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I think the people who liked the finale and show have moved on so it's fair game for shredding by the haters now, right?
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Dec 27, 2019 00:23
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I liked the show, and still like it overall, I was just disappointed to find out it was more about the part I found weakest than about some of the parts I enjoyed more at the end. I think Esmail's great though, and even though his directing could be so flashy that it was actually a distraction at times, it was a joy to see someone like that doing so much work on television. I'll always have Tyrell being interrogated by Wallace Shawn to remind me of the stuff I really loved about the show.
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Dec 27, 2019 00:29
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DaveKap posted:Anyway, the finale wasn't the real finale of the show. The real finale was the Deus Group hack in combo with the no-talking episode. Dom's romp with Darlene was a victory lap. The finale was a way to tie-up the loose end of Whiterose and what Elliot was seeing during his fancy trips to unreality
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Dec 27, 2019 00:40
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Did all of you thinking Elliot and Mastermind looked like different people miss the whole scene where they met each other and Elliot was freaking out that they looked exactly the same? Or literally any scene where Mastermind sees a picture of Elliot in the real world and assumes it's himself? So how much did Lost break your brain? Because you're making that comparison SO hard, but if you're using it as the metric for all other confusing serialized shows, hell, Lynch did that poo poo with Twin Peaks way before. Lost actually had pretty steady explanations or inferences when you weren't waiting for weeks between episodes. I've done a full binge rewatch and a chronological edit rewatch, both years apart, and there are answers to most of the questions people had. I still think people just didn't get it, or made the wrong interpretations a lot of the time. sticklefifer fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Dec 28, 2019 |
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Dec 27, 2019 01:00
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I just want a good Mr Robot Mr Roboto montage. It cuts off too short on the last episode. It would have been perfect 1st season.
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Dec 27, 2019 01:13
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DaveKap posted:... maybe even Watchmen. Maybe. Lindelof has only managed to prove (to me) he can do a single-season well but multi-seasons might be his downfall as it was for Noah Hawley with Legion. I might respond to you in more detail later since I'm bullish on Mr. Robot's place in TV's greatest hits, but just lol if you think Watchmen finished stronger than Mr. Robot. Watchmen totally shat the bed with the last two episodes. My feelings are it's a mixed bag with one of the all time greatest finales that makes the journey worth taking. Also the way you use  so derisively is pretty laughable, it was a transformative series in TV history that holds up surprisingly well to rewatch. It seems to have become one of those "cool to hate" things.
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Dec 27, 2019 04:09
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I never got on the Lost bandwagon, but I was big into BSG which as I understand it suffers from some of the same issues. Compared to BSG, Mr. Robot comes across quite favorably. The last season and a half of BSG leaned very heavily into suggesting that there would be a concrete answer to the central mysteries of the story, primarily Head Six, Head Baltar and Starbuck, but in the end they swerve not just into mystical answers, which would have been fine, but into frankly unknowable mystical answers, which just wound up being unsatisfying since the pieces existed in the show to provide concrete answers. The result is that the writers' struggle with the plot became transparent, where it was clear they'd wrote the mysteries without a clear idea of the answers, and couldn't work them out in a satisfying way. What Mr. Robot does correctly is that the reality of the show's world remains largely intact by the end, since we never get to see if Whiterose's machine actually works. Maybe it does, but that's not the point since Elliot and the rest of the principle cast rejects the hope that it offers, so even if it did work they would continue to try and stop it. It teases us with the possibility of full science-fiction, just like BSG teased that there would be some reconciliation of the show's mystical elements with harder SF elements, but wisely avoids compromising itself where BSG failed.
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Dec 27, 2019 04:29
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To expand on that point a bit since I've been thinking about it today, I felt super dissatisfied with the blue balls on the machine, and the seemingly pointless end for White Rose, but I guess it kind of works as a choose your own adventure. If you think the machine needs to have been real to have justified some of the things that happened in the show (like the obsession White Rose had with Elliot when she could have just killed him a long time ago), then it was real. If you think that's stupid and obviously the show would be worse with supernatural elements, then fine, it was all bullshit, she was high on her own supply for some reason, and managed to break Angela's mind somehow too. Seemingly intelligent people get lured into cults all the time, so it's not entirely implausible. For me, I feel like there has to have been something there to have justified White Rose's obsession when she threw away the world to attain it, but ymmv.
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Dec 27, 2019 04:39
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Strange Matter posted:What Mr. Robot does correctly is that the reality of the show's world remains largely intact by the end, since we never get to see if Whiterose's machine actually works. Maybe it does, but that's not the point since Elliot and the rest of the principle cast rejects the hope that it offers, so even if it did work they would continue to try and stop it. It teases us with the possibility of full science-fiction, just like BSG teased that there would be some reconciliation of the show's mystical elements with harder SF elements, but wisely avoids compromising itself where BSG failed. This is the main counter to DaveKap's use of Lost as a comparison to this show: DaveKap posted:Along with "What did Whiterose show Angela to brainwash her? "What did Tyrell see before dying?" and "What did Whiterose's machine do?" the unfortunate answer here is The problem with Lost was not that it did not explain itself. The problem was that it explicitly outlined what was happening and people just didn't like it. Lost did not finish on an ambiguous note. It finished on "Everything you saw happened, including all the sci-fi and fantasy, and then they all met up in the afterlife." Mr. Robot finished on "Everything you saw happened (except it wasn't happening to who you thought it was happening to) and you can decide for yourself whether Whiterose was crazy or not." Mr. Robot was ultimately not about science fiction, it was about trauma and how the characters dealt with it. That's why the 'plot' finished in the middle of the season. The only valid comparison between the two shows is that there is a few 'unexplained' breadcrumbs - Lost had way, way more. Of the few you mentioned, the Angela and Whiterose are both connected - if you think Whiterose was delusional, then Angela was simply caught in the gravity well of Whiterose' delusion and they both would rather the world change than deal with their own trauma. If you think that maybe the machine worked, then it's not a mystery, she saw a different world somehow. What she was specifically shown would inevitably answer that one way or the other and therefore could not be shown. What ultimately mattered was that neither of them could move on with the world as it was. The Tyrell one was weird, but that whole episode was weird and dreamlike. I never really felt like it needed explaining, it's not like it had relevance to anything else. He stumbled off and died, who cares what he saw.
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Dec 27, 2019 05:04
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Ya I didn’t watch Mr Robot in order to learn the mystery of what people see when they die, I’m OK with the show not explaining that one.
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Dec 27, 2019 05:07
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mr robot is a show about how the status quo is good and trying to change anything fundamental is bad. the correct way is to ally with good billionaires to take down evil billionaires who have corrupted an otherwise good system and are responsible for all of society's woes. thank you for coming to my wine cave keynote.
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Dec 27, 2019 05:26
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I've got a bit of a hot take here and I just want to see it discussed some more. I think the Whiterose arc was mishandled and problematic. The first point is that their storyline seems to be based on suicide. This has been a Dark Army signature, but suicide affects trans people much more than others, and the climax scene for Whiterose is an on-screen trans suicide. Whiterose had to die by suicide to move in to their new world. It isn't explicit, but it seems that in this other universe, Whiterose is a cis woman. So we have a trans character whose story arc results in them killing themselves and being reborn cis. The trans character is a murderer who kills thousands of people and the cis version is the world's richest philanthropist. It gets extremely close to saying "trans bad, cis good" and that's before you consider that the only trans character has suicide be the crux of their entire story. xtal fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Dec 27, 2019 |
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Dec 27, 2019 06:00
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xtal posted:I've got a bit of a hot take here and I just want to see it discussed some more. I think the Whiterose arc was mishandled and problematic. Sorry but there is zero evidence that Whiterose is born biologically female in Elliot's prison world. The presenter says she is "the world's richest person" and refers to her as 'she' and Whiterose looks the same. All this says is that the world refers to her by her preferred gender, which is nothing more than a little suggestion at that point in the 'mystery' (we don't yet know where we are) that she seems to be better off, in a world she doesn't have to hide her identity.
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Dec 27, 2019 06:26
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Really the whole Edward/Deus Group/"the Machine"/using a kid to brainwash Angela/constant Lolita references all felt like it was adding up to a conclusion that would have been horribly offensive to ascribe to whiterose. And the show's efforts to humanize whiterose weren't so good. All the time she spent with Grant (and Insubordinate Lady, who went nowhere) ended up meaning nothing. The one flashback scene was half The Machine hype with the "IBM factories opening in the wrong year!" and a needless gripe about IP theft. Mameluke fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Dec 27, 2019 |
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Dec 27, 2019 07:01
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xtal posted:I've got a bit of a hot take here and I just want to see it discussed some more. I think the Whiterose arc was mishandled and problematic. yeah this is a bad take
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Dec 27, 2019 08:06
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xtal posted:It isn't explicit, but it seems that in this other universe, Whiterose is a cis woman. I'll have a response for some other posts later but for now I'll fully admit that when I talk about Lost, I'm using it as a stand-in for "breadcrumbs go unanswered because the writers were bad." This is just the generic take on the show I've seen prevail across the Internet, I have no personal hatred for the show. If my bringing it up causes problems, just replace every time I say with "a show that refuses to answer the questions it posed because the writers couldn't come up with a good answer."
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Dec 27, 2019 11:41
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xtal posted:I've got a bit of a hot take here and I just want to see it discussed some more. Is it hard to understand that maybe the world WR wanted was one that accepted people for who they are?
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Dec 27, 2019 12:34
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If you read around, magic cis is definitely the impression that most people actually have. I'm not the one suggesting it. I hedged the possibility that alternate-universe-rose isn't magically cis, because it's possible and I prefer it, but it would still be a transphobic character if the entire story arc is about suicide, regardless of this potential extra badness. A bit of evidence in favour of the magic cis theory is that Whiterose is trying to build an entirely new universe to accomplish the changes they want; that wouldn't be necessary if they just wanted to be accepted. Of course, by the finale, none of this makes sense. xtal fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Dec 27, 2019 |
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Dec 27, 2019 14:15
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I'm reading it more as a criminal who knows that the jig is up. That's the only way it really makes sense to me. Whiterose's machine was running, and its operation was threatening to destroy the entire plant and cause a nuclear disaster. That can't be by design. And if it's fully functional already, why the urgency to move it to the Congo? WR says that doing so will allow it to run without endangering nearby populations, but if it's designed to be a one-way trip, what's the point of that? I think what we saw is WR's last attempt to win over Elliot, because she thinks she needs him to complete the project. She's made herself into probably America's Most Wanted, burned her Zhang identity and the cops are literally barking at the door. She desperate and terrified because the dream she's lived the past 30 years for is collapsing. She's been trying for half the season to recruit Elliot because she thinks they're kindred spirits, but I'm sure also because he is useful to her. If the machine is running and is fully functional, WR's suicide makes no sense because she's already got what she wants, she just needs to jump through the Stargate or whatever. If it's not functional but WR's delusion convinced her that it will work, then it makes no sense because it flies contrary to her personal conviction. The only way it makes sense is that the machine doesn't work, not yet at least, and that this is all a very dramatic, very desperate gesture to recruit him, because WR believes that Elliot can help complete her vision. When Elliot refuses, the last door slams shut for WR and she kills herself rather than be apprehended by the FBI and face her crimes exposed to the world. She gives Elliot the means to shut it down because, in the end and despite her rhetoric, her chief goal is a better life for herself, and if she can't have that it doesn't matter what happens to everyone else.
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Dec 27, 2019 14:27
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Strange Matter posted:I'm reading it more as a criminal who knows that the jig is up. That's the only way it really makes sense to me. Whiterose's machine was running, and its operation was threatening to destroy the entire plant and cause a nuclear disaster. That can't be by design. And if it's fully functional already, why the urgency to move it to the Congo? WR says that doing so will allow it to run without endangering nearby populations, but if it's designed to be a one-way trip, what's the point of that? Maybe you have to be dead for the machine to do its thing. All of the dark army guys were shooting themselves in the head when their operations were complete as well. It’s consistent that when she was done she would do it too.
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Dec 27, 2019 15:45
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Is it over? Is it done? Is this strange few days I've experienced where I've seen the phrase "stuck the landing" or some variant thereof around 200 billion times a minute every time I try to read people's opinions on this show? Are we done now? It was like the Malkovich homage scene but with that phrase instead of Christian Slater's face. Is some sort of film school thing? Is it over now?
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Dec 27, 2019 16:12
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Genuinely confused by the discussion in this thread, so I went to Wikipedia for a quick episode summary in case I missed something major when loving with my phone or whatever. Oh my God. There's a Part 2 of the Finale. I thought the series ended with Elliot just ruthlessly killing his clone and taking over his life. Fade to red. Can't wait to go home and watch.
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Dec 27, 2019 16:39
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im depressed lol posted:Genuinely confused by the discussion in this thread, so I went to Wikipedia for a quick episode summary in case I missed something major when loving with my phone or whatever. I will only say LOL LOL
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Dec 27, 2019 16:42
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GutBomb posted:Maybe you have to be dead for the machine to do its thing. All of the dark army guys were shooting themselves in the head when their operations were complete as well. It’s consistent that when she was done she would do it too.
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Dec 27, 2019 16:49
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im depressed lol posted:I thought the series ended with Elliot just ruthlessly killing his clone and taking over his life. Fade to red. Can't wait to go home and watch. O_O
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Dec 27, 2019 16:52
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xtal posted:I've got a bit of a hot take here and I just want to see it discussed some more. I think the Whiterose arc was mishandled and problematic. I really appreciated this post.
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Dec 27, 2019 16:55
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Well obviously not a clone but whatever Happy Elliot was in the apparent parallel/white rose fantasy world they're in. People kept on mentioning Darlene and I'm sitting here 'what the gently caress are they on about?'
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Dec 27, 2019 17:05
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im depressed lol posted:Genuinely confused by the discussion in this thread, so I went to Wikipedia for a quick episode summary in case I missed something major when loving with my phone or whatever. lmao post of the year 2019
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Dec 27, 2019 17:14
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Strange Matter posted:Real talk, Tyrell still feels like such an enigma to me. His character has been so weirdly idiosyncratic from the first season till his dying moment that I genuinely could watch a show just about him in order to finally figure him out. Tyrell thought he wanted advancement and recognition and followed that through his rise at ECorp on his journey to CTO. Internally he was full of rage and resentment as shown when he nearly beat a homeless man to death for money. It fully manifested when he murdered Knowles' wife and later lashing out at Price and being fired. Just before that, Tyrell had realized that Eliot and F Society had infected ECorp servers. Tyrell then decided to seek out Eliot and IIRC, ended up talking with Mr. Robot instead (the conversation in Tyrell's SUV). (Even though I just did a binge of 1-3 I am a bit hazy on order of events) This all culminates at the end of season 1 when Eliot shows Tyrell what F Society is about to take down Ecorp Tyrell realized what he really has been missing and how to truly separate himself from his father: purpose. Sadly we don't get to follow up on this until season 3 when we catch up with what happened to Tyrell and his work on Phase 2. I really liked Tyrell's character, too. I'll have to do another rewatch in the future now that the series is complete. GutBomb posted:Maybe you have to be dead for the machine to do its thing. All of the dark army guys were shooting themselves in the head when their operations were complete as well. It’s consistent that when she was done she would do it too. Yeah, I think it makes sense if you think of White Rose as Jim Jones and the DA as her true believers. geeves fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Dec 27, 2019 |
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Dec 27, 2019 18:26
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GutBomb posted:Maybe you have to be dead for the machine to do its thing. All of the dark army guys were shooting themselves in the head when their operations were complete as well. It’s consistent that when she was done she would do it too. Consistent with the charismatic lies she told. If Dark Army wore identical model Nike sneakers instead of masks maybe the apocalyptic suicide-cult possibility would be clearer.
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Dec 27, 2019 19:30
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Also uhh, honestly, why was the FBI arresting Whiterose? Even after losing the funds that made her the richest person alive, she still had China backing her. It's kind of incongruous with the earlier seasons that justice was served on her as promptly as if she had been selling weed.
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Dec 27, 2019 20:04
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it's not great that whiterose was played by a gay cis man. And then one of the larger representations for a trans person on television killed herself is lame. b.d.wong at least was cognizant about some of this, but seemingly figured he would at least give the character more depth than whatever other cis actor they got. "There's a lot of things we can discus that are connected to it. There's also the casting of me in this part, which is not cool to trans people. Like Asians, trans actors don't get a lot of opportunities. There are arguably mitigating factors in this particular role because there is gender fluidity and she has to interface as a man and as a woman."
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Dec 27, 2019 20:05
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im depressed lol posted:Genuinely confused by the discussion in this thread, so I went to Wikipedia for a quick episode summary in case I missed something major when loving with my phone or whatever. (That movie is the criminally unknown Coherence) Mameluke posted:Also uhh, honestly, why was the FBI arresting Whiterose? Even after losing the funds that made her the richest person alive, she still had China backing her. It's kind of incongruous with the earlier seasons that justice was served on her as promptly as if she had been selling weed. There's about five thousand details like this that make no sense when you think about them but who cares, apparently all that mattered was the guy we knew the whole time wasn't the complete personality and instead a new (to the viewer) one is taking over with no effect on anything at all. Like so many other prestige serialized dramas it's a house of cards and collapses as soon as the creator stops holding onto it while promising just one more card will make the whole thing internally stable Bsg , for all it's problems with not having a plan and making up the final five on the fly, nailed it way more than this. And I'm not going to say the gymnastics phrase because as someone pointed out, it's as overused as saying this game really makes you Feel like Spider-Man mastershakeman fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Dec 27, 2019 |
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Dec 27, 2019 20:18
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Mameluke posted:Also uhh, honestly, why was the FBI arresting Whiterose? Even after losing the funds that made her the richest person alive, she still had China backing her. It's kind of incongruous with the earlier seasons that justice was served on her as promptly as if she had been selling weed. mastershakeman posted:Bsg , for all it's problems with not having a plan and making up the final five on the fly, nailed it way more than this. And I'm not going to say the gymnastics phrase because as someone pointed out, it's as overused as saying this game really makes you Feel like Spider-Man With Mr. Robot I'm not sure I like how the answer was given, but for the most part I feel like it's a good one. The big flaw for me is dropping too much into the finale itself. The urge to have one last twist thrown in was too great when the affect of revealing the Mastermind would have been more profound earlier in th season, because it gives the audience and the show time to explore the concept instead of being forced to accept it. BSG did this too, with a bunch of lengthy flashbacks in the final episode that were intended to imply that the end of the characters was written from the start (I'm thinking mostly of Baltar's father). Strange Matter fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Dec 27, 2019 |
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Dec 27, 2019 20:27
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This is just my naive assumption, but if the CEO of Google/Alphabet or any other huge US based conglomerate was shot dead in the middle of NYC with a ton of witnesses, the authorities would want to at least have a chat with whoever did it, no matter what government they were a part of, although maybe not with guns blazing... Of course, that's ignoring everything else whiterose did, but I just figured the one murder alone was bad enough. empty baggie fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Dec 27, 2019 |
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Dec 27, 2019 20:38
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empty baggie posted:This is just my naive assumption, but if the CEO of Google/Alphabet or any other huge US based conglomerate was shot dead in the middle of NYC with a ton of witnesses, the authorities would want to at least have a chat with whoever did it, no matter what government they were a part of, although maybe not with guns blazing... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/honey-barry-sherman-murder-first-anniversary-1.4945270
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Dec 27, 2019 21:47
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xtal posted:https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/honey-barry-sherman-murder-first-anniversary-1.4945270 Well, ok, but they weren’t shot to death in the middle of Manhattan by a well known foreign government agent while a bunch of people were walking by. Am I missing something?
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Dec 27, 2019 22:13
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Isn't there a real-life child rapist who could "shoot a man on 5th Avenue and get away with it" that the show explicitly positioned under Whiterose's control?
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Dec 27, 2019 22:15
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xtal posted:I've got a bit of a hot take here and I just want to see it discussed some more. I think the Whiterose arc was mishandled and problematic. as a trans person, i think this could be a fair take. I don't particularly agree with it (tbh I'm surprised by how little I was affected by whiterose's suicide and the culmination of her plot, maybe there were other reasons why i was just like "sure yeah" but idk), but like... i can definitely see how it could be read this way. Also, though i think BD Wong did a great job acting as whiterose, it would be really frustrating to see him getting an emmy for it; cis people being celebrated for playing trans roles is already a thing that happens way too much.
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Dec 27, 2019 22:18
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xtal posted:I've got a bit of a hot take here and I just want to see it discussed some more. I think the Whiterose arc was mishandled and problematic. A less hot take way to look at it is that if she'd been allowed to express who she was and who she loved instead of having to hide it, she wouldn't have become a monster--as she said, all she wanted was a world where she could be accepted. She wasn't a monster because she was trans and wanted to be cis, she was a monster because of the actions she took due to her desire to get revenge at the world and/or create a better one to make up for the pain other people caused her. She thought she and Elliot shared that perspective, and obviously Elliot wasn't trans and didn't need any physical transformation--the difference she was promising was that other people would behave differently. Lupus Rufus posted:Also, though i think BD Wong did a great job acting as whiterose, it would be really frustrating to see him getting an emmy for it; cis people being celebrated for playing trans roles is already a thing that happens way too much. I get why that might be frustrating, and the appropriateness of it is above my pay grade, but man he really was incredible. If he does get the award, it should be because he acted the hell out of the role, not because he played a trans character. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Dec 27, 2019 |
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Dec 27, 2019 22:31
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