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“Mr. Robot” officially begins its second season run on July 13th. The first season was a runaway success, winning several awards including the Golden Globe for best drama. Tapping into a wide variety of prescient subjects ranging from cyber security, “hacktivism,” and social anxiety, “Mr. Robot” has anticipated real-world scenarios of cyber-warfare, data breaches, and hacker activism. Show creator Sam Esmail has gone to great lengths, in fact, to illustrate hacker culture in a more realistic way, eschewing previous pop-culture iterations of the subculture as bands of pithy computer magicians who drink Jolt Cola and play amusing practical jokes on their enemies – usually school administrators or romantic rivals – from the comfort of their messy bedrooms (typically replete with music posters, comics books, and ironically anachronistic bed-sheets).
“Mr. Robot” taps into criticisms of consumer culture (and corresponding anxieties) in a style reminiscent of David Fincher’s “Fight Club.” The main character, Elliot – brilliantly portrayed by Rami Malek – is torn between the world he inhabits and his own idealism. He simultaneously hates the world, but feels oddly compelled to save it. He hates consumerism, but operates successfully within corporate culture. With his unique skill-set, he isn’t so much an anti-hero as he is a vigilante. Similar to the goals of Project Mayhem in “Fight Club,” Elliot is recruited by an insurrectionary anarchist known only as “Mr. Robot” – portrayed by Christian Slater – to try and wipe the debt record to zero and destabilize the entire global economy.
By the end of season one, the hacker collective has been successful in doing just that. But the social, political, and economic infrastructures of the entire western world cannot be obliterated in one calculated attack. The collective, known as “f-society,” still has plenty of work to do.
I’ll be bringing artwork and analysis after each episode, beginning after Wednesday’s season two premier. Hop aboard, will you? Let me know what you’re thinking about, and don’t forget to follow me on Facebook and also follow me on Twitter.
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