Mr. Robotfans continue to wonder if some or all of Elliots season two storyline is a delusional mirage.
Mainline hallucination theory argues Elliot is projecting fiction upon his circumstances.
His mothers home isnt his mothers home, its a psychiatric hospital or a prison.
Credit: Michael Parmelee/USA Network
Mom isnt his mom; shes actually a guard or orderly.
Those conjectures remain plausible after five hours and four episodes.
But what about Ray, Elliots seemingly good-hearted, ministerial benefactor and would-be employer?
Hallucination theory says he could be an occupational counselor or psychologist.
A therapy dog.)
But maybe we should look past the untrustworthy surface and read the essence.
Ray is a metaphor for the moral dualism.
His computer profile icon: a yin-yang symbol.
Hes empathetic and exploitative, savior and slaver.
Paradoxes are to use the shows language logic bombs that literally blow his mind.
Elliot tends to be cynical-absolutist.
Evil Corp. F Society.
We live in a kingdom of bulls!
Everything is black and white like Ray and Lone Star.
The unfolding Ray narrative could represent an act of psychological disassembly and reassembly.
Call him: Dogstar.
And he will be played by theWhoa!masterMatrixman himself, Keanu Reeves.
The next episode might go a long way to clarifying this: the title is m4ster-s1ave.aes.
Let me unpack this a little bit before returning to hallucination.
(Dig it: Mr.
Robot takes command of a veritable dark army of androids.)
Robotis adorned and coded with master-slave metaphors, relationships, and concepts.
Joanna Wellicks BDSM role-play.
The neo-Marxist master-slave ideology of fsociety.
The evil of human trafficking.
It was a stunt meant to symbolize and advance fsocietys slave revolt against the worlds corporate overlords.
Becketts darkly comic existentialist play features a famous master-slave pairing, Pozzo and Lucky.
Pozzo is blind; Lucky is mute.
(Their condition speaks to Elliot and Mr. Hegel suggests that people relate to themselves (and each other) in a master-slave sort of way.
Our consciousness is aware of itself the way it is aware of another person; it is an Other.
Our self-aware existence fascinates us and terrifies us in equal measure.
Unless I am completely misrepresenting Hegel (which is very possible), I can imagine a professor usingMr.
Robotas examples for his ideas.
Robot are illustrations of self-aware consciousness relating to itself with shock and awe, fear and loathing.
They are in a constant death struggle.
Acknowledging their interdependence, they settle for a dysfunctional lord-bondsman relationship.
Elliots arc this season has seen him move from The Stoic to The Skeptic to Unhappy Consciousness.
This will be an unending, circular struggle.
Will this looping reality degrade him?
Can he break the cycle and move out of it?
Or is his story about learning to manage his chaotic internal life with grace and wisdom?
We were talking about hallucination theory, werent we?
Heres the thing: I dont know if I believe in it.
At least, not in the way mainline hallucination theorists conceive of it.
These beats could be explained as products of Elliots imagination.
But based on the available information, we should trust our eyes.
Ray, Lone Star, Rat Tail, Leon, and Nameless Mom are not fictions.
They are as they present themselves to be.
Similarly, I think we can trust that every other character and every other storyline inMr.
But, our eyes do tell us something else.
Its as vaguely sinister as the Overlook Hotel inThe Shining.
Its a blurry dream-realm, dimly lit and sparsely furnished, yet adorned with odd, conspicuous details.
An abundance of light fixtures.
Elliot only ever entertains visitors in the dim dining room.
Theres zero interaction with Mom.
She stays in the living room and rarely says anything.
She completely ignores her daughter, Darlene, and vise versa.
She just watches TV or works crossword puzzles and occasionally serves as Elliots wake-up call.
Moms house is a paradox, just like Mom herself.
Its a home, but its not homey.
Mom is homely in appearance, but not in spirit.
Shes offering hospitality to Elliot, but shes rather inhospitable in demeanor.
Uncannymeans strange or unusual in a way that is surprising or difficult to understand, according to Merriam-Webster.
Robot suggests a very common expression of the uncanny.
Increasingly human-looking robots that trigger creepy cognitive dissonance?
Thats the uncanny valley effect.
The character of Mr.
He looks like Elliots father, but hes not; hes Elliot.
Freud was very interested in the uncanny.
In 1919, the tell-me-about-your-mother psychologist wrote an essay about the uncanny entitledDas Unheimliche.
It means familiar or home.
(Don Draper might call this nostalgia.)
Elliot is suffering from at least one of those maladies.
Did Elliot shoot him?
Does he think he killed him?
Robot is a manifestation of that loop.
He comes and goes, forgotten and remembered, summoned when old wounds are touched.
Theres no need to overthink this or over-theorize this more than I have.
But lets do that, anyway.
Its a more elaborate, profound form of repressed memory emergence.
Robot jacket and putting on the Monopoly Man mask and started brainstorming his diabolical plot against E Corp. Its the seventh and final movement, Neptune, the Mystic.
Note the implication of endless looping there, the seventh movement switching to the first.
Oh, and 7 +1 = 8, which is the number of eternity.
Oh, and by the way, this nutty bit of conspiracy thinking and numerology that Im doing?
A symptom of the uncanny-fogged mind, according to Freud.
Okay, that got a little crazy.
So here are my theories.
I propose that Ray isnt a fictional hallucination.
Rays narrative represents a story from Elliots past.
Lets call him Ray.
In truth, Ray was grooming him for some kind of exploit.
Thats what Freud would think.
But here, Im to argue that the events shown are the events that happened.
Remember that Elliot didnt act right away last week to move against Ray.
In fact, he went home and went to sleep!
That poor choice will surely have consequences.
I propose Elliot suppressed/repressed this memory because of the shame of those consequences.
Perhaps someone close to him died.
Something just hit me as I wrote that preceding paragraph.
Nameless Mom said they wouldnt be able to afford their medical bills because Edward had just lost his job.
Edward told her not to fret, that they didnt need to worry about money anymore… Ray hired Edward to fix his website.Edward is Rat Tail in Elliots hallucinated memory.Dad couldnt do the job.
Maybe he didnt know how.
Maybe he had moral objections to Rays work.
Regardless, he couldnt do it.
In doing so, Elliot was able to provide for his family.
(Another possibility, kinda dark: Edward pimped his son out to do this work for Ray.)
But then Elliot did something he shouldnt have done.
He beheld the truth of Rays criminal enterprise.
(No wonder Elliot now wishes to refuse the will of his dad.)
Ray had his goons beat up Edward maybe they even killed him?
and made Elliot watch.
Of course, Freud would see all these motifs and think Oedipus complex.
Or at least so badly injured, Edward couldnt provide for his family anymore.
If thats true, Elliots memory of Dad throwing him out the window may be a guilt-induced fabrication.
What if Ray had his goons throw Edward out the window?
Why is Elliot is remembering this story now?
My guess is shooting Tyrell or failing to?
But perhaps something more heroic is happening here.
Perhaps thats a psychiatric facility; perhaps thats his Nameless Mothers house.
Could it be his own apartment?
We remember that season 1 ended with a knock on his door.
I like this theory, because thenMr.
Robotwould be telling us two stories at once.
It would be filling in the blanks of Elliots past and dramatizing Elliots present internal drama.
Weve watched Leon not only chronicle hisSeinfeld-watching, but wrestle with the meaning of the show.
Hes perplexed by the show.
Hes troubled by the show.
Hes infuriated by the show.
Hes worn down by the show.
Finally, he accepts the show.
The last time Leon spoke aboutSeinfeld, he recalled the controversial finale.
In fact, they laugh at the guys plight.
And then he pitches a very Hegelian idea.
Otherwise, Leon says, you might as well die.
It was a surprisingly idealistic and hopeful system at that.
It was as ifSeinfeldhad inspired Leon to give Elliot a spiritual hug.
Which is super ironic, becauseSeinfeldwas famous for being a show with the mantra no hugging, no learning.
But this is the best part.
The concept of criminal indifference resonates.
It was essential to last weeks episode ofMr.
(So, I might say, wasSeinfeld.)
Robot that now that he knew about Rays evil, he had an obligation to do something about it.
But where Leon and Elliot most echo theSeinfeldfinale is how they fulfill the judges command to contemplation.
Leon does this by going down theSeinfeldwormhole and coming out of it with an idealistic philosophy.
Finally, and more for fun than anything, Id like to offer one more piece of evidence thatMr.
Robotis pointing us toward the uncanny,Seinfeld, and a million other themes touched upon in this essay.
Youre going to like this.
Its a statuette on the windowsill.
Here it is from a scene two weeks ago, when Mr.
This is an interesting touchstone for Elliot.
I also wonder if this is an homage to Stanley KubricksA Clockwork Orange.
Kubrick is an aesthetic influence onMr.
In one sequence, Alex masturbates while listening to Beethovens Symphony No.
As he pleasures himself, nightmarish images, self-generated or recalled from viddies, light up his mind.
Do we have authentic agency or are we executing programs of cultural conditioning?
Are we clockwork oranges?
Are we Mr. Robots?
Alex is betrayed by his fellow droogs after committing a harrowing home invasion that leads to murder.
Hes sent to prison.
Malcolm McDowells acting plays to the phoniness; Alex here is a willfully ironic representation of the good.
Here, in his disorientation and unintended inauthenticity, Alex is an uncanny representation of the good.
Theres more to the movie, but Ill let you watch it.
Lets go back to prison.
Alex is allowed several objects in his cell.
One of them is… a little bust of Beethoven.
And damn if it doesnt look exactly like the little bust of Beethoven on Elliots windowsill.
you might see it here, resting on top of a comic book.
The title of that comic book?Uncanny Tales.
The most ironic thing about it?
Its a reprint of an older comic book, entitledAdventures into the Unknown.
Mr. Robotairs Wednesdays at 10 p.m.
