If you like Mr. Robot, you should watch Person of Interest.
POI is a pre-snowden series about a world "in which the NSA has a system which spies on every american citizen in order to fight terrorism" (sounds familiar?).
The show begins with the weak premise of "help us fight crimes we predict will happen", but don't be fooled by its appearance of a run-of-the-mill CBS show. Without spoiling it too much, I do want to say that by the end of Season 1, it transitions from "monster of the week" to an extremely high quality science fiction show, nearly invisibly.
I don't want to oversell it, but if you're reading HN it's very likely to be a show that you will appreciate. And like Mr. Robot, it's one of the very rare shows that has a lot of respect for tech and doesn't vomit gibberish on their audience.
My wife and I watched POI and as the show progressed the plot ideas got better but the acting and dialogue took a nose dive.
At times the show with its dialogue became very CSI, NCSI, aka other CBS cop crime crap. Reese and Ebbg's (Rot 13 name per spoiler avoidance request) one liners became fairly irritating.
It also didn't help: <rot13> gurl ryvzvangrq bar bs gur orggre npgbef naq punenpgref va gur fubj (Pnegre... V'z nyy nobhg xvyyvat znwbe punenpgref ohg gurl unq orggre bcgvbaf) </rot13> (spoiler avoidance).
POI is an amazing show. You can really tell how they started off with a bonkers scifi idea, then between S1 and S2 Snowden happened and the writers were like "Oh fuck this shit's real??". The show much improved from there and pushed the scifi to the max. Like ok we know this is real, but what if it was waaay more powerful?
The only downside is that they let some techno babble seep in by S3 and the hacking has become a bit odd in its explanations.
Overall a solid 5/7. You should watch it.
And unlike Mr. Robot, it's watchable to nontechies so if your SO couldn't do Mr Robot, they'd probably watch POI with you.
I've watched both in their entirety (so far). I definitely agree that POI is more watchable with a non-tech person. POI had a few stinker eps, especially ones involving "baddy of the week" type standalones or the "very special episode" where we explore the hidden pain of main character X.
The upside is the ensemble is very strong and likable, the writers worked hard to preserve continuity and development of the characters, even a few side characters that only show up one or two times per season, and it rewards careful watching.
My issues with Mr. Robot are they have been overusing some of the tricks you saw in Fight Club for example, and the characters are much more Breaking Bad in that you can like them but not admire them. The portrayal of tech is amazing though, and the direction and editing stays mostly in the "clever homage" of Hollywood genre films rather than straight ripoff of them. The cast is also very good.
And let's not forget the other big genre series, Orphan Black, which I highly recommend.
The last two seasons went all in on the tech/super-AI plots and dropped the "crime-fight-of-the-week" tedium. I'm actually pretty happy to see it talked about so well here. The last season was kind of emotional and definitely struck at my techie core.
I watched the first few episodes and really didn't like it. I wasn't aware that the plot of the show moved past the episodic crap of the first season. Maybe I should pick it up at season 2?
I've been confused by the positive comments it has gotten from people in tech - I found it unwatchably bad and that it actually got worse (not better) as time went on.
Everything from the 'machine' itself, to the cringe acting and writing, dumb tech concepts (woman who 'speaks' for the machine) and all their vigilante killings that only happen in New York. I couldn't take it.
Watch Halt and Catch Fire - it's a thousand times better.
I watch a ton of TV and I honestly think Person of Interest is the best show I've ever watched.
It may not have the production value of Game of Thrones, the suspense of Breaking Bad or the comedy of .. um.. Seinfeld? but [rest of this comment rot13'd for spoilers]
Vg vf nyfb gur bayl fpvrapr svpgvba fubj V'ir rire jngpurq juvpu vf cynhfvoyr. Gurl gnxr yvoregvrf bs pbhefr: Gur gebcr bs gur "travhf cebtenzzre" gung "qvq rirelguvat ol uvzfrys" vf gverq, ohg jung ur cebqhprq vf fgvyy cynhfvoyr. Vg'q gnxr qrpnqrf, uhaqerqf bs lrnef znlor, ohg gung'f jul vg'f fpv-sv naq abg n qbphzragnel.
Gur punenpgre qrirybczrag bs gur NV vf snfpvangvat naq vg tbg zr gb pner nobhg ure n ybg. Fnznevgna jnf nyfb na rkgerzryl vagrerfgvat punenpgre.
The POI team produced the most unique experience in TV I've ever watched. I won't pretend everybody will like it, but it is the show I recommend to people the most.
I don't expect a lot of people to agree with the statement. But I did just put it in front of breaking bad, game of thrones and yes even the sopranos. Those series are all amazing in their own right, but I'll reiterate that Person of Interest is the most unique TV experience I've ever had.
All of the characters in H&CF are great but god damn I love Lee Pace's Joe MacMillan. The overall production is great as well with mostly correct terms and hardware for the time.
I really enjoyed season 1 of Mr. Robot but season 2 really hasn't been the same, it is way too mind trippy for me now.
Yeah, I found POI very cringey for the most part. Although I thought the character speaking for the machine was a fun development. They just took the concept too far by introducing the child later on.
I binge watched the entire series, because so many people liked it. Though I wouldn't recommend it.
The transition into sci-fi was very subtle, and where they took the show was interesting for it's time. But the technical aspects are like almost other TV show. NCIS levels of inaccuracies.
Mr. Robot should not be utter in the same context as POI, because unlike POI, they did their research. They made a show that has both a good story, but also mostly technically accurate and plausible.
The last season has been out for a while. I ended up being very impressed by just how well it's executed. When the cut was announced after season 4 I thought it could only end in disappointment, but after watching season 5, I truly felt like the series ended how it should have ended.
I liked season one of Person of Interest but for me it started to get old after that so I stopped watching somewhere in season two (but that didn't yet happen with Mr. Robot).
I've watched S01 but I'm not sure I'll watch S02. The cliché about dysfunctional people in IT is too much for me. I'm a normal person and I don't have difficulties in dealing with other human beings.
Also the part about vilifying companies and loving big government is not my cup of tea. At least in Person of Interest both were bad.
Last part, vilifying money as a medium of exchange is just absurd. Are they expecting to exchange their computer services for eggs at the supermarket?
> The cliché about dysfunctional people in IT is too much for me. I'm a normal person and I don't have difficulties in dealing with other human beings.
TV shows centered around normal people are really boring.
Well, I think the answer to that is going to vary a lot based on the personal experiences of the person answering, so here's my take:
I can’t speak for everyone, but it’s been my personal experience that many groups of friends partake in “shit talking” or “gossiping” when no one is around.
This leads me to believe that many people can be uncaring behind closed doors (which is what I think Seinfeld was meant to show, and which is why many people could relate to the show).
They all had their quirks, but overall, they were all meant to be relatable to in their own way. Of course, some were really out there (Kramer, Soup Nazi, etc...), but I think Jerry, George, and Elaine were all kind of normal.
I believe that the show was so popular because many people saw connections between the characters and people they actually knew in real life. Compared to Mr. Robot, I would say that the characters in Seinfeld were far more normal.
So maybe relatable doesn’t necessarily mean normal, but that’s what I was thinking.
When the show started that was probably the case but as the seasons went on they became cartoon characters. I believe the finale was to show just how awful they and their actions were.
Yeah true. It seems like that's the trend for a lot of shows. The events and characters keep getting more and more ridiculous. I guess they have to keep introducing new things to keep the show interesting.
I think it’s starting to happen with Mr. Robot already. I liked season 1 a lot, but I’m not as big of a fan of season 2. I think they’re going too far with the whole “delusional acid trip” kind of thing.
> about dysfunctional people in IT is too much for me.
> vilifying companies and loving big government is not my cup of tea
> vilifying money as a medium of exchange is just absurd
You should watch season 2. All of the above are directly addressed.
> The cliché about dysfunctional people in IT is too much for me.
I hate this so, so much. I enjoyed Orphan Black but the biologist character was just such a babbling idiot that I kept having to fight the urge to fast-forward through her scenes (I have to say though, the actress that plays the clones has a pretty amazing range. Not all of the characters are great but sometime I had to remind myself that it was the same person playing all the roles).
This seems to have originated with the procedural crime dramas; the "geek tank" full of adult children that spout technobabble to eye-rolling detectives and are unable to communicate technical concepts to non-technical people. I have a few friends in research. None of them have lip rings or dreadlocks and they are all able to carry a conversation with people of diverse backgrounds and education.
As someone who believes in free markets and voluntary exchange, the ethos of Mr Robot resonates with me. I also haven't seen any love of big government (but I've only seen S01).
When government is continually debasing money through forced inflation, it's not surprising that people develop a distaste for money itself. Rather than functioning as a virtuous representation of value creation, inflating money just represents political connection to the central bank. Rather than being able to build up savings to gain security and negotiating power, the common person's primary interaction with money is having to service the debt driving their wage-slavery.
If you believe in free markets, you should want to make money sound again. Writing off people's rational distaste for the role money is presently playing just allows the fundamental problem to continue growing.
If you believe in rational markets, you should also probably consider that those rational markets are capable of pricing stable inflation into nominal pricing. Consider that money is widely accepted to be neutral in the long-run.
In inflationary economies, there is nothing stopping individuals from saving value in the form of assets; you can store your value in pork bellies or gold or ownership of a company or whatever other asset you'd like, in order to build up savings to gain security and negotiating power. The oft-repeated idea that inflation precludes saving is silly; it does make it costly to save by stuffing your dollars into a mattress, but it would still hold true in an economy without managed inflation - such economies are still subject to inflation and deflation (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Historical_Inflation_A...) so if you need to actually spend your money during one of those 20% inflation spikes, well, good luck with that.
Store your value in an asset rather than a medium of exchange and managed inflation is a tremendous boon thanks to its tendency to decrease the risk (and thus cost) of investment.
Even rational markets do not respond immediately or frictionlessly. And I wouldn't call a market where one sector gets a steady inflow of newly-created money "rational".
The disconnect in your analysis is that price inflation hits hardest the areas where the conjured money is injected into the wider economy. Saving in gold works to pay for food, but not to pay for housing. To keep up with the latter, you must invest in housing to cover the entirety of your consumption. Until you achieve that, you're over the barrel servicing debt. This encourages everybody into further helping to inflate that bubble, with those who've succeeded then lobbying for even more housing inflation.
You're presuming that 100% of price level changes are due to changes in the money supply. That's simply not the case (see also: that graph in my original post prior to 1913, 1933, or 1971, pick your favorite of those dates). Changes in the money supply do affect nominal prices, but it's not the only factor. Housing prices would continue to increase even with a perfectly fixed money supply; saving at an inflation rate of 0% would result in diminished purchasing power for housing over time, as aggregate demand increases.
Historical record is not aligned with the fantasy that eliminating fiat currency would cause price stabilization and promote savings. It would eliminate long-run inflation, but at the cost of price stability and medium-run investment.
First, we shouldn't have price "stability" as defined by the Fed. In a technological economy, the price of everything should be trending downward - price optimization is exactly what a market does! The Fed functions to smooth out the bumps, but they seem unable to do so without being tempted to destroy that natural downward trend. Which is why we're next door to 0% interest and "Helicopter Ben" is making rounds in academia (UBI).
The core of your argument seems to be that there is little economic difference between natural technological deflation and forcing a slow inflation, that the market can adjust to either condition. But if markets were perfectly efficient like this, then forcing inflation would have no effect and in fact bubbles would not occur because they would be immediately corrected
Real markets have inefficiencies and lag time, and altering the macro environment is straight endorsement of specific policy, but cloaked as science. If prices were allowed to go down and people were able to save money (actual savings, not simply leveraged between stocks and debt), then they could choose to work less and we would be able to actually see widespread gains from technology. Instead, the government is running the same tired Keynesian playbook for getting "full employment" while the need for human work is being ever reduced.
> You're presuming that 100% of price level changes are due to changes in the money supply
No, just the majority of them. Even though demand for housing is going up (population), we would expect prices to rise to stable premium over the cost of creating new housing (corresponding to the lag between demand and production). Instead, what we're observing is a continual inflation in "values" that seems to actually be constrained by the cost of interest on the value. This makes intuitive sense based on how people are actually encouraged to view houses (like various acquaintances thinking a $5k earnest money deposit is serious business, while seemingly oblivious that they're actually spending much much more).
Furthermore, shamelessly implicit in the idea of forced inflation is the viewpoint that people should be forced to "invest". This certainly keeps the financial sector in demand, but obviously hurts the average person who has their savings eroded either passively through inflation or actively through transaction fees and time spent managing relatively small investments.
Can you explain what you mean by "loving big government?" I watched both season 1 and season 2 and never got anything like that impression. They spend quite a bit of time avoiding the government and using it as an unwitting tool against the corporation and later itself. I'm curious what you saw, because I honestly have no idea what you're referring to.
For some reason hacker fiction became less interesting when the stereotype went from "hip awesome dude who skateboards to class" to "depressed guy in a gray hoodie".
I chose the former when it came time to design a protagonist for my totally unrealistic hacking-themed mobile game.
I'm going to play fan boy here. After almost finishing the second season I have to say Mr. Robot is the best TV show I think I have ever watched. Even better than Homeland.
The funny thing is if it didn't even involve hacking I would still consider my favorite show. The psychodrama existentialism of the show is so good. The plot is so damn good. The acting is so damn good.
Th music, the timing of title screen and the font used. I love it all.
- The actors are often out of character (or their development isn't clear) and
mumble unintelligible sentences targeted at milennials with existential crisis
(there are a few rants from the main character that would make 14-year-old-me
cringe).
- The plot reads a bit like Fight Club fan fiction with some American Psycho and
geopolitics bits thrown in.
- The pacing could be improved. Some chapters feel like a mere excuse to shoot
cool and edgy scenes where you don't see any progress until the expected cliffhanger.
- And the worst of all: Main character uses GNOME, codes in Python/Ruby, makes
heavy use of the mouse (and not to use ACME) and doesn't use Gentoo. I also find
his lack of anime wallpapers disturbing.
I think a big thing people ignore when they make the Fight Club reference is that the story of Fight Club is really act 1 of the story of Mr. Robot. It isn't really trying to be different there. They even acknowledge that by their obvious references to Fight Club. However, Mr. Robot is a spiritual sequel. It asks the questions what is next after you wipe out everyone's debt. How does the world react to that, how do the banks react to that, how does Tyler Durden react to that, etc?
The show is also fully aware that the underling motives behind the hack are immature. That is why in the 2nd season they show that the world is worse off than before. Freeing people from debt didn't solve everyone's problems. It shows that F Society is really a bunch of childish vandals who got in over their heads. I mean they literally have them cutting off the balls of the bull statue on Wall Street. They aren't meant to be flawless heroes that we are supposed to 100% agree with.
> Main character uses GNOME, codes in Python/Ruby, makes heavy use of the mouse (and not to use ACME) and doesn't use Gentoo. I also find his lack of anime wallpapers disturbing.
> - And the worst of all: Main character uses GNOME, codes in Python/Ruby, makes heavy use of the mouse (and not to use ACME) and doesn't use Gentoo. I also find his lack of anime wallpapers disturbing.
In season two he is seen using Vim and then Leafpad. I think the character uses whatever is at his disposal.
Oh and I used Gentoo years ago (like 2003) and stopped using it because of the whole recompile the world. I don't think recompiling everything is the best option when so much of hacking is about speed and timing.
I'm not qualified enough to speak on this conclusively, but I believe the Ruby coding he did was using an actual social engineering tool. Also, he uses Kali Linux.
FWIW what the shows creators have to say about that:
> I actually wanted the audience to be a little ahead of Elliot on that. And we were telegraphing it intentionally, to the point that people thought it was a misdirect.
That said I was somewhat irritated when I realized that the twist, along with the main plot arc were lifted from the same movie, which is also referenced almost explicitly in a couple of episodes.
If it is the twist I think it is that twist is purposely obvious (I hope your not thinking your smarter than the show because of that). I mean that twist happens fairly early.
S02 has far more truly hidden twists.
I mean even in Ex Machina I had some rough idea of what was going to happen in the end but that doesn't make it a bad movie.
There were some very strong hints about the twist in S01, I'm pretty sure we were meant to know. The S02 "twist" was much less obvious though IMHO. Despite reading theories about it on reddit before the reveal, I still didn't quite believe them.
It was supposed to be obvious, I think. Dramatic irony. Elliott even calls you (the viewer) out on it in the first episode of season 2. He says he doesn't trust you anymore because you didn't tell him something you knew. I love how they handled it with the cheeky nod
But it's a sideshow, the show even plays the same music as a homage. To me what makes it tolerable is that it accepts the twist as a matter of course and jumps right into other interesting plots, including whatever the fuck is going to happen tonight.
I understand it was a homage. It just didn't make sense to do it as the main twist.
I mean, if you're making a movie about an island zoo of dinosaurs, it's OK to pay homage to Jurassic Park using dialogue or the composition of a specific scene. But if the main plot of your movie turns out to be about dinosaurs escaping their zoo... well, that becomes a bit too much, in my opinion.
We'll have to see after tonight's episode, in which the episode seems likely to break in such a way that makes the first season twist look weak in comparison. I'm eager to see how the writing goes, but I'm afraid I'm going to be disappointed as I was with how BSG went off the rails.
IIRC, Elliot at one point acknowledges that the viewer already knew what was coming. But the twist is Season 2 is much, much harder to spot. Reminded me of Life of Pi.
Me too. For two reasons. One: the main character---very interesting character development not to mention a superb actor. Two: the visual aesthetic---very distinct, very artistic, and absolutely beautiful.
Its a decent and sometimes good show but certainly not one of the greats, and has more than a few major flaws. I'll try to minimize spoilers.
1. The plotline is pretty much Fight Club with computers and telegraphs this early on. This is clearly not on purpose as we see hints dropped all the time and the reveal is given with such a flourish. Lets stop defending Esmail here. The reveal is really hamfisted and the show borrows VERY generously from Fight Club, for better or worse.
2. The twists are largely unpredictable. Sure you can argue that some clues were dropped beforehand, but they're so ambiguous as to be meaningless. Anything can happen on that show and to me, that's lazy writing. The universe that show lives in should have a rational set of rules that govern it. Its basic world-building. If the finale involves aliens or time travel, it woudn't surprise anyone, in fact /r/mrrobot is full of people expecting this. Anything should not be possible, especially when you're 30+ hours in.
3. The pacing isn't very good and gets especially bad in season 2. I don't think we needed several episodes dedicated to Elliot being in [spoilers] or other events that look stretched out to fill episodes. This is a common issue in TV, and I'll let it slide, but the first few episodes of S2 are like pulling teeth and turns off viewers. I know people that quit watching during this period. Its a hard sell to say "Look there's about 10 hours of nothing, but it kinda picks up after an experimental episode where the characters are bizarrely on a 90s sitcom for artsy fartsy cred."
4. The content is lacking. My understanding is that Esmail and his team originally wrote a movie and pretty much retrofitted that into one season of television. Once the [big event] happens in season one, the show lost its footing. I would have loved to spend more time at Allsafe instead of jumping straight into [big event].
5. The politics and hacktivism are pretty naive, if not just stupid. Its a lot of alt-left/far-left politics and having the characters act dumbfounded and guilty when regular people lost their homes and jobs seems ridiculous. What exactly did they think would happen after [big event]? We never really get to see anyone's moviation for this, other than some throwaway comments about "evil bankers" and "evil ceos." We know Elliot has a secret motivation and master plan (of course we have no details of it), but what about Trent and Mobley and Darlene? Why are they doing this? None of them remotely seem to have the zeal of a revolutionary and very soon regret all their actions. Its like some middle class hipster kids decided to overthrow society on a whim.
6. The show has a lot geek fan service where it can alienate non-geeks. I think its possible to show hacking without getting into the weeds of it and have it be semi-authentic. I can go either way here, but it would be nice if the show was more accessible to people like my wife and her friends.
7. The exploration of mental illness seems hackneyed and, well, boring. Season 2's long strange cinematography focusing on Elliot's tortured face just doesn't make for good TV. I think this stuff works best in small doses and has been done better by almost everyone else, including season 1 of this very show! Thankfully, Esmail has moved away from this kind of thing about mid-way through S2.
8. Whiterose as an unstoppable mastermind is a cliche and she's tiresome to watch on the show. Writers please stop using the mastermind cliche and start making your characters have flaws and screw-ups. For a show that's suppose to be complex, most of the characters aren't terribly deep or anti-cliche. Its almost distasteful to play up "the Chinese are inscrutable" cliche and have almost all the Chinese characters be unstoppable, unpredictable, and near perfect robots, constantly toying with the dumb and emotional westerners. We see the Dark Army, Chinese state hackers, the CCP, etc win pretty much every engagement but the FBI is clueless and there's no NSA or CIA at work at all here.
9. Less so than Whiterose, but Price is written to be stereotypically evil. He's only missing a mustache to twirl. I wish he was a more complex character, not just a sociopathic CEO who cares about nothing but himself. This doesn't necessarily upset me considering the general low complexity of secondary characters on this show, but the actor playing Price is so good, it seems like a waste of talent for him to play a two dimensional character. Price has a lot of potential that has so far been ignored and perhaps anything humanizing him would upset the far-left politics of the show, which I find disappointing.
10. The show has slowly degenerated into Lost, where meaningless clues lead to a surprise. Fans argue on /r/mrrobot but no one is ever right because its all so damn ambigious. Or someone is right, but only by dumb luck or perhaps marketing plants. I wish the show had less of a mysterious air about it. I also don't like the marketing led approach of "Check out the finale to get the real answers you've been waiting for all season!"
I feel this show is a bit like Halt and Catch Fire. Its decent, but not very good and is constantly trying to find its footing. Like Halt, I suspect it will never really find its proper footing and will be passable geek popcorn fare with moments of brilliance. It doesn't seem to be reaching out past modest ratings. I've heard comparisons to Breaking Bad, but BB had a general appeal that Mr Robot doesn't.
That said, this is destined to live in geek fandom, which frankly has a low barrier to entry. I just wish it was a better and more accessible show. I do look forward to the shows that will be made after being inspired by this. Mr Robot 2.0 will be good. 1.0 is just too uneven and unfocused. Compare how tight Walter White's world was or the world of The Wire compared to the manic world of Mr Robot or how complex and flawed the secondary characters were on that show compared to Mr Robots'. Those are mature and very good shows. Mr Robot? Not so much.
2) The vast vast majority of twists have been predicted far in advance if they are of any significance. And frankly the ones that people missed the missed clues are dug up after the fact to show what people missed. Having problems with Mr Robot is fine, but claiming LAZY writing is lazy analysis.
3) in the short term the pacing felt weird, but as things have been revealed everything has started to fit together and see WHY it is paced the way it is.
4) This is entirely incorrect. He started writing a movie, but when he was 90 pages in (1 page = 1 minute of screentime) before he hit the end of act 1 (which was the first season of the show) he changed his intention and plotted it as a TV show after that.
5) this if fair, the characters are wildly naive.
6) Eh this can be argued both ways so can't really disagree
7) I've seen at least some people who struggle with similar issues who are impressed with how accurate Elliot seems. Others may not feel that way, but like anything else relating to people how different people experience different things means no one person can represent an entire thing.
8) She hasn't been unstoppable, though she is the most daunting character in the show other than possibly Joanna.
9) This is totally fair. He's a psychopath as was shown by his whole talk on wanting to be the most powerful person in the room.
10) What? People have CONSITANTLY been right on subreddit. Obviously bad theories are also going to show up, but the accurate ones regularly bubble to the top.
Eh, the big reveal for this season I suspected something similar before seeing the reddit thread (I was slightly off) and last season's I figured out by episode 2 w/o seeing Reddit.
Mind you aside from coding my main passion is writing so I can smell a lot of the tricks of the trade a mile away.
I agree with most of what you say, save a few things:
Re: The politics and hacktivism [...] like some middle class hipster kids decided to overthrow society on a whim.
... _yes_, I think that's the point. The mere fact that it's possible and the consequences of this is the drama.
Re: Price ... frankly I like the way he's characterized in this show. Some people have very simple motivations and this makes them very dangerous and the perfect antagonists. He's surrounded by people more nuanced or conflicted than him, which makes that interplay interesting.
How can someone so unrelenting be undermined? That's what I want to find out.
I agree. Yeah sure his motivation is simple but it is very accessible and it makes since (I still disagree with the previous poster that the show is not accessible).
If they made Price some ignorant money driven CEO (just asking to be manipulated) than White Rose would be too powerful (which the previous poster alluded to as well but then has problems with Price being just plain evil).
I'll be curious to see if Sam Esmail gives any hope/intelligence to the government(s) other than the single FBI agent.
I completely agree. I admit that I'm following season 2 because it's still an enjoyable show, but every single one of those points is valid. At times it feels like Esmail is insulting your intelligence or pandering to extreme cliches (points 8 and 9), all the while entirely ripping Fight Club off. And no, he didn't seek Fight Club for "inspiration". He utterly and completely replicated the plot, but executed it poorly. The laziness of his storytelling is clear when we can pretty much assume all of Elliot's confusion is the result of Mr. Robot intervening on his behalf. Except that mysterious intervention doesn't even appear to be attributable to a well-defined and somewhat believable circumstance (Norton's insomnia in Fight Club). Instead, Elliot has some odd lapse in memory, and what do you know, some unthinkable event has occurred.
It's an entertaining show, but only in the same sense as corny superhero movies. Esmail has been trying to wrangle a sensible plot with an interesting premise, but unfortunately he's not as skilled as his execution implies.
I suspect that at a certain age shows like Fight Club or Mr Robot are deep and edgy, but when you've been around the block a bit the world is less black and white and a lot more grey. I hate to play the ageist card here, I really do, but teen or 20 something me would be over the moon for Mr Robot. Modern me, not so much. The whole "we must crush The Man(TM) and only then will we have utopia" is just too much to swallow, even if the show flirts occasionally with criticizing that message, but that is the take-away if you remotely relate to any of the protagonists. If anything, a rational look at this show makes Elliot look like the dangerous psychopath that he is and the "bad guys" are the ones trying to make sure everyone keeps their jobs and homes.
I also think the whole Chinese domination against a weak and emotional West is a tired cliche, the same way the 80s had Japanese domination over a weak and emotional west in fiction. Mr Robot could be our Rising Sun (1993), where it will seem ridiculous, baiting, and pandering to future viewers.
I somewhat agree but Season 2 certainly introduces more "grey".
I keep seeing comments that the show is not accessible (e.g. previous poster " I just wish it was a better and more accessible show.") but then comments that it is pandering to the audience by being unoriginal with tropes.
I would argue in large part to be "accessible" aka relevant to many is to be contextual of the current times and slightly unoriginal.
China right now is hacking the US. This is widely known. What other entity should be picked? You could go ultra scifi and go with aliens but I would imagine that would make the show fairly targeted to inaccessible (scifi has historical had a tough time in prime time).
I admit the whole evil company / sticking to the man motive is overdone but that is sort of inline with the hacking we have seen (which is what the article sort of delves into).
I'm not so sure. From my perspective The Wire had a lot of Freshman psychology, philosophy, and civics mixed in with pauses where characters would stare at one another and let silence pass between them.
Mr. Robot is clearly a mature show to a subset of an audience; Rami Malek even won an Emmy, this year. Perhaps you are not hearing the music. In that case, I hope you do. : )
They're at least self-aware, in one scene the fsociety crew is watching "Hackers" and one of them comments "I wonder what will ruin the next generations perception of hacker culture" or something like that.
Not my favorite rendition (full disclosure: "Hackers" is my favorite), but they do really drive home the "otherness", which is the core of any "hacker culture" story.
I saw it on netflix...and just checked, its still available on netflix. Do note, I'm U.S. based, so not sure if you're outside U.S. Also, I give it a thumbs-up; not Mr.Robot but still a well done series (I think anyways).
I love this show. Haven't been excited about a show like this since The Wire. Not because it is "real" in the same way that The Wire is, but because it is so fresh and challenging. There are points where things go wildly left-field, but it's not predictable. Even the first season twist, which is fairly predictable depending on what movies you've seen, is preceded and followed by other twists.
The second season has veered quite dramatically from the first season, and part of me misses the hacking-focused plots (particularly the realistic handling of social engineering). But I can't fault the creator for avoiding expectations, even if the show's pace feels slower (apparently he had both seasons planned out before he started).
(I tried to be vague to avoid spoilers but now fear my post makes no sense)
One of my favorite things about the twists though is that I feel like they actually lay a lot of groundwork and foreshadow them very well. For example, I think the twist before the main "first season twist" that you mention was foreshadowed beautifully at the beginning of the episode. By the end of the pre-opening credits scenes, I knew something was up.
Similar story this season. There were so many scenes that felt weird to me (things weren't "matching") that I knew something was up. And as soon as that twist was revealed, they had laid the background/groundwork for it so well enough in season 1 that I immediately knew why it was that way.
Edit: My point was that I've heard some people complain about the twist in season 1 being predictable, but I don't think a "twist" being unpredictable is always a good thing, sometimes it's shitty writing. Almost every time I'm surprised by something in Mr. Robot, I had suspected something was up and thought, "I should have seen that coming". It's almost like watching a really good magic show: I know how a lot of tricks are done, I know they're going to try to trick me, and I'm still surprised when they pull it off.
I had the first twist in the pilot. As soon as Elliot entered the ... club rooms, I figured it out. I'm very good with patterns, and one thing that annoys me is knowing how TV shows are going to end before they do. I had BSG early on, Sixth Sense ("I'll bet he dies and we see a ghost. No, that's just too obvious."), watched three episodes of the Mentalist and had the culprit in the first five minutes of each episode - even within the first minute of the first episode I saw. I'm almost at the point where I can quote some more ordinary movies while I'm watching them. (That's not as odd as it sounds, it's the patterns that are used to build each scene and the overall film that are the giveaway, but it's more subconscious than deliberate.)
So where is Mr. Robot going?
Damned if I know. That's what I like about it. As you say, some of the scenes were so odd that it was clear something was up - why is he watching the game from the bench? Why were they so angry with Elliot, and why was the friend such an influence on them? I didn't pick that one, although perhaps I should have re-watched season 1 before starting 2. I don't think that was the big twist, though, that came later - Juvgrebfr'f fhecevfr gung Ryyvbg qbrfa'g xabj jung Cunfr 2 vf tvira gung vg'f uvf cebwrpg, naq nyy gur cbgragvny snyybhg sebz gung. Vf Juvgrebfr hfvat Ryyvbg sbe uvf bja raqf? I think the other shoe has yet to drop on that one.
I think that people who write it off as "just Fight Club" are hugely missing the point - the narrator in that is just too reliable after we learn the twist, and after all, Fight Club was just a backlash against the overall commercial exploitation of the world at the time. Mr. Robot is about n qryhfvbany cnenabvq fpuvmbcueravp jvgu n fbpvny nakvrgl qvfbeqre, jub unf n zhygv-ynlrerq cyna. Jr'ir bayl frra gur Svtug Pyho cneg bs vg pbzcyrgrq, jung ryfr vf pbzvat?
One of the developers hosting Kali posted about it here once. Basically he remembers one morning waking and seeing that traffic had spiked and he was really puzzled about it. Up until he clued in to the fact that a certain episode of Mr Robot (where Kali Linux figured prominently and was advertised quite profusely) had been aired the previous night. So yes, there has definitely been a spike in Kali Linux downloads over the course of the show.
Ignoring everything else, Mr. Robot builds a spectacular atmosphere, which is an almost impossible task in television. This show is wonderful. I'd say it competes with Game of Thrones on quality and it's my favorite show right now.
They get the technical details right enough to earn respect. Sometimes you need to give artistic freedom to the writing as long as it doesn't devolve into a graphic of Pacman eating data. Gives you some meaningless pride when you see a protagonist empty a can of Pringles into the trash, knowing exactly what they are doing.
If someone has a problem with the series, my natural reaction at this point is that they're pretentious... it's not fair but imo really that's what all the criticism has boiled down to:
You noticed the heavily telegraphed twist? Good job! Gold star for you!
You're going to criticize a show with such wonderful atmosphere building for having long episodes? Wow, your time must be really important!
He uses the wrong text editor or Linux flavor? You must be a master, could you please fix my iPad?
The characters are flawed or mercurial? Could you please elaborate on the strengths of two-dimensional characters?
I only watched a few episodes, but the whole "She needs to learn to hack in 24 hours" bullshit was a little too much for me. Everything she was doing could have been a script. There was 0 reason to have her punching in commands like that, and either way that's simply using Linux.
'python hack-it.py' would have sufficed. If you haven't seen it, it wasn't much better than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmz67ErIRa4 and at least that was entertaining.
Except the basic CLI knowledge prepared her for when she needed to run some emergency commands e.g. to restore the network connection. I'll allow them a tiny bit of artistic license here, it certainly added to the tension.
I think he wrote "emergency commands" not "hacking commands".
Because she's inside the same network, she can send those commands from her cubicle, so she needed to know how to do it.
The show emphasized many times that "she is learning to hack" to the point of ad nauseam. Nobody who has a clue would ever call it that. In reality, she was learning to use Linux.
Side note: Why is everyone using Kali Linux all the time? Does anyone (who isn't 14) really run that as a daily driver? They use it to surf the web and check their email. It makes no sense.
> They use it to surf the web and check their email. It makes no sense.
There's a scene where we can see Elliot running CentOS on his personal laptop. Not that lends any realism (CentOS is more common on servers, not PCs) but it does show their awareness of Linux beyond Kali.
Maybe because it's easier to boot it everytime from USB wherever you are than to have an OS installed with information about you on it.
Also, I guess they use it daily for hacking purposes and happen to check the mail on it.
> 'python hack-it.py' would have sufficed. If you haven't seen it, it wasn't much better than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmz67ErIRa4 and at least that was entertaining.
Hacker (film) was painful to watch. So much cheesyness.
I'd probably think this was one of the best shows ever written, even without a lot of the hacker stuff. The fact that they obviously use consultants who know their stuff, and depict hacking better than 97% of other fiction, is a great bonus.
I agree 100 percent. The second I heard (and the fact that I watched the last documentary like episode of the show of Season 1 that talked with the cybersecurity experts). That made me love it even more
Considering that Edward Albee was mentioned in the article with a quote, I find it worth while to mention that he has unfortunately passed away at the age of 88 - just now.
Edward is/was known for works such as The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) and A Delicate Balance (1966).
Halt and Catch Fire is my favourite at the moment. Although it had some hmm not so great moments, third season is beyond amazing. Probably my favourite show of the year!
I think the lesson non-hackers need to take away from Mr Robot is that hacking is as psychological as it is technological. You could have the greatest firewall known to man and just one stupid or disgruntled employee with too much admin access and it may as well be the Great Wall which Genghis Khan simply walked around.
Otherwise society at large is poised to think of hacking in the laziest Hollywood depictions:
I find it really interesting that they do so much research to try to make sure they're not ruining cyberpunk culture like so many other artistic entities have[0].
I usually avoid most of the comments on here because of the negativity. I'm loving the declarations of endless love for the show on here though. I've been convinced this season that Mr Robot is my favorite show of all time and these reaffirmations make me confident in my position.
Amazing monologues, realism, extreme tension, brilliant writing and acting, Mac Quayle, Sam's directing work, an attractive cast, the unreliable narrator, good story arcs and wonderful narrative styles. This show is pure art.
This show would not have been possible in the old world where networks all were targeting the general audience. This is a show for a narrow audience. The programming middleman managing the limited resource - prime time - is leaving. I hope this is the beginning of an age of increased content diversity.
Care to elaborate on what you didn't like about S2?
I enjoyed most of season 1, but started to get turned off by the philosophy/politics towards the end and kind of stopped paying attention.
Now I'm seeing people say S2 is more critical of the characters and explores the ideas in some more interesting ways, which has pretty much convinced me to start watching again.
You're the first I've seen who specifically didn't like S2.
Season 1 had a clear goal, to hack E Corp to collapse banks, every chapter was about hacking E Corp, it was a little more simple.
Season 2 is slow, not as exciting, and who knows what the goal is, maybe to survive after the hack, maybe something that will be revelead in the last season episode that only Mr. Robot knows, still, it is more slow paced, and tries to over analise the complicated behavior of the characters. IMHO,Elliot's double personallity should have ended in season 1. Another thing is that despise the collapse of the banks, the series doesn't show an apocalyptic world, everything is just like season 1, like if nobody cares about the collapse.
And
Every character is overcomplicated, Elliot with his double personallity, Angela with her ackwardness, Darlene a control freak, White Rose a time freak, and so on, and every damn character always has a monologue, it gets boring, it tries to hard and there is little substance in the story.
I thought so too at first, but it really becomes it's own story despite that fact, especially after the first season. The similarities are not unintentional. Sam Esmail doesn't hide the fact that the series is inspired by Fight Club.
Good god man. You asked that question? Movies rip-off books, books rip off real life, tv rips off movies. Format doesn't stop one from appropriating material.
Just google Fight Club and Mr. Robot. There are plenty of interviews with the creator of Mr. Robot where he explicitly discusses the Fight Club connection. Straight from the horses mouth.
I don't have a problem with referencing other works, but it's got to the point of a simple rewrite.
Fight Club: A prototypical, disillusioned male worker with daddy problems has a psychotic break causing him to make an imaginary friend, and this immaginary person pushes him to destroy all debt records to set everyone free to have a fresh start. In order to do this they start an undetground club that collects members who band together to accomplish this task, who are not totally in the know regarding the immaginary friend. In the process one of the main members of thr club is shot in the head and dies. There is a woman who has a very close relationship to the main character, who is central to plot development, who is portrayed as being very antisocial and rowdy.
I read and loved Fight Club, loved the movie, and love Mr Robot. Sam Esmail (Mr Robot creator) even says in interviews that Fight Club is his favorite movie, and certain threads, characters, etc are an homage to that. I mean, he even plays the same song ("Where is my Mind") during part of the "reveal" in Mr Robot. However, as other viewers have mentioned it wasn't really MEANT to be that big of a reveal. In fact, the /r/MrRobot subreddit had that theory nailed very early on in Season 1, and I would argue that knowing that reveal was coming didn't detract from any enjoyment.
Anyway, I totally get why you feel that way about the Fight Club similarities, and at first I felt that way too. But if that is the main reason you stopped watching, I urge you to give it another shot! I think there is so much more to the show than that story thread.
Edit: Also, just curious, how far did you make it before you decided to stop watching?
Hola, thx for response! 2nd episode of 2nd season. I'd also read those interviews, and so decided to give the second season a shot based on them. However, the first couple of episodes seemed to double down on the "homage". It sounds like I should give it another couple of episodes, so will do. But, I just can't help but be turned off by the breadth and depth of similarites. But, will give episode 3 and 4 a shot.
You need to watch the condescendence here, Fight Club is a well known movie and I've watched it, so have a lot of people who, like me, appreciate Mr Robot and a lot of them, like me, appreciate Fight Club.
Of course I can see the parallels. But, like I said, watching the two shows is a completely different experience. I work in the games industry, I'm quite familiar with what a "rip-off" looks like. Mr Robot is not a rip-off. Inspiration is not a rip-off.
Are you aware Fight Club was first and foremost a book? If you've had the opporto read the author's other books you'd likely distinguish a vein of an original artistic contribution that run through his material, straight through to Mr Robot. I'm speaking specifically of the philosophy here. So to also adopt the plot and style so heavily, I just can't.
So for someone to dismiss out of hand with so little consideration, as you did, the artistic licence which was taken with the material in this instance, and then to follow-up without considering my follow-up comment, that is condescending in its own right. To right off the other's thoughts so glibly.
And sorry, but working in the gaming industry does not give someone authoritative rights on being able to call out a rip-off. It's possible you missed something here. In which case it might not be the worst thing in the world to fully consider the other person's arguments prior to responding to the comment by simply stating you hadn't changed your position. A very dismissive response.
POI is a pre-snowden series about a world "in which the NSA has a system which spies on every american citizen in order to fight terrorism" (sounds familiar?).
The show begins with the weak premise of "help us fight crimes we predict will happen", but don't be fooled by its appearance of a run-of-the-mill CBS show. Without spoiling it too much, I do want to say that by the end of Season 1, it transitions from "monster of the week" to an extremely high quality science fiction show, nearly invisibly.
I don't want to oversell it, but if you're reading HN it's very likely to be a show that you will appreciate. And like Mr. Robot, it's one of the very rare shows that has a lot of respect for tech and doesn't vomit gibberish on their audience.