Heres your tech-savvy vocabulary term for this weeks Mr. Robot episode: kernel panic. Its what happens when an operating system comes across an internal fatal error something essentially and deeply broken within itself that it cant recover from. For old-school PC users, its when the screen becomes a snowstorm of indecipherable numbers and commands when the machine examines itself and finds something it doesnt know how to process. Its what happens when the shadows on the wall of the cave cease to form a coherent narrative.
Its the same thing thats happening to all of the lost souls this episode, though we see nary a laptop screen. Instead, its all disquieting tight shots of faces in mirrors, trying to convince themselves that they arent all busted up inside. And theyre dancing as fast as they can.
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Elliot continues to be very not okay: After a blackout, he comes back to himself on the phone with an apparently very-much-not-dead Tyrell Wellick, whos full of cryptic non-information and an almost romantic nostalgia for our unhinged little hacker: I think about you a lot, Elliot. I think about that night we became gods.
Mr. Robot puts the kibosh on the call before we can learn any real information, at the same moment as he hears news of Gideons murder from the TV news. The revelation and the continual bullying of his dark Jiminy Cricket sends Elliot on a quest for his old friend drugs. Its Adderall this time (pretty much as far from morphine as you can get) and our heross riding high. We chase this particular dragon right alongside him, and man, is it a doozy starting with a nasty hallucination in the form of dark-suited men pouring cement down Elliots throat. He wakes up puking his guts out, then he out-crazies his crazy by eating the pills out of his own vomit. (This show, man.) Cue a six-day jag with no sleep but also, to his delight, no Mr. Robot. Everything is hilarious! The sky is so blue! Elliot is in control! We dont think Rami Malek blinks even once during this sequence.
The comedown is awful, and props to Sam Esmails genius direction that we feel it, too. Elliots world starts glitching pixelating, making horrible crackling sounds, and populating itself with terrifying children in fsociety masks. Yeah, I know. Thats very weird, he deadpans. This particular bad trip culminates in Elliot in his church group going on an absolutely nutso wake-up-sheeple rant about the uselessness of belief and metastasizing mind worms, delivered to the ceiling and the godless sky beyond.
Unlikely salvation comes in the form of Craig Robinsons Ray, who needs something regarding site migration and virtual wallets, whatever all that means; for now hes helping Elliot battle his demons. Ray, too, has an invisible friend in the form of his dead wife who he makes small talk with and he offers his compatriot some apparently comforting platitudes about how control is an illusion just as Mr. Robot appears once more. Were not sold on Ray yet; he so far seems to exist solely to be mysterious. But well wait it out.
Elsewhere in the brave new world, the remaining members of fsociety are experiencing their own kernel panic. Romero whom we learn via flashback scored the gang their Coney Island digs in the first place turns up dead in his mothers backyard, shot through the head. (Well miss you and your gravitas, Ron Cephas Jones.) Mobley and Trenton are freaking out: They suspect that the Dark Army is erasing its tracks, but chill, you guys. Darlene is on it. Stop spazzing and be cool, she advises. Her lieutenants are understandably mistrustful of the both of the Aldersons, and we smell a coup coming. That is, if they can manage to stay not murdered long enough.
On the case: One Dominique DiPiero, an FBI agent played by Meryl Streep scion Grace Gummer. Esmail doesnt shy away from showing us the weird underbelly of all his characters, which is what makes Mr. Robot more than the sum of Elliots neuroses, and Dominique is no exception. She cant sleep, either, but not because of Adderall: She stays up all night in her huge, darkened apartment, watching bad TV, having cybersex with strangers, and feeling all the feelings about Gideons murder. Like that woman we met briefly last week, Dominique has a smart house, and its her only source of conversation. Alexa, when is the end of the world? she asks the house. Her domicile says not for a few billion years, and you get the sense thats not nearly soon enough for Dominiques taste.
Still, she cakes on the makeup that makes her look not quite so over the world and its horrors to the tune of White Buffalos Highwayman (The bastards hung me in the spring of 25 / But I am still alive) and goes to see Romeros mother. Turns out our departed hacker didnt do such a hot job of covering his tracks, because Dominique discovers a poster for last seasons End of the World party that leads her directly to fsociety HQ. Watch your back, guys.
And speaking of watching backs, what is going on with Angela? Shes all in with her role at E Corp now, seemingly content to manage the PR of CEO Phillip Price and the other corporate monsters. The executive summons her into his cavernous office, and its very spider-to-the-fly: We only ever see him at a distance, in his position of power, until he deigns to get close to Angela and the camera. Shes invited to a dinner that is, of course, a trap, one involving the same men who covered up the toxic spill that killed her mother (and Elliots father). Price leaves her with a disc containing damning evidence that could ruin all their lives, and Angela with a choice. Remove emotion, he advises. Looks like Elliot isnt the only one with a demon perched on his shoulder.
Previously: Apocalypse Now