I don’t
know about your social circle, but in mine Mr. Robot is pretty much a phenomenon.
Everyone seemed to watch it and categorically EVERYONE seemed to adore it. I do
not “do” hype as you know but this was coming from so many normally sane and
sensible people (ehm, well, relatively so anyway) that I had to give it a shot.
So I did. Now, I am only half way through but it has become such a stable part
of my life SO darn quickly that I absolutely HAD to talk to you about it. We
cannot have anyone else missing out on this, this is big news peeps.
Meet Elliot
(Rami Malek). He is a rather extraordinary man for many different reasons.
Suffering from social anxiety disorder he finds it extremely difficult to make
contact with human beings in real life. What he is good, nay, BRILLIANT at is
computers. This talent guarantees him a career at least.
What it also
guarantees, however, is the opportunity to make a difference. It is the 21st
Century after all, we live our lives online, whether we are Joe Bloggs or a
crime lord. Elliot is content making a difference in his own little way until
he is recruited by the mysterious Mr. Robot (Christian Slater). He is the
leader of a band of renegade hackers called fsociety and they are intent on planning
a revolution and changing the world one line of code at a time. The crazy thing is that the way they are
going, they just might succeed…
It took me
a minute to realize what this was and why it was so good. But when I did, I had
to admire the pure genius of it. Ok, so from practically the opening lines,
Elliot complains of the capitalist system. He talks about how money enslaves us
without us even really being aware of it. The invisible ties of “want”, “need”,
“debt”, “credit” that dictates pretty much our every move. Into this world led
by “invisible” forces comes an anti-hero with a mentor who lands in a secret
force, a group of very diverse people ( kudos on fsociety’s diversity by the
way, two men, two women, one black, one middle eastern lady wearing a hijab)
who are going to defeat the invisible powers that are ruling the world and free
humanity from its enslavement. Yep. Yep you got it. It IS The Matrix all over
again. Just in series form so there are more ratings and it makes more money,
ingenious really.
Now
seriously, if you haven’t seen the series brace yourself. Major spoiler alert.
But there is of course a second film this series references. Fight Club. And I
actually kicked myself when I realized that Mr Robot was… Well, Elliot. And the
formula, here as well, is mirrored eerily. Society being brought to its knees,
a group led by a charismatic and mentally unstable leader, the unreliable
narrator and Darlene(Carly Charkin) who replaces Trinity in the Matrix scenario
and Marla for the Fight Club scenario. She is a perfect combination of the two really - she looks for all the world like a 21st century version of Marla, she is like Trinity in the sense that she is a fighter and a real force to be reckoned with. I need to say, this being a tv series, the big reveal, which in Fight Club creeps
up on you slowly and yet in reality takes only a few minutes is eeked out pretty
much over one episode.
It has had
a severe revamp, there are none of Neo’s “magical powers” or the nervous,
visceral energy of Fight Club that brings the world to its knees supposedly purely
through the power of chaos. Here, we have actually thought out a plan that
could, potentially, actually work. Pure, rational coding and hacking is what we are dealing with– and to be honest
what with everything that is actually possible on the internet these days
hacking is as close to magic as you can get ! All the economic arguments Elliot
and Mr Robot put forward are those of a disgruntled generation that are no
longer happy with the “old fashioned” way of doing things and think the system
is unfair, having got the short end of the stick compared to the boom years
(i.e. mainly millennials. I.e. the main
targeted audience). The antagonist is Tyler Wellick (Martin Wallstrom) is cold,
charismatic and so drop dead gorgeous that you quite frankly can’t help wanting
him to win and lose at the same time. I see the reason for the upgrade from
Agent Smith. He is representing capitalism after all, capitalism is slick,
glossy and it wants you to buy it.
Elliot is a
lot less dark than Neo and our narrator from Fight Club though. I would say all
the characters are. But he is a lot easier to sympathize with as well. His
social anxiety makes him very much like us – all our shy, weird, insecure
moments mirrored and multiplied, giving him a weak point exactly like us and
making his “superpowers” instantly tolerable. He has a “best friend” – Angela (Portia
Doubleday) that has always been a little more for him but neither has ever
quite broached it – a common (not necessarily omnipresent, I am really not
saying that) but common, and relatable issue of male – female friendships. What
I am trying to say is Elliot is one of the most tangible and real anti-heroes I
have seen on screen. That coupled with Rami Malek’s clear talent and brilliant performance
put him squarely in the hall of fame of immortal television characters. In this respect he gets the better of our
narrator in Fight Club as well. Our narrator, though a lot more real than Neo,
is still a man of extremes between his attendance of self-help groups as a
means of making connection and later on, his emergence as a charismatic,
one-man-band leader. Elliot is a leader too – but it’s almost in spite of
himself. His “non-leader” persona is a lot closer to us than the narrator ever
was.
Now please
don’t get me wrong. I am not saying any of this is bad, that Mr Robot is simply
a cheap knock-off or something. I am just saying “this is how it was put
together”. Mr. Robot is fascinating and fun. I laugh and cry as I watch it and
drool over Martin Walstrom. I finished the series and am officially heartbroken
– I have no idea how to wait until the second series! All have to remember though peeps, those
glossy things we buy, eat, watch, listen to and – by and large – live are
actually cleverly constructed by some marketing and sales people somewhere… The
Matrix is out there folks… Hmm… I think I am more heavily influenced by this
series than I initially thought…
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