This review contains spoilers for the entire series of Mr. Robot, including Season 4! You've been warned.
I was lead into Mr. Robot with one cheat, albeit a cheat I didn't realize was going to be so literal. A friend of mine, the one who was relentless in recommending the show to me, told me to think of Mr. Robot as a super hero show. This ended up being a hole he had to dig himself out of in convincing me to give the show a shot, because if there was one thing I was less excited about watching than a corny show about hackers, it was a show about super heroes. Now, I'm not a man so shallow as all of that (I do enjoy The Boys, along with just about everyone else), and as he gave me little tastes here and there as to what this show could provide for me, I decided to give it a shot and found that description he originally led in with to be rather apt. Mr. Robot has always had an air of comic book story telling in it - from its melodrama to its alter egos, its crime fighting to its insanely on the nose and constant references to pieces of pop culture, to its goddamn narration - Mr. Robot hasn't exactly been hiding its roots, but because of its stylistic choices it could have hoodwinked me had I not been aware.
I've somewhat criticized Mr. Robot's melodrama in the past, or at least made note of it with a somewhat soured tone. Melodrama has its place (one of my favorite shows, as stated before, is The Leftovers), but there always felt like something itching at the frame's edge of Mr. Robot, a desired realism (or heightened realism) of filmmakers like David Fincher, or of an eye for the human in chaos like Denis Villeneuve. From the isolating shots with zero nose room and tons of dead space to flattened cool colors and the harsh warm colors, the show's aesthetic has always felt like one of control. Yet, here in such a frame was the Enron logo, slightly adjusted so as to act more referential than literal. And here again was a discount Guy Fawkes mask, and obvious Lolita references, etc. The aesthetic promised subtlety, and the content screamed its purpose.
The comic book aesthetic helps to, if not synergize these two points, then intentionally direct them as conflicts. The biggest spoiler of Season 4 is that it turns out the Elliot we have been following this entire time was never the real Elliot, rather another personality split from the original Elliot. It is the sort of twist that comes off as incredibly corny and forced shock nine out of ten times it is done, but because Sam Esmail planned this series from the start, looking back you see layers of it all the way back from Season 1. Angela screams at Elliot that he hasn't been himself in months, and Elliot mistakes his own sister Darlene for a love interest much to her disgust. If Sam Esmail is good at one thing, it is playing a story carefully to make sure that when he uses cliches they land (and, as a slight criticism, well executed or not he does use a lot of cliches). Elliot not being the real Elliot puts a lot of his unhinged behavior into a rather strict and freeing perspective: he was the alter ego the whole time, unable to see the seems of his mask. The seriousness of the real world meets the comic book persona in control, the one who sees the Enron logo, who makes references to pop culture and integrates them into a fabric that is like reality, but not.
This doesn't entirely fix the tiny little issues I've had with the show up to this point, but it does certainly help. Despite a new context that will be sure to recolor a second watching whenever I have the energy for it, I can't help but still feel like a lot of these are references without grounding. There is something to be said about drowning in self aware references, some of it obviously bad, but when it is good it is almost always with reference to post modernism. Infinite Jest is chock full of references and end notes with even more references that swamp the reader with information they honestly don't need to know. All the information almost always informs the greater story and themes of the infamously long novel, but more than anything it provides the feeling of drowning in information, a post modern take on the television age buzzing around people's heads in the 90s (and, unintentionally, acting as prelude to the internet age in its shape, if not content). Gravity's Rainbow - a novel I have admittedly never finished - references obscure engineering and localized pop culture references. Not all post modernism is swamped with references beyond what one person could catalogue without an intense and ridiculous amount of effort, but it is a feature and often times an effective way of putting you within a story even as it holds you apart by its very nature, allowing you to feel the general room temperature of a story as you are kept at an analytical distance. Post modernism has its head(s) wrapped up in itself, a painting that not only references the frame, but the building in which it resides. Mr. Robot oozes this type of feeling, that references to Back to the Future Part II must significantly echo Whiterose's obscured and never answered plan to turn back time or open up a dimensional rift. But the references act as a sort of pallet, a swatch of colors the show will use but without the actual feeling of it all working necessarily. The most often brought up reference by me is the Enron logo, a reference I find gaudy in a lot of ways, but likewise the most effective in the entire series: remember Enron? Remember what corporate America is capable of? It is paramount that you do, for the betterment of your experience with the show. Other cases, such as the fsociety masks and Lolita references seem to be threads with frayed ends, references for their own sake as though to force you into realizing what should have been an "a-ha" moment so covetous in video games. Art works its best when it sends your thoughts into an intersection at a hundred miles per hour, and you're the one who feels the crash you never get to see. Mr. Robot manages this several times, but it will take a full rewatch to really consider if it manages it as much as it thinks it does. A new perspective on Elliot for the series is a great gift that is extremely difficult to pull off, but what exactly that yields I will have to return to.
Season 4 as a standalone season was simultaneously stellar and slow. The previous three seasons ratcheted up the tension to an almost unbearable degree, as secrets, conspiracies, and trauma whipped you back and forth until you could hardly see in front of you. Season 4 slows things down. The first half of the season starts out with a bang - a heist involving Elliot and Mr. Robot working together that could have been the opening to a James Bond film - and quickly switches gears. The midpoint to the season is probably the best episode of the entire series, but the point everything is moving towards is just beyond that, with a meeting between Price (the CEO of E Corp.), and Whiterose, orchestrated by Elliot in order to gain access to all of Deus Group's (the group lead by Whiterose) bank accounts and liquidate them. It is the Robin Hood story the show has been promising this entire series, and finally, with some three or four episodes left to the entire series, they finally make good on that promise. But it takes quite a bit of time. Elliot and Mr. Robot make progress by the inch, each episode leading up to that moment being just a couple of hours of a single day, all leading up to the meeting on Christmas. It can be a tad bit agonizing after the quick paced series that lead up to all of this, but that time is, for the most part, well spent. The slowdown allows for some character growth, some shuffling of the chess board, and some illumination on various characters' trauma and world view. It works, but it definitely doesn't always feel flush with the show entirely. It feels worth it in the end, mostly because of one episode, the famous 407, where Elliot learns the birth of Mr. Robot, but the show isn't over yet. The latter half of the season is where the real twists are. People are put into life or death situations, as you do in the final season of a TV show, but more importantly we see the villain Whiterose pressed into a corner, and we see what her final moves actually look like.
Season 4 pulls an actually great trick at the end, one that feels completely like no one but Sam Esmail could have pulled off. Whiterose tells Elliot she will show him what her machine really does, and though Elliot thinks he turns off the machine, a bright red light takes up the entire screen. Next we see him, he is a completely different Elliot, engaged to Angela who died in the first episode of the season, and his father, no longer a source of abuse but rather loving and supportive, is still alive. This world feels like an alternate world, one with only one caveat: Elliot's sister Darlene is completely absent. It's the only indication we get that this is not, in fact, Whiterose's utopian machine at work. Elliot has been sent back into his mind, into a place he created for the real Elliot, and now he must reckon with who he is: the Mastermind. The one who wanted to save the world so Elliot wouldn't have to be hurt by it anymore, the ultimate protection against the ultimate threat. This twist, where the sci-fi trip we thought we were going to get is secretly swapped for a more accurate Mr. Robot locale is incredibly executed, done with such a flare and such a resounding disappointment as to open us up for the reckoning the show has in store for us. It works because there was a plan, because the show has been secretly setting us up for this ending all along, and though we didn't think it is what we wanted, it is what we needed in the end.
Season 4 of Mr. Robot certainly sticks out as a stellar season of a stellar TV show, one that was worth the wait and the trials the series sent us through up to this point. It might rank on the lower end of my favorite TV show endings of all time (can you guess the few that rank among the top?) but it still makes it onto an extremely exclusive list. Mr. Robot has always felt a bit at odds with me throughout its run, a show that has had me wanting something it wasn't willing to be, and whether that is my fault or Mr. Robot's for giving me something pulpier than its premise promised will come in time (and a rewatch), but until then I'm glad to say the show was a great success. I may not quite have the love for it most people do, but I at least understand it. Goodbye, Elliot.
9.0
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