Mr. Robot: Just Like Before

The one subplot that appears to be approaching an end is Agent Santiago’s (Omar Metwally) role as the Dark Army’s inside man at the Bureau—as Mr. Robot (Christian Slater) scratches into a mirror for Elliot to read, a message Elliot passes on to Darlene, who in turn piques Dom’s suspicions, “THEY OWN THE FBI.” But Santiago is a minor character, and his treason has largely been treated as a narrative convenience, something to slow Dom down: His exposure, in the finale (should it even come), isn’t exactly the coup de grâce one wants from a season-long suspense thriller. Which leads me to ask the same question Mr. Robot does of Wellick, the one that’s been niggling me since we learned of the Cyber Bombings: Was it worth it?

Despite being peppered with references to Back to the Future, and almost obsessed with the impulse to reclaim the past, Mr. Robot nonetheless seems thinner, thematically speaking, than it once was. More than its humorously ham-fisted quotation of Trump (“No puppet. No puppet. You’re the puppet!” Wellick cries), this comes across in Mr. Robot’s description of “Men who fuck over the rest of us for profit, for fun,” or Whiterose’s (BD Wong) claim that “People like Phillip Price do not respect mercy. You only get their attention with force, and a lot of it.” (The glass-rimming’s a bit much, no?) It’s a strange betrayal of the season’s thrust, if “betrayal” is not too strong a word, to resolve the potential complications of Elliot’s “failed revolution” by pinning that failure on Price’s conspiratorial involvement in it, rather than pushing harder on the moral compromises made by those (Elliot, Angela, Darlene) whose motives were pure, if personal. “World catastrophes like this, they aren’t caused by lone wolves like you,” Price tells “Mr. Alderson,” in one of those pat proclamations that always leave me leery of embracing Mr. Robot too much. “They occur because men like me allow them.”

For what its worth, “world catastrophes” are not, in my estimation, Esmail’s strong suit. The series, the season, and indeed “eps3.8_stage3.torrent” tend to soar higher on intimate moments with big implications, from the conversation set to “Where Is My Mind?” to Dom’s late-night talks with Alexa. It remains as true as ever: This week’s highlight, for me, is the camera circling Darlene and Dom in the latter’s apartment, swaying like a soused dancer, or Darlene’s earlier remark that she’s “one hell of a wingwoman.” This is the stuff—personal, emotional, messily human—that makes the series’ politics real, the stuff that generates our impulse to erase, delete, return, redeem, and I only wish Mr. Robot managed to integrate it more fully, more consistently, into its broader narrative. At least, that’s what’s required, now that that the series is once again an effective actioner, for Mr. Robot to reclaim its own past as one of TV’s most formidable dramas. As Price notes at one point, by way of advice, “You can’t force an agenda, Mr. Alderson. You have to inspire one.”