Entertaining episode. Should've seen the shootout coming, I was thinking the whole time during White Rose/FBI lady scene "why the **** is White Rose being so honest with her".

I continue to praise the show but it is really difficult to see how this all ties together. There's so many things up in the air that I can't find a reasonable explanation for. Just some things I have a hard time coming up with a plausible answer:

*Where the **** are they going to tie in Tyrell into fsociety/dark army? It seems like he is a third player but that just doesn't make any sense.

*How is it plausible that fsociety has become a team of like 50 people and that they all just know eachother?

*How is it plausible that they are squatting in a multi million dollar house belonging to a top executive at Evil Corp?

*How did Ray find Elliott?

for (4), Ray could be the warden of the mental institution

We're looking at kind of a similar problem to Tyrell and Mr. Robot meeting in season 1. There are so many real events happening (at least 80 percent of that episode was outside of Elliot) that it's hard to think any of this isn't actually happening.

We are also seeing a fracturing of Elliot's un-reality, with there being fewer and fewer people inside his repetitious delusion. The beat up thing could very easily be him acting out as a mental patient, and being restrained. But this kind of stringing the audience along is a huge story problem, in my opinion. I feel we have to start getting answers next week, as at least to me this is starting to get really frustrating in regard to story progression (this isn't vamping or teasing either, which arguably makes it worse, I don't know for sure), or there won't be much of an audience left in a few weeks (think it now has at least one more drop before stabilizing in ratings). There was pretty much no chance something big wasn't gonna happen at the end of the episode (as Sam loves that shock value), but leaving that big a cliffhanger with two separate scenes is not desirable. If both scenes pay off quickly next week, then great, we have a great plot propulsion. If not, I don't know what to think.

As an FYI (it was really dark on my TV), I'm pretty sure the clock that Dom pointed out to White Rose was featuring the same design of the mask she saw at the airport. He quickly pegged her story as b.s., and that's why he probably tried to kill the whole FBI team. I just hate this kind of super cop storyline in this type of show, especially when she'll of course be the only one to survive.

Only on ep 4 but need tyrell back so the wife stops talking English. Everything else is meh and doesn't matter

Season is getting into gear now. Glad that is won golden globe and got Emmy nom so it'll continue on despite the ratings.

Does anyone know how many more eps are left?

the thing about Ray is that the day he met Elliot, he already knew he was a computer genius.

in a mental institution, would he know that?
in jail, he would know that.

I think there's close to zero chance Elliot's been arrested. He probably committed himself to a mental institution.

So Tyrrell is in another timeline IMO ... Strong hints of multiple dimensions in this episode

wild wacky stuff, I'll tell you what. Angela looks a lot hotter with her hair down and loose.

Wouldn't mind a guest appearance by Rick and Morty, how great would that be.

I hate when Ang wears suits.
She looks like a little boy in hand-me-downs.

Her storyline seems so abbreviated.

Probably. But how would Ray knows he's computers?

The therapist maybe

My theory is that he's a psychologist/psychiatrist, and the various progressions of getting through to Elliot are the treatments he's trying. I think that's the most logical thing for his character to be, but this is Mr. Robot, where you kind of have to throw logic out the window. I have no explanation for Ray's extracurricular activities.

I started rewatching season 1 last week, and in one of the earlier episodes Tyrell makes a comment to Elliot about how "I'm not human." Given the progression of Tyrell's storyline I wondered if that line is going to prove significant.

apparently dom's coworker was denzel washington's daughter?

i thought she was exceptionally bad

is white rose hugo strange?

There is a line specifically about Eliot doing something to himself by Darlene to the fsociety people, and then the debate with Mr Robot trying to get him to get back online. He's definitely in some sort of residential mental health facility voluntarily. Mr Robot wants him to leave.

For example, I think the scenes of him leaving and doing computer **** at the old IT's guy are real, that happened as portrayed. You can't just leave jail in a van, and also you can't just go to jail for no obvious reason. If there was some sort of legal case against Eliot the whole fsociety plotline would make no sense.

I agree with pretty much all of the criticism on this page, man, it's go time on the plot. We're halfway through the season, it's time to develop a goal for our protagonist. And maybe make clear who the antagonist is?

Yeah, we're halfway through the season. Time to really dumb this show down...

This isn't a movie, man. Part of what allows you to see shows like this are audiences. If there's no plot propulsion this week, this show will have only a tiny amount of viewers left by the end of the season. I could point you to a bunch of shows that had similar problems that started out with great buzz and good ratings, and tanked by this point of the show due to lack of resolution to small but consistently added questions (if you end an episode or season on a cliffhanger, the audience expects that cliffhanger to be paid off within an episode or two at the most). In the giant twist culture we live in, this is what I call the LOST problem. You can't keep pushing answers later and later. There's too much good stuff out there that even the most dedicated audience won't stick with shows they think are effing with them (and it should be very obvious by now that Sam loves effing with his audience).

One of the most beloved small audience shows on this forum (for an incredibly small audience) was Hannibal seasons 1 and 2 (especially 2). Hannibal season 3 was a huge problem early on, and a lot of people just stopped watching it. The season eventually became excellent (though still no answers came for how any of its start was possible), but NBC actually canceled the show something like 3 episodes into the season when it had lost over half its audience from the season 2 finale (Mr. Robot is close to half an audience loss from the first episode of this season to now, and is probably worse than that from the end of last season). Most people who watched that show on here are or were watching this one. This show has almost replicated the problems that Hannibal had early in season 3. It's time to get going on some kind of answer that at least lets the audience know what's going on in some facet of the story. Since Elliot's the "protagonist", it's most important to get his answers, even though they've added a real protagonist in Dom (this might have turned into a standard cop chase show at this point, which would be the biggest twist of all...lol).

this season has 12 episodes tho

I think the only 2 episodes that were too slow were and E3 and E4. I'm more worried about how they're going to pull off a believable story rather than pacing.

Ratings being bad is sad but not unexpected, I have a hard time to convince people to watch this too. People have said that due to critics praise and awards it should be safe from cancel for now, so that's fine too I guess?

I don't think any Emmy nominated show has ever been canceled directly after a nomination. USA has put so much effort into marketing this show, and it has had almost no reward (more due to what the show is than anything else, since it just has zero mass appeal). They're likely to have to bring it back, but Sam might have almost all of his power and major creative input stripped, or they let Sam retain control and they call the next season the final season (the ratings are dead and buried, it will never be viable in ratings ever again). I think the latter is probably a better move, since it's not a procedural and Sam is as close to an auteur as there is on it. It won't get nominated for Emmy for drama series this season (unless all shows are complete crap), and they're pretty much just going to have to make it go away quietly after next season. That probably works out better for Sam's career in the long run anyway.

Nunn,

How often do you hang out with Sam?

Is there really though? The OOTV forum has been pretty dead. You could attribute some of that to it being summer and people are busy with other things. On the other hand, I don't have a lot I'm looking forward to this fall. You're the Worst starts back up at the end of August, and they moved Shameless to an October premier, but otherwise the only things I even have on my radar are Survivor and The Amazing Race (obviously totally different types of tv shows).

With LOST, the cliff hangers and twists were the biggest problem in maybe the third season when they were open ended about how long the series would continue. Once they resolved that and decided how many seasons and when it would end, the series got better again. You may not like how it ended (and many people didn't) but at least they were following a outline. LOST was somewhat revolutionary with announcing years in advance when it would end.

For me, X Files fits your example even better. I was never a dedicated watcher, but there were a couple of seasons where I watched most episodes in the early days. Once I realized they weren't ever going to give the ultimate answers, I lost interest.

I am optimistically hoping that Mr Robot follows more of the LOST template (with a better conclusion to the story) than the X Files.

This has been a very historically weak summer for television, that's correct. The best summer shows will likely be Halt and Catch Fire, The Night Of (a lot of people are upset about the direction the show has taken on here), and Rectify (think Rectify probably comes back this summer, but don't know for sure). Queen of the South on USA is a solid show for what it is, I still need to get around to checking out Stranger Things, and Westworld is due in October on HBO. I'm also still watching the turds Tyrant and Suits, due to plot commitment.

I just think we're in a strange stage for television right now. We have been bombarded with so much good stuff in the last 10 years that people don't need to waste time on stuff that doesn't connect with them (there was a point not long ago where I had 20+ shows on my weekly schedule, but this summer I'm not even at 10). And interestingly, nearly all of the best shows on TV in the last couple of years fit best in the Miniseries/Anthology category, which skews the drama series category much worse. We're almost at the point where network shows can be nominated again, since so much energy has been focused on the Miniseries/Anthology category. Mr. Robot never would have had a drama series Emmy nomination last year or the year before. That's just a product of category dilution. To hammer that point home, The Newsroom probably would have been nominated this year if it existed.

I thought Alcatraz on FOX a few years ago was a good show, but the audience became consistently annoyed to the point of cancellation with the lack of answers (from very high starting ratings for the first few episodes). I don't doubt we'll get answers in Mr. Robot (no matter what, this is still USA), but if you push them so far down the line that most people won't care about them it's not good for audience retention. And once you've lost that audience, they're gone forever (sure, some of the lost viewers will come back and binge watch it later this year or when the season's done, but that's not the cable TV model). 0.4 in the 18-49 for Live+Same Day viewing (bad numbers to start with) are a distant memory for this show. It's possible this show could fall below a .2 by the end of this season, and only shows propped up by much bigger shows on arty channels get to come back at those numbers. USA's flagship show, Suits, is routinely pulling in a 0.5, so there aren't any high performing scripted shows on the station right now. By default, Mr. Robot's poor numbers that will very likely lead to renewal should guarantee renewal for all of the shows on USA performing better than it, even if they don't deserve to be renewed. The impacts are theoretically larger than just to Mr. Robot's bottom line, but USA has been in complete disarray for nearly 4 years now anyway, pretty similarly to TNT who had all their execs fired around December, 2014.

One more thing of moderate noteworthiness is that USA has a new show coming out soon called Falling Water. They obviously green lit that show at the height of Mr. Robot's season 1. It's following a lot of the off kilter shooting style of Mr. Robot. I don't think that show will be successful, but its creation (if it's more standard storytelling) might help them re-construct Mr. Robot into a show with more connection for the masses. I still think this show just wouldn't be the same without Sam, and that USA has put themselves in an incredibly difficult position with it.

Imagine typing that many words and expecting people to read them