Elliot goes through the looking-glass and finds…ALF?
Last weeks episode ofMr.
Robotteasingly floated the possibility of an impending leap into an alternate reality.
Credit: Michael Parmelee/USA Network
It was presented as part of a programming block called Word Up Wednesdays, a riff on ABCs TGIF!
block of family sitcoms on Friday night from this period.
They were on a road trip in a convertible, leaving New Jersey, destination unknown, inMr.
Robotstake on a classic sitcom plot: the family vacation that goes to hell.
The theme song was fascinating.
This episode would touch on all those themes.
He could see the phoniness.
He could hear it, too.
The audience laughter and titters.
The censor bleeping out his expletives.
eyes were more buggy than ever, reflecting hisWhat the hell is going on?
!disorientation and reflecting back our own.
His severe high-top fade was a symbol for his condition: Elliot was at risk for total mind erasure.
On the screen: black-and-white images of real world Adult Elliot getting pummeled by Rays thugs.
Her rig, a viewer into another reality.
I bet Whiterose wouldloveone of those.
Angela was a blinged-out, gum-chomping, Jersey-accented quick-mart clerk.
Gideon was a highway patrolman searching for a clan of outlaws and a kidnapped corporate exec.
And then there was The Man in the Trunk.
His eyes and mouth were covered with tape.
He wore a suit.
That should ring a bell.
In the last episode, we saw the phrase No Problemo!
I wasthiscloseto making an ALF joke in my recap and even suggesting the show was referencing ALF.
It was very real foreshadowing and more game-playing, but to what end?
Yeah, its probably that.
At first, I thought theMr.
Robotsitcom was a fancifully told flashback.
Elliot spent time in a mental institution as a kid!
Were watching his family take him there.
His consciousness is a dangerous ride in a dubious place.
Its a top-down convertible; that means hes exposed and vulnerable to external forces.
The scenery is bogus, all sets or matte paintings.
So is the horizon behind him; its a front or rear projection.
You could also look at the road-trip story as an allegory for Elliots life story.
Its difficult to say for sure, because so much of his past remains untold, fuzzed or coded.
The Aldersons present as a typical dysfunctional family, albeit one with a troubled son.
His family, particularly Darlene, is keenly aware he is going to die.
She teases Elliot and Edward about Edward throwing Elliot out the window.
The cheeky gallows humor is funny and disturbing.
Dig Edward coughing into his hand and showing us the blood.
They stop at a gas station.
This would be Elliots adolescent period, when Edward ran into money and health problems and started his Mr.
Robot business, and Nameless Mom went really, really dark.
Dad fills up the gas tank.
Mom plays abusive parent to the hilt.
Her primary target: Darlene.
She extinguishes a cigarette on her daughters hand.
She punches Darlene in the face, knocking her out.
(This will happen several times on the trip.)
Mom tells Elliot to be useful and go fetch her some cigarettes.
(But what about poor Darlene?
He should stay and protect her!)
(Not shaming Elliot.
Just my way of saying that I suspect that failure and guilt weighs heavy on him.)
Elliot is distracted from his errand by the sound of pounding.
Its The Man in the Trunk.
Edward slams the trunk shut.
Not so fast, kiddo, he says.
Nothing but baggage, Im sorry to say.
We gotta get your peepers checked as soon as we get home.
I say the latter.Edward Alderson is gaslighting his son.
NEXT: No, hes crazy for seeing ALF.
Elliot does his errands.
He immediately bumps into ALF.
ALF says No problem, E-meister, suggesting that ALF knows him.
Again: Does ALF represent someone else from Elliots past who remains cloaked in his memory?
Does he represent mental decline during adolescence?
Does he represent the fuzzy dice of madly rolled chance and chaos?
Does he represent higher powers that play with people like puppets?
Does ALF = God?
(I forget the details at the moment, but remember Elliots first conversation with Mr.
Robot back in the pilot?
I want to say Mr.
Robot told Elliot a story about his father, whom he portrayed as a criminal.
I think we need to revisit that story now that we know Mr.
Robot = Elliot.)
Edward intimates hes unhappily married and something of a horndog, possibly an adulterer.
(More and more, I wonder if Edward =Breaking BadsWalter White.)
Edward encourages Elliot to be like him.
Then, after looking at his wife, he reconsiders anddiscouragesElliot from being anything like him.
Its a confusing mixed message that launches Elliot into the next stage of the trip.
The car blows a tire a breakdown.
Edward stops to get a temp tire a donut to fix it.
Hes censored, the audience gasps, and Elliot looks to camera another jolt of Hello, Friend self-awareness.
If Edward (and Mom?)
caused Elliot to go insane, what was the catalyst?
Was it when Dad threw him through the looking-glass, i.e.
through the window, and his subsequent scapegoating of Elliot for his actions?Its an accident!
Its your fault!Or is there much more to this story?
A police car approaches.
We dont see it, we just see the lights and hear the sire.
Next we get a Bud Light ad from 1990.
(The one where dogs jump through flaming hoops.
It introduced them to the image of the Monopoly Man and inspired/codified their anti-society counter-culture ideology.
Its a post-Nine/Five E Corp. spot, featuring the tagline Still on your side.
When we return to the sitcom story, Elliot sees the cop.
Now, you could interpret this as an immediate continuation of the biographical allegory.
The arrival of the police car prior to the commercial break = the moment when Elliot joined Allsafe.
But the commercial break also could also represent a flash-forward.
The implication of this reading is the initial police drive-up represents a different event than Elliot meeting Gideon.
If so, what was it?
Did Edward get sent to jail for throwing Elliot out the window?
Or did Edward and Elliot do something during Elliots childhood that got them in trouble with the authorities?
Hes a police officer!
And hes looking for a clan of fugitives and an abducted businessman.
Before this can go any further, ALF runs him over and then drives away.
He treats the event as if it was something way in the past they should just forget.
Elliot cant believe his father could be so blase, so indifferent to the horror of the world.
It happened 12 seconds ago!
Gideons death stands for the blood on Elliots hands.
The argument over Edwards criminal indifference corresponds to the argument last week, when Elliot and Mr.
Robot clashed over how to deal with what they found on Rays black-market website.
So the allegory has moved into the present.
He also represents another kind of psychotic break.
During his brief escape, he runs into the back screen and falls into unconsciousness.
The world is exposed as unreal, and Edward finally acknowledges hes Mr.
Robot, and he knows this reality is a delusion.
In fact, Mr.
Robot created it.But it could be real if you let it, he says.
Here, in this moment, Elliot and Mr.
Robot stand on either side of The Man in the Trunk.
Elliot teams with Mr.
Robot to toss The Man in the Trunk back into the trunk.
Robot appears to kill The Man in the Trunk with a tire iron.
Elliot grieves the nihilism.
He concludes it can mean Mr. NEXT: Is Elliot lying to himself about the value of lying to himself?
(And other paradoxes.)
Nothing like a TV show to help us escape from painful realities!
(ALF got in his head because the show was playing on his hospital room TV.)
Elliot, it would seem, is rather double-minded when it comes to the value of lying to yourself.
Were we supposed to agree with his argument?
But your imagination can run away with you, like an out-of-control driver.
And driving without a rearview mirror to see whats behind you?
Never a good idea.
Elliots memory his rearview mirror remains fogged at best, completely disabled at worst.
Robot is responsible for this.
Hes still hiding memories and perhaps distorting others.
His Lies can be good!
argument has some truth to it, but its also self-serving.
Which is trippy, because Mr.
Robot is actually Elliot and vice versa.
As the sitcom hallucination ended, Mr. Elliot wasnt yet sure he wanted to receive it or return it, so he didnt.
He immediately regretted it.
After the beating, Ray and Lone Star had taken Elliot to a hospital.
His room was huge and sterile.
A religious painting hung on the wall.
Elliot injured by a familiar, then taken by that familiar to the hospital.
More recurring motifs, more proofs of looping reality or repetition compulsion disorder.
Elliot was in excruciating pain.
He wheezed and writhed.
As his consciousness came fully online, he could tell he was not alone.
There were Others, looking at him.
Waiting on him to recognize their presence.
He turned with great dread to ogle the pair of overlords responsible for his suffering and his painful resurrection.
What he saw was Evil, Incorporated.
(You see how this works?!?!)
Ray sat in a chair.
Lone Star stood behind him.
Master and Servant: The theme, the fashion, the implicitdepeche modeof this episode.
Ray suspected this dawning awareness destroyed her spirit as much as illness and hastened her fade.
His death wasnt a murder to her; it was euthanasia.)
Ray finished this narrative while standing over Elliot.
It was clear he was using the story to describe the new state of their relationship.
Anyway, Ima quit yappin and let you rest.
Elliot was now Maxine.
He was Rays new bitch.
Ray was his master.
Later, Ray has his goons throw Elliot into a proverbial dungeon Maxines basement cellar.
Elliot was still in extreme psychic and physical torment.
In this present darkness, Mr. Elliot stood up to his fearsome holy ghost and lunged at him.
Robot thought he was being attacked and started to defend himself.
But Elliot wasnt assaulting him.
Robot was swallowed hard.
He was God-father proud(This is my son!
With whom I am well pleased!
), moved or nervous about what was unfolding.
As they embraced, we heard the beginnings of a lovely song: Guiding Light by the band Television.
A genius selection for an episode that saw Mr.
Robot give Elliot some guiding light in the form of a TV show.
An implied call-back to two episodes ago, when we got the flashback to the spirit of Mr.
Robot entering Elliot when he put on the Monopoly Man mask, illuminating his head with madness.
But to borrow from theMr.
Robotsitcom theme song: Can we trust the story?
You could read the Elliot-Mr.
Robot embrace as a reconciliation of equals and a recognition on Elliots part that Mr.
Robot a hold spirit, here to build up Elliot?
Or is he a demonic spirit, playing a long game of possession?
The twist, of course, would be that Elliot wants this to happen, because Elliot = Mr. NEXT: Word Up is the code word…for Elliot is Jesus.
Televisions Guiding Light bled into and played through the episodes equally touching final scene.
It was another road trip a bookend to the road trip that opened the episode.
This scene was a flashback played straight, with no high-concept filter.
His face was banged up, the result, perhaps, of a fight at school.
Edward only gave him grace.
So Edward tried another tact: he modeled vulnerability.
He told Elliot a secret.
He had lost his job a few weeks earlier due to several days of missed work.
September 8, August 29, August 2, a few more…
If Edward wanted Elliot to accept this at face value, he was wrong.
He started asking questions.
What was the significance the dates?
Why was he seeing a doctor?
Elliots interrogation finally forced him to spill another secret: He was sick.
Notice the motifs here.
What else wasnt/isnt Edward/Mr.
Robot telling his son?
Elliot was already badly beaten, but this was a more profoundly dispiriting blow.
(Assuming, of course, we trust as true everything weve seen so far.)
But then he tried hard to dispel the doom and gloom.
He told him not to worry.
She was charging into the future.
Full steam ahead to a great, big beautiful tomorrow!
Edward said he had a new job, a new way to support the family.
He was opening his own computer store.
Elliot brightened.Could he work for him?Edward said yes, he could.
Elliot transformed, warming to his father, wanting to trust in his hope and strength.
If he could have hugged him, it would have hit the correlation to the Elliot-Mr.
Robot reconciliation and lord-bondsman forging right on the head.
But it was there.
Edward already has a very specific chore in mind for Elliot.
He wanted his son tonamethe store.
He told Elliot to look out the window, look at the storefront.
Whatever came to mind, the very first thing, thats what theyll call it.
We didnt see the storefront.
We didnt hear the words.
With that, Mr.
Spoken into being with a word, the way God created the world.Let there be Mr. (On Word Up Wednesday, no less!
)Oh, lord, do I dare overthink this?
Robot is/was/represents Elliots father.
The ideal form of his father.
An idol to love.
An image god of worship, and more, to conform to, to become.
Ergo: In creating Mr.
Robot, Elliot created his dad and himself.
He created an unholy trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Seriously, theres something here.
The allusion of The Father creating something through The Son through The Word is Biblical.
Its found in John 1:1-5, a passage in which The Son, a.k.a.
The Word, is presented as a light in the darkness aguiding light.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.
In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Robot does have God on the brain this season.
We know Elliot has been journalizing about The Bible, describing the good book as a science-fiction story.
We know Elliot has rejected God this season.
We also heard Tyrell on the phone declaring that he and Elliot became gods on the night of Five/Nine.
(Tyrell smacks of Nietzsche to me.
All of this reminds us of what Mr.
Robot told Elliot last year.
I was only ever supposed to be your prophet.
You were supposed to be my God!
What might this mean?
Honestly, I dont know…
But I know someone who might.
NEXT: Meet the real-life Mr. Like Edward, hes a hard-charging futurist whos got his eyes on the road ahead of him.
Like Elliot, hes a man with a very complex relationship with a dead father.
Robot in this episode.
Robot as overman, Superman, Transcendent Man, if you will.
His name is Ray Kurzweil.
Hes an inventor, futurist, author ofThe Singularity is Near.
So does God exist?
I would say, not yet, he says in the film about his life,The Transcendent Man.
Kurzweil chases the dream of functional immortality.
He also has a dream of functional resurrection via super-realistic A.I.
replicas or computer avatars that look, sound, think, and behave like lost loved ones.
Ray has a very specific project in mind: He wants to bring back his dead dad.
In the future, we will all be Mr. Robots and so might everyone else who has ever lived.
So take heart, Ray!
You havent seen the last of your beloved Maxine yet.
In the world of Mr.
Robot, the Singularity might be near… if it hasnt happened already.
What really happened on the night of Five/Nine?
aes is Advanced Encryption Standard, the code the government uses to protect data.
It was time for fsociety to make the FBI its bitch.
But fsociety didnt have much time.
The FBI was exiting E Corp.
The operation was contingent on Angela learning how to script code in, like, a day.
Darlene ordered Mobley to make like Mr. Miyagi and mentor their Karate Kid with wax on/wax off instructional brilliance.
Darlene told him to deal.
Heed the omens!The Singularity is Near!
Complicating Angelas learning curve was the very thing that helped it: Angelas troubled slave consciousness.
She wants to be someones asset.
She wants to be someones friend.
Can anyone find her someone to love?
Can someone find her a God to worship?
Angelas internal dialectic worked to fsocietys advantage.
He suspected they had done something to it.
He wanted to know what, as he wanted to protect his friends.
His Dark Army contact made it clear there was only one entity he should be concerned about honoring.
He had Cisco restrained as he implanted a high-tech splinter a tracking equipment?
The relationship, clarified: Cisco was a foot soldier.
His responsibility was to follow orders.
This was not a rapport of equals.
Dark Army was the master.
Cisco was the slave.
She enjoyed herself as she worked her grift, exuding a self-generated confidence Angela could only dream to possess.
This point was underscored by Darlenes disguise.
She received a call from Darlene.
- It was time to hack.
*Actually, Darlene showed up as Marble Cake on Angelas phone.
It also speaks to Angelas negative feelings about Darlene and her self-loathing over this whole sh-t sandwich life.
Angela took a deep breath, exited an elevator, and began her part of the operation.
Stop suffering, Angela!
Gwan with your ideal bad self!
Let the transfiguration begin.
And you know what?
Darlene and Mobley talked her through the work, the figurative master gear directing the figurative slave gear.
NEXT: Angela, transcendent.
Ross talked a lot with his mother, according to his phone records.
Maybe a call from mom would shake him off?
I loved how thriller-suspense matched with psychological conflict.
Were they doing her any good?
She seemed paralyzed, a fragile dear caught in the headlights of Ross penetrating gaze…
Enter an idea from Hegelian master-slave dialectic to save the day.
(Also see: Elliot, goaded by fear and death to innovate by embracing Mr.
Robot, and all that means.)
Frazzled by terror yet also prodded by it, Angela got an idea.
As she turned the tables and worked him, the voices quieted.
The scene was playing out like a triumph of personal realization for Angela.
The long shot finally cut after minutes, upon successful installation of the master equipment.
Oh, happy consciousness!
Heros Journey: complete.
The master-slave dialectic never ends.
Its a constant loop.
And so, seconds after her victory, the Wi-Fi went out.
Darlene told Angela she had more work to do.
She tried to focus, she tried to innovate, but she was lagging, spacing out.
She wanted a moment of Angelas time.
Go ahead, I can wait for you to finish, said Dom.
But in m4ster-s1ave.aes, he certainly didnt feel like one.
Congress was still balking at giving him his bailout.
They had good reason.
The money was going to come from a loan from China.
Hence, the bailout was politically risky.
He needed to get Minister Zhang (a.k.a.
Whiterose) to help him out, but she wasnt taking his calls.
This pissed him off.
The universe, it seemed, was conspiring against its so-called master.
But does he still own them, too?
Dom.The FBI agent survived the shootout in China last week.
We didnt see this.
The FBI worried she may have suffered trauma.
Her boss said there was no proof of her theory.
The Dark Army are just hackers, not terrorists.
Doms forced leave of absence made her a warrior servant without a master a ronin.
Without customers, he couldnt attract customers, because he needed their cash to restock his depleted shelves.
He served her one more time, the most sad-happy bodega sandwich maker the universe has ever seen.
And Now For Something Completely Different: A Small Essay On How TheMr.
RobotSitcom Is A Guiding Light Response To Televisions Dark Antihero Age.
Robotsitcom, I thought aboutNatural Born Killers.
(Instead of an abusive Mom, she had a sexually abusive father, played by Rodney Dangerfield.
She and her partner-in-crime boyfriend, played by Woody Harrelson, kill him.)Mr.
Elliots troubled reaction to his reality blur doubles as response to the subversions around him.
So does the theme song.
Theyre arrested for criminal indifference, tried, convicted, and jailed.
I saw some of that in m4ster-s1ave.aes, in the moment ALF runs over Gideon, then speeds away.
So basically,Mr.
Robotis sayingSeinfeldhas a lot to apologize for.
(Im kidding.)
Okay, Im taking a vacation.
See you in two weeks.
