Mr. Robot - eps2.5h4ndshake.sme - Review: "Mind-bending"

USA's Mr. Robot entered the back half of its second season last night with an episode that can only really be described as mind-bending. Writer/director Sam Esmail introduced a whole new dynamic to lead character Elliot, with the episode's biggest twist revealing that Elliot's last few weeks have been spent in prison, not in the big wide world. But that wasn't the only bombshell dropped in the season's seventh episode.

In the last couple of weeks, Mr. Robot has delivered episodes which progressed the main story arcs more than ever this season, but this wasn't the case last night. The episode again moved into more cerebral territory, though that may be the last of that for the immediate future with the big reveal in the episode's final minutes which indicated Elliot had in fact been in prison for virtually all of this season to date.

Looking back through some of the season's key moments, this makes reasonable sense, though I'll happily admit to being blindsided by the revelation. It's likely Elliot is locked up as a result of him taking the dog, Flipper, from one of Krista's possible dates early in season 1. Elliot can hide his identity and leave virtually no trace online, but offline and in the real world is a different story, it seems.

There's so many beautifully ingrained parallels that now make sense. Elliot being contained in a small dark room with small windows, a rigid routine which involved eating at the same time and place daily with Leon, watching basketball, and to a lesser extent the characters surrounding him, including Leon and Ray - the latter coming in rather handy later on.

You gonna sit your ass right here until you do whatcha gonna do.

I'll come back to that shortly, because there's much more that happened in this episode that is worth discussing. Let's start with Angela's showdown with Dominique.

In last week's episode, Angela was just about to execute the final command to re-establish fsociety's network link to the router she planted on the FBI's restricted floor in the Evil Corp building when she was interrupted by Dom. Again, the series didn't pick up right where the previous episode left off, with proceedings in this scene resuming 5 minutes in.



The wait was worth it, though. Angela turned on the charm and handled the situation very well. She leveraged her prior meeting with Agent Thomas to her advantage, using it as an excuse for her presence on the restricted floor. Dom also never saw what was on her screen, but she caught Angela off guard with the personal details she knew. Later, Dom went to run a search on surveillance footage to dig up more on Angela, but the data had been erased. Dom rightly assumed the FBI had been hacked, but she didn't have enough evidence to pin it on Angela - yet.
​

Whatever this is, it's not you.

Yet again, Tyrell Wellick remains formally unaccounted for, but some significant progress was made in this episode. The opening scene featured Wellick and his wife, Joanna, in a flashback which saw Tyrell gift Joanna some earrings. The pair attended an E Corp function which had CEO Phillip Price, and Scott Knowles and wife Sandra present. The camera zoomed in right up close to Joanna's ears, which had her new earrings in them.

Back in present day, the camera zoomed out from the same earrings, showing Joanna on the sidewalk. An older woman approached with a bucket of blood and covered Joanna in it. This incident wasn't touched on again to my knowledge, so why this occurred is a bit of a mystery.

Later, Joanna was presented with an ultimatum from lover Derek, who wanted her to turn up as his girlfriend to a function. She never did, so Derek attempted to break things off, but when presented with a document indicating her intention to divorce Tyrell, things changed. This is something to watch for next week, for sure. Joanna has been so steadfast in her commitment to Tyrell, despite their more open relationship, so this is a big step for her to move on, especially as a new mother with Tyrell's baby.



But Tyrell may be dead after all. In the cell he was thrown in, Mr. Robot admitted he had shot Tyrell shortly after the hack. By proxy, it's probably Elliot who did it, but Mr. Robot may have been controlling that aspect. We don't know much more than that, but it's somewhere to start. Again, watch this space.

Let's get back to the whole prison thing. Ray dragged Elliot back to work on his site migration. He did so, but also alerted the authorities through several channels to have Ray and the site brought down. Before all that happened, Ray talked a little bit about how the site came to be, stating his wife was good with computers and technology, and set it up and left it to run on its own. Ray wasn't aware what was being sold on it - he was just happy to have the income it generated.

Perhaps the most spectacular scene in this episode came with around 8 minutes to run. A group of (prison) gang members assaulted Elliot, pinning him up against a (prison) fence. Reminiscent of when Mr Robot said Elliot was inside the sitcom episode last week, Mr. Robot was taking the beating for Elliot, as you could see Mr. Robot appear in place of Elliot for just a couple of frames as each blow landed. They were angry at the loss of several hundred bitcoins which went west when Ray's site was shut down. Out of nowhere, Leon barged in and slashed the throats of all the attackers, spraying the alley (prison) with blood. For good measure, he rammed the shank up one attacker's bottom (who in the writers room thought that up!?), and left Elliot with some rather ominous words:

Gonna get a letter on Tuesday. Do what it says. Hey yo man, when you see Whiterose, make sure you say I did you good.

So it turns out Leon is a member of the Dark Army, likely put in place to keep Elliot safe while he is in prison. This was such a fascinating twist, and caught me completely by surprise.

Closing the episode was a great bunch of scenes which revealed Elliot was in prison. The editing and cinematography here was outstanding, and it was a sensational, yet almost mediocre way of revealing the truth. Props to the creative team for that.



A couple other points worth mentioning include Angela confronting her father about the legal claims he was pursuing against Evil Corp. She forced him to settle for less with the company, which played into her hands and allowed her to leverage CEO Price into giving her a new position in risk management which has more access to the company's internal records. After being allowed to sit in on a meeting, Angela tried too hard to make an impression, likely stalling her progress in taking down Evil Corp from the inside.

Also worth noting was Elliot's Bible studies tutor recognizing he was talking to Mr. Robot. It's a minor thing, but it does mean that his interactions with Mr. Robot aren't just known among his closer circle. It was also interesting seeing Angela's new manager talking about the current water crisis in Flint, Michigan as being a potential liability issue. It's just the sort of thing a corrupt conglomerate like Evil Corp would be into if it was a real thing, so that was a clever way to help the viewers hate Evil Corp even more by relating it to a real-life event.

All up, the revelations that Elliot is, in fact, in prison, Tyrell may be dead, and that Leon is a member of the Dark Army made this episode pretty important. fsociety was hardly touched on, which was surprising. It was good to see continued development in Angela's circumstances, and Dom growing more suspicious of her. I get the feeling the tempo is about to increase dramatically, and that is an exciting prospect for the weeks to come. I'm also concerned for fsociety, which may have fallen into a honeypot with some of the data they received from the FBI, so we will have to wait and see what happened there. Finally, I can't wait to see what that letter promised by Leon has in it.

Thanks as always for reading. The comments section is below so please do share your thoughts and theories on this episode and what you think will happen next. Click here to find out all you need to know about next week's episode.

About the Author - Jimmy Ryan

Jimmy Ryan lives in New Zealand, and works in the IT industry. He is an avid follower of drama television and has a keen interest for television ratings and statistics. Some of his favorite shows right now are Person of Interest, Scandal, House of Cards, Orphan Black, Mr. Robot, Suits, The 100, How To Get Away With Murder and Elementary.

Recent Articles by Jimmy (All Articles by Jimmy)