Whatever You Do, Don't Become Obsessed With This Conspiracy Thriller on Netflix
It took me a few years to find my next TV obsession, which aired on an unassuming basic cable channel.
The show I'm referring to was about the internet, of all things. It was created by a guy with no experience in television and starred a relatively unknown actor who played the central, flawed hacker genius who becomes involved in a super dangerous shadow government conspiracy. Solid performances, relevant themes, slick writing and epic world-building made it a must-watch show. It dominated the conversation and regularly kept me on the edge of my seat.
This show is an Emmy-winner, a game-changer and one of the best thrillers to ever hit television. Now, for the first time ever in the United States, it is available to stream in full on Netflix.
This is Mr. Robot.
Read more: Netflix Review: Our Top Pick in a Sea of Streaming Choices
Rami Malek plays Elliot Alderson in the hacker drama Mr. Robot.
USA Network
"Hello, friend," Rami Malek's hacker antihero Elliot Alderson says in the opening moments of the pilot episode. He's talking to the audience. But moreover, I took it to heart that he was talking to me. As someone who related to his antisocial, black hoodie-wearing, outcast vibe, it felt as if Elliot was the TV embodiment of me -- if my goth outcast phase of the '90s and '00s never ended.
Without getting too into the weeds here, Mr. Robot follows Elliot, a computer programmer who works for a giant company, named E-Corp (or Evil Corp, depending on who you ask) by day and flexes his chops as a hacker at night. He gets recruited by a mysterious Anonymous-like organization that wants to crash corporate America. The only issue? He works for the company at the top of the greedy corporate food chain.
That's the nutshell explanation but there's more going on here than that. Add in a V for Vendetta-style anarchist cult, a mysterious mentor figure (conveniently named Mr. Robot) and a complicated mental health struggle and you have one heck of a layered onion to unpeel.
Mr. Robot is an absolute banger of a TV show. It was different from anything else on television (and pretty much, still is). It was clear from the jump that this series was going to move the needle; it was a programming paradigm shift and it had a lot to say.
Christian Slater plays Mr. Robot opposite Rami Malek as Elliot Alderson in Mr. Robot.
USA Network
Christian Slater plays Mr. Robot, whose recognizable cadence and smirky, sardonic delivery make Elliot's sidekick a compelling character who can be charismatic and abhorrent in the same breath.
Cocky, confident, and a bit sociopathic, Slater's Mr. Robot is the antithesis of Malek's Elliot. Their relationship dynamic is reminiscent of the one between Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden and Edward Norton's Jack in David Fincher's 1999 cult classic, Fight Club.
Mr. Robot explores a slew of heavy themes that can be tough to stomach. It's the rare occurrence where the use of voice-over narration elevates the whole story instead of feeling like a storytelling shortcut. Elliot regularly addresses the viewer and his narration is never ham-fisted.
Carly Chaikin as Darlene and Rami Malek as Elliot in the hacker drama Mr. Robot.
USA Network
In fact, Malek is on another level here. Emotionally resonant, intense, vulnerable -- his range runs the gamut -- and he's simply enthralling as Elliot.
As his world unravels and he's forced to question the chaos happening around him, he regularly breaks the fourth wall to talk with us at home -- which is welcoming and unnerving -- and invites us deeper into his reality.
In the series' opening moments, all it took was hearing him say, "Hello, friend," and I was fully invested in the slippery slope of insanity that followed. Mac Quayle's Emmy-winning, techno-laden score kept me nodding my head, even during the show's twistiest twists.
Rami Malek as Elliot and Joey Bada$$ as Leon in Mr. Robot.
USA Network
Slater and Malek are the powerhouses here, and their characters' storylines are the lifeblood of Mr. Robot. The supporting players also bring their A-games. Carly Chaikin, Portia Doubleday, Martin Wallström, BD Wong, Michael Cristofer and Joey Bada$$ deliver memorable performances that succeed in building out Esmail's sleek yet bleak world. The aforementioned hip-hop artist is an absolute delight.
Recently, I wrote about FX's Legion and the ways in which that Marvel series pushed the envelope with what can be done on basic cable. Esmail did the exact same thing with Mr. Robot (on the USA Network, no less) by infusing style elements into the city streets and cold buildings, reminiscent of the aesthetic the Wachowskis brought to The Matrix. Elliot (go with me here) can even be viewed as a Neo but without all the supernatural sci-fi minutiae that came with that story.
As kooky and bizarre as things get, Esmail manages to keep things grounded and believable. His attention to authenticity, like using real Linux code every time Elliot is seen typing on-screen, is on point. I said earlier that this was a TV show about the internet and, really, it's probably the most accurate-feeling representation of the dark web subculture I have ever seen on television.
A hacker series winning Emmy awards? Yes, that happened. Yet, Mr. Robot was anything but mainstream, which, funnily enough, is what made it mainstream.
A masked spokesperson for the mysterious hacker group F Society delivers an ominous warning in the conspiracy thriller, Mr. Robot.
Screenshot by Aaron Pruner/CNET
Even though things get pretty dark, Esmail came prepared. There is a surprising amount of humor threaded throughout the series that helps to offset the bleak nature of the show's looming dystopia. He uses pop culture nostalgia and disruptive production techniques to keep us on our toes. One specific episode featured a reality-altering flashback, curious visuals and an iconic '80s sitcom alien that made me sit up and yell at the television like Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
It's been a decade since the conspiracy thriller first hit the USA Network. It was a time before TikTok, misinformation, deepfakes and AI. Yet, through all these social media and technological advancements, the show holds up. In fact, the overarching themes like political corruption, corporate greed and untreated mental health issues somehow make Mr. Robot even more relevant today.
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But the feelings and the sentiments and the loyalties that will allow people to want to wear something has to be natural and organic. It has to come from a place of either deep passion, deep feelings, or deep aggrievement.' All of the public discourse right now does feel emotionally driven, and to some extent that is rational. It makes sense that we would have strong feelings about the state of the world. The world is scary and the general state of the planet feels a lot less stable than it did not long ago. Josh Johnson speaking at an Art District revitalization effort he spearheaded after building a coalition of local arts organizations. Courtesy of Joshua Johnson Johnson still remembers his debate team coach, Ms. Sears, and the music she would play on team road trips. Johnson credits his coach and the experience with opening his ear to music he might not have otherwise discovered. Teachers like Ms. Sears inspire their students to grow up and find vocations instead of careers. Mentors are vital to anyone seriously interested in learning, to people growing or developing anything. But the relationship is good for the mentors too, I don't think we talk about that enough, how mentoring is symbiotic by nature. How mentoring is a closed loop system that teaches self-regulation. 'Joining that debate team was the start of my life,' he said to me. 'It was my baptism. It was an outward expression of an inward change.' One of the many great things about America and American culture is how we, most of us anyway, allow teenagers to try on identities during this developmental stage. It's simple to divide kids up by cafeteria tables in content for a screen, but in the real world, students are much more empathetic and sensitive to the needs of others than they were when Josh and I were students. Greta Thunberg, then a teenager,speaks at the 'Fridays For Future' Denver Climate Strike on October 11, 2019 (Photo by) Getty Images I asked him about his work as an educator and how he saw his students reacting to all the forces he and I were discussing. Josh and I are both millennials, but all generations get castigated for their perceived faults as they near their majority. I was curious about their response; of course it was related to music. 'I teach college level kids and I teach older high school level kids,' Johnson told me, 'the high school seniors in dual enrollment classes. The time when people start to begin figuring themselves out.' 'People are trying on their identities to see what fits and to find out what feels comfortable for them,' he said. I love this quote, 'a good educator shows you others. A great educator shows you yourself or brings you back to yourself.' 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