack is utterly outstanding (bonus points for the well-judged, tactical deployment of Depeche Mode) and the unusual direction makes this possibly the most visually distinctive show on television. This is almost a remarkable work of art but it also strays into being cold and unwelcoming, more concerned with narrative trickery and holding the audience at arm's length lest they rumble the show's secrets. This is a show that is very easy to admire for its aesthetics but it's definitely a hard show to love. For the upcoming third season the show really needs to make up its mind on what story it wants to tell and dial back on the self-indulgence before it disappears up its own posterior.

The second season of Mr. Robot (***½) is available now on Blu-Ray (UK, USA) and DVD (UK, USA).

Mr Robot: Season 1

Elliot Alderson is an IT technician who suffers from anxiety and depression. At night he hacks other people on the internet, sometimes just for something to do, sometimes to help them. His skills are called upon when he is recruited by the enigmatic "Mr. Robot" into a hacker's collective, Fsociety, which plans to bring down E-Corp (which Elliot nicknames "Evil Corp") and erase all of society's debt as a way of freeing it from control by the banks and governments.

Mr. Robot is an intriguing show. Created and developed by idiosyncratic film-maker Sam Esmail, its premise sounds deeply boring. In actuality, it's one of the best-directed, visually distinctive shows of the last few years, with a layered, complex and fascinating plot related through some extraordinary performances. There's nothing quite else out there like it in terms of it having its own unique feel and atmosphere, save maybe the first season of True Detective and both (so far) of Fargo, although it's a very different kind of series.

The series is rooted in the character of Elliot. Elliot is a massively atypical protagonist. He is nervous, anxious, socially awkward and suffering from a range of anxiety and depressive issues. He is a brilliant hacker and technician, but his ability to work with other people is limited. He also has boundary issues and finds it hard to relate to people around him. It's a tremendously powerful and nuanced performance by Rami Malek, who sells this awkward and damaged human being with total conviction and utter skill.

The actors around him are just as good: Christian Slater is very good as Mr. Robot (who doesn't appear that often but gives a nervous, edgy and intense performance when he does) but one of the other stand-outs is Portia Doubleday as Angela, Elliot's best friend, who starts off feeling like a disposable side-character but rapidly becomes an integral figure as she is blackmailed by a different hacking group and inadvertently ends up ascending the hallways of corporate power. Her character arc is unexpected and brilliantly developed. Frankie Shaw also gives a charismatic performance as Shayla, Elliot's drug-dealing neighbour who starts off as a bit of a cliche but very rapidly becomes a compelling character. Martin Wallstrom also gives a blisteringly intense, offbeat and bizarre performance as Tyrell Wellick, the corporate super-executive who is very much Elliot's mirror image but uses his brilliance for much darker ends.

The direction is intriguingly different, putting characters in the corners of the screen to make them feel crushed by the space around them, reflecting the magnitudes of the tasks they face. The musical score is atmospheric and sparse and the story developers with pace and verve over the course of the ten episodes in the first season. Up until around the sixth or seventh episode, I was convinced that the first season of Mr. Robot was going to supplant the first season of Fargo as my favourite season of television this decade.

Then it all goes off the rails.

Not completely or fatally, but in the last couple of episodes of the season Esmail puts an explosive device under the storyline you thought you were watching and blows it to pieces. Rarely have I seen a show that was so bold as to completely rewrite what you thought you were watching and start telling a new story. It's conceptually brilliant, artistically brave and, from a creative writing standpoint, very impressive. The problem is that this paradigm shift really only benefits a few characters (Angela and Darlene, most notably) but it has a huge detrimental affect on Elliot, who becomes much more difficult to read and sympathise with as a character as a result. There's also a similar shift (if for different reasons) for Tyrell, who becomes flat-out loathsome and utterly repugnant. Then there's the fact that this shift completely shunts the Fsociety hacking storyline, which dominates most of the season, to one side. It feels like the audience's emotional investment in the characters and storylines is short-changed by it being revealed that so much of what we thought was going on wasn't right.

Some people may disagree, and certainly the blanket acclaim levelled on the show - even the bitty and highly unsatisfying semi-cliffhanger finale - shows that it works for many. But for me it leaves Season 2 with a lot of work to do to redeem that final twist and make it work.

Mr. Robot's first season (****) is certainly worth watching for its fantastic acting, directing and atmosphere, not to mention its unusually accurate depiction of hacking, and for its superb character development. The way the season ends is also startling, shocking and fascinating, but also divisive. The season is available now on Blu-Ray (UK, USA) and DVD (UK, USA).