In which we learn the origin of the Monopoly Man mask…
In darkness, there is knocking.
Robot, where perceived reality is a fussy cat governed by principles of uncertainty.
Credit: Michael Parmelee/USA Network
Elliot sits at his desk labeling his latest hack job.
The knocking has his attention, but it doesnt make him jump.
He takes his time moving to the door, and as he does, the knocking turns playful.
We see a familiar female form wearing a familiar jacket and a familiar plastic mask.
Trick or treat, says Darlene, rocking the Monopoly Man plastic.
Her tone is chipper-sweet, as she removes the mask, we see fragility written all over her face.
Found it in the 99 cent shop in Chinatown.
I didnt know they made a mask from that movie.
What shes asking isnt what shesreallyasking.
Shes appealing to some shared history and some old communion to gain entry, to acquire his company.
Elliot asks Darlene when she got back into the city.
She doesnt answer the question.
Well, its Halloween.
Seeing since that used to be our thing, I thought Id hit you up.
Elliot still hasnt invited her inside, and shes tired of waiting.
She enters the apartment and half-feigns some hurt for his apparent lack of enthusiasm for her.
Truth is, he isnt enthusiastic, but he doesnt have the sack to say it.
She knows her anti-social loner brother doesnt go out.
And she needs him to stay.
She pushes the button he cant resist, the coded command she knows he wont refuse.
Init-1.I had no idea what this meant in the moment, but heres what the Interwebs tell me.
Init-1 is Unix jargon that refers to a certain run level or configuration of a multiuser operating system.
Init-1 is single user mode.
Its also an emergency modality, and thats the context here.
Shes crashed; shes needs some tech support to reboot.
I wouldnt say it if I wasnt being serious, says Darlene.
Hang out with me tonight.
And with that, the funny games begin.
Elliot knows what will cheer his sister up.
He goes to his computer and clicks on uTorrentPlus and accesses some pirated movies.
(Freakin hacker, destroying the media economy with his misguided entitlements.
Whats next, the banking system?)
He goes to an alphabetical directory the C section.
Youve already heard the title of them in a line of dialogue.
A few notes about a few of these movies.
3.Cometis a romance told in flashbacks and with glimpses into parallel realities.
It was written and directed byMr.
Robotscreator, Sam Esmail.
Robot, a film made by the maker ofMr.
(In this alt reality, perhaps someone else madeComet.
Perhaps it was a bigger hit here, too!)
But officially, the movie isnt commercially available.
So why is it in on uTorrentPlus?
Anyway, its another piece of metafictional business that gets us questioning the nature of the reality were seeing.
Its also a bit of subversive gamesmanship in an episode with a lot of it.
ButThe Cometis not the entertainment that Elliot selects for their Halloween night hang-out.
He choosesThe Careful Massacre of the Bourgeoisie.
NEXT: Confabulation Theory.
As the Alderson siblings smoke dope and watch the film, we hear dopey dialogue.
Context clues suggest the characters are like Elliot and Darlene, a brother and a sister.
Do you have to wear that grody mask?
Its fathers, he says.
Long live the oligarchy!
Darlene makes other wisecracks that double as winks about the films unreality.
She says that she and Elliot and the three seeders are the only idiots who watched this growing up.
The counter culture snoot lowers herself to using Instagram to post a screenshot.
People need to know this movie exists.
Cut to:Mr. Robotfans posting screenshots of this episodesMassacrescreenshots with captions like Remember this movie?
or I love this film!
This is definitely the root of all of our psychological dysfunction, says Darlene.
The parallels between Elliot and Darlene keep increasing, like a tendency to flake out on each other.
Darlene did it to him in 2014.
Elliots doing it to her in the present with his Brooklyn exile.
Darlene pushes back on Elliots mothering.
Trust me, in this day of age, its sicker tonothave panic attacks, she rationalizes.
Since when did pretending everything is okay suddenly become the almighty norm?
The mask is the Monopoly Man mask.
A ridiculous torrent of blood splashes onto a stereo.
The image freezes and we see the films title and hear a heavy metal theme song.
Shes really into popadam.
That lame infosec job scare you straight?
Nope, he says.
On the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, Elliot kept the geek squad late, pissing them off.
They retaliated by locking him in the server room.
Elliot fell asleep, and when he woke up, he saw the servers had been wrecked.
His own hand most likely caused the vandalism, during a somnambulant episode.
The company took action against him.
A judge ordered him into therapy for anger management.
I guess its official, he says, turning his stoned head toward Darlene.
Elliot tells Darlene that their childhood friend Angela is getting him a job at Allsafe Cybersecurity.
The mention of their old neighborhood pal spurs Darlene to ask about their mother.
Has Elliot seen her lately?
F no, she says.
She still shits on Dad every time I see her.
Surely there must be more to her story.
I wish I remember him better, says Darlene.
Now shes talking about Dad.
You wanna see something?
NEXT: The answer to that question is Yes.
Elliot goes to the closet and pulls out Edward Aldersons Mr. She asks Elliot to put it on.
Then, Darlene asks Elliot to put on the Monopoly Man mask.
Elliot resists.Why do you want me to do that?Darlene insists.Humor me.Elliot puts it on.
Darlene is even more delighted.
Robot, a dark knight redeemer, her father figure destroyer-creator.
He seems to look to the camera from behind the eye slits of the Monopoly Man mask.
Yes, perhaps he will take that job at Allsafe, he says.
He begins pacing the room, talking out his plan, looking beyond the take-down of the company itself.
Hacking and bricking Evil Corp.s database would be easy.
Stopping them from rebuilding it and resuming business as usual would be the hard part.
The publics confidence in them would have to be completely destroyed to get to really finish them off.
Thats the only way it would work.
Dude, says Darlene, youre freaking me out.
But hes also thrilling her.
Elliot is playing out the superhero savior part she dressed him for.
Shes Aldonza/Dulcinea, watching Miguel de Cervantes rise up and become her crusading, tilting-at-windmills Don Quixote.
Is this something youve actually thought about?
Well, a part of him certainly has.
Elliot doesnt answer, perhaps because he doesnt know.
The opening sequence ends on the image of the Monopoly Man mask.
Through the holes for the eyes and the mouth, we see the static of the TV set.
But a change in the music adds another layer of meaning.
Its a blast of brass that sounds like something from a horror movie.
We think that, because its here that Esmail plays theMr.
It represents Elliots pathology and the schizoid, fd up way he manages it.
The music reverts back to Neptune, the Mystic as the story shifts us to the present.
We toggle between narratives.
We see Elliot jotting into his Red Wheel Barrow notebook.
We see Darlene riding the subway.
Darlenes fellow commuters are a curious bunch.
Weve been wondering if Elliot has been hallucinating his reality or all of the show the season.
Elliot meets with Darlene in the dining room of their mothers home.
This, too, could be an augmented reality.
It belongs to Elliot, because hes narrating the scene to us.
I will never understand why you did this, says Darlene.
The line links to the statements in the flashback intro expressing their mutual resentment of Mom.
NEXT: Darlene doesnt say the magic word.
The scene between the Alderson kids mirrors the flashback, with Darlene coming to Elliot for assistance.
But her complex nature complicates the ask.
Shes blunt, but not completely transparent.
She wants him to resume his role at the fsociety revolution.
They have a big stunt planned, timed to a Congressional vote on the E Corp. bailout.
She needs his help, on this, and other unspoken things.
Someone is hunting and killing members of fsociety.
Whats she supposed to do aboutthat?
Elliot refuses to give her what she wants, the way she wants it.
She shouldnt be doing what shes doing anyway, he says.
We are on the other side of something we never signed up for.
That wasnt me, he says when Darlene tries to remind him.
Maybe if she said the magic word init-1 Elliot would have responded differently.
The key line in this sequence is Elliots hot take on Darlene.
Asking for help was never Darlenes strong suit, but then again, is it anyones?
The flip side being exposing a vulnerability leaves you open for an exploit.
The themes encoded in that statement inform all of the episodes story lines.
The gross economy of being Bourgeoisie Joanna is in danger of collapsing, just like the economy around her.
Joanna might find pleasure in pain, but there are some pinches that she just cant handle.
Behind the mask of cool, high refinement hides a hustler thatll do maybe anything to survive.
She has hope for a bailout.
The Wellicks are owed Tyrells severance package.
has no interest in helping her.
After all, Tyrell murdered his wife, and both he and Joanna know it.
Derek, do you know why Im with you, why Im dating you?
You make $15 an hour.
Youre never going to be able to take me to Madrid.
Youre never going to be able to afford to take me anywhere.
You wont be able to give me anything I want out of life.
But Ive had all those things before, and they never made me happy.
Thats why I love you.
Youre not any of that, and I dont need you to be anything more than you are.
Derek looks dumbfounded and gutted.
Never has dream squashing sounded more like a valentine.
Joanna kisses his neck, then starts making her way down.
Good luck trying to get it up afterthat, buddy!
Whiterose and Richard Price.I know someMr.
For the rest, it was confirmation that the tack-on scene is indeed canon.
Just two masters of the universe, talkin new world order shop.
They discuss a pawn in their scheme Angela would be my guess.
Whiterose doesnt like putting all our faith in her when we have other options.
Price pushes back on what he interprets as impatience or want for grander gestures.
I opt for the simpler path.
Occams razor and all that.
NEXT: Is Price trying to create a new global currency?
An alarm clock bleats on Whiteroses side of the call.
We remember that she is obsessed with time and not wasting a moment of it.
How many minutes have you allotted for this phone call?
Their dialogue grows tense.
He wants to why she isnt doing more to help.
She wants to know why he isnt moving more quickly.
You assured me that the U.N. vote would be in full swing, says Whiterose.
This will take time.
Painful as that is for you to hear.
Whiterose ends the call.
A nameless subordinate enters.
How can we trust the appearance of gender in a story where nothing could be what it seems?
Well go with male until told otherwise.
Whiterose speaks to him with a more feminine voice instead of the more masculine voice she used with Price.
Looks like hes opting for his e-coin strategy.
Hes such a fussy cat.
We need to look into our phase two schedule.
Whatever that means, the nameless helper says the phase two schedule will take six months, minimum.
That will require patience, she sighs, and you know how much I detest that.
Nameless Helper is most likely intimately acqainted with this aspect of Whiterose, and many others, too.
She tells him to get more info: she needs to know everything the FBI knows.
Then she asks her helper for some advice on earrings.
She holds two options to her lobes and asks him to pick.
The right one, he says.
(Good answer.)
Nameless Helper receives this affection and cooly walks away.
Whether he desires this or experiences this as workplace harrassment, we dont now.
In a meeting with Nayar, Angela worries abut the implications of moving so aggressively on the Jim/Saul info.
One of the other affirmations Angela internalized in this episode: My beliefs create my own reality.
But what if those beliefs are all wrong?
He also tells her no.
Im sorry, dear, this is all in your head, says Price.
But dont take that as a slight.
Its always good to have dreams.
She was so sure she was correct.
She was so sure her power play would work.
Im notwrong, she says, an assertion thats also a fish for affirmation.
Go home, says Price.
We left Angela gobsmacked by uncertainty, feeling disoriented and cursing bleepables.
NEXT: Cries and Whispers.
Darlene.The other major scene involving fsocietys queen of heart-shaped glasses is also about disorientation.
This scene is all cries and whispers.
She meets Cisco, low-life ex-boyfriend and fsocietys contact with the Dark Army.
He has news for her.
Darlene spiraling after Elliots rejection grows distraught, slumps and whimpers.
Cisco tries to buck her up.
Darlene bites back with the line of the night: You want to help?
Be a man and let me be upset!
She looks away… then looks back at Cisco, eyes twinkling with longing.
Theyre barely done with their screw when Cisco tells her he has more bad news.
The roster of FBI agents Romero had in his possession when he was killed?
Most if not all of them were participating in a surveillance operation, codenamed Berenstain.
- Who were they spying on?
Darlene wants to run.
Cisco says that would only make her look guilty.
She plops on the toilet.
How the f did this happen?
*The spelling of Berenstain would be confirmed later in the episode with a text from Darlene.
Last year, a kooky notion started floating around the Interwebs and captured a few imaginations.
It was an explanation for a common misunderstanding.
Are you familiar with The Berenstein Bears series of childrens books and cartoons?
Well, you shouldnt.
Because theres no such thing as The Berenstein Bears.
Theyre called The BerenSTAIN Bears.
We just remember it as The Berenstein Bears because Berenstein is more common than Berenstain.
Its an example of confabulation, how our mind and memory plays tricks on us.
But this isnt the explanation that got peoples attention.
Accepting Rays help would mean exposing a weakness, leaving him vulnerable to an exploit.
Elliot is aware of this.
The part of him thats Mr.
Robot is out-of-his-mind alarmed by it.
Elliot begins debating his alter-ego, i.e., arguing with himself.
Mr. Robots counter: What if the Dark Army learns you turned turncoat and murders Darlene in retaliation?
This is a road paved with your dead friends and family.
Beholding Elliots internal struggle, Ray quips: You need that game a lot more than I thought.
Back at the Cuckoos Nest of Nameless Mamas maybe-hallucinatory not-so-safe safe house sanitarium, Mr.
Robot challenges Elliot to a winner-take-all game of chess all meaning all of Elliots mind.
If Elliot wins, he can confess and Mr.
Robot would leave him and never come back.
Ill get to be in charge once and for all.
What would that look like?
An absence of knowing.
A deep black void maybe youll never come back from.
No thoughts, no body.
(Presumably, he told her during the session that he hid from us in the premiere.)
For better or worse, he is part of you that makes you you.
Annihilation is not the answer.
Leon inquires about Elliots chessboard.
He drops some trivia pulled from Wikipedia.
So, what you playing for?
Existence, says Elliot.
Thats some high stakes.
So what you waiting on?
Elliot still doesnt know, and his uncertainty nettles Leon.
Do you want to be here?
Existence could be beautiful or it could be ugly, but thats on you.
How does Elliot know which one is for him?
Leon says to close his eyes and visualize.
If he cant see anything beautiful for himself, might as well fade the f out right now.
Basically: Get busy living, or get busy dying.
That night, Elliot dreams of his Tomorrowland.
The sequence is set to a lullaby version of Green Days Basket Case.
Theres even an empty chair for us, too!
Elliot and the gang see a skyscraper collapse in the distance.
Its the E Corp. HQ.
The spectacle of collapsing high rises also reminds us of another dream narrative: Christopher NolansInception.
We remember that Mr.
Robot has been controlling Elliot at night.
Which one of Elliots personas is dreaming this dream?
I dont want to be cynical.
I want to say its Elliot all the way.
Hes Neptune, the mystic, after all.
And Neptune was a god of dreams.
Regardless, Elliot is mobilized to fight for his life.
He goes to sleep with this thought: Its the world I always wanted.
And you know what?
I would like very much to fight for it.
The next day, Elliot and Mr. to the challenge of making bunches of Hamilton-Burr dueling allusions here.
Robot starts exposing the shame in this exercise as well as the negating paradox in their game.
Hes referring to fsocietys stalled Five/Nine revolution.
So far, it has caused only more suffering, not redemption.
Hes also basically saying theyre no different than the indifferent bourgeoisie they hate.
He points out the irony of their chess war: Because Mr.
Robot is an aspect of Elliot, Mr.
Robot is only making the moves Elliot wants him to make.
After the third stalemate in a row a statistical impossibility and Elliot tries to play again, Mr.
Robot calls it something else.
NEXT: Your reading assignment for next week is to brush up onFaust.
Its Darlene, poor, despairing Darlene.
Shes crashing, and she needs help.
She pushes the buttons Elliot promised hed never refuse; she invokes Init-1.
Did you mean what you said, that you wanted him, not me?
Did you mean it?
Darlene, I need to know.
Elliots question is Angela-esque, a need for affirmation.
It also kinda frames the Elliot-Darlene-Mr.
Robot triad as a bizarre love triangle.
I want you, only you, says Darlene.
Thank God were not through the looking glass on this one, if you know what I mean.
Dont worry, says Elliot.
I know what to do.
Elliot races off to Ray.
Hes scared Elliot is going to enact his salvation-via-confession plan, rescuing Darlene by triggering their collective arrest.
In this new framework thatMr.
Robotis establishing, we need to interpret Mr.
Robot in terms of Elliots unspoken or subconscious wants and desires, fears and anxieties.
Elliot opens his mouth… and confesses nothing.
Relief passes over Mr. Its what Krista told Elliot, but this has a spiritual spin.
Did you know that Moses heard voices, too?
Abraham, John, Paul, Jesus.
In fact, many prophets confessed to hearing voices.
People like you, what you have, it could be divinity, Elliot, if you let it.
Elliot wonders if this could true, if he could be special, like Moses.
Better question: Does hewantit to be true?
Doing so means embracing Mr.
He realizes right now, he has no choice.
He has to save Darlene and Mr.
Robot can help him do that.
This isnt the first time Elliot has been veritiably deified or beatified on this show.
In the season 1 finale, Mr.
Robot called him his god.
Last week, the voice of Tyrell said Five/Nine made them gods.
Here, Ray likens Elliot to the son of the Biblical god or one of his agents.
Buying into this could lead Elliot into some intersting, maybe dangerous areas.
If beliefs shape reality, per Angelas affirmation tapes,what happens when you believe youre divine?
This delusion is probably the product of his other delusion, Mr.
Robot is based on his father.
To modern eyes, it could look like schizophrenia.
When Elliot fell out of the window at age 8, did he bonk his brain back 4,000 years?
Elliot sits down at Rays computer console.
Ray says that the guy is there to help Elliot as needed.
But hes an implied threat, and Elliot knows it, and Ray does elaborate.
Nicely, of course.
Elliot, before you get started, there is something you should know.
My own line of business is very important to me.
Like you, Im a very private guy.
Elliots feels the itchy feeling that leads inevitably to disc-making cyber-vigilante super-heroing.
But thats the part of my brain I have to start ignoring, he says.
And for the moment, he does.
But before he gets to work in Rays project, Elliot has to work on his own.
Robot over his shoulder, a partner (for now) in crime, Elliot contacts Darlene.
She explains the fsociety predicament.
The cops have found their HQ.
The FBI has an operation called Berenstain that might have them under surveillance.
Theres only one way to find out.
What exactly are you doing?
Elliot says, Im hacking the FBI.
