Commentary

No Easy Answers As 'Mr. Robot' Returns For Season Two

The thing on the wall in the photo at left is a dial phone, and its primitive analog technology represents a bygone era that is incompatible with life in the digital age.

Or is it? That’s the intriguing question posed in the second season of USA Network’s “Mr. Robot,” which returns Wednesday night. The conflict between the old analog world and the present-day digital age is brought into sharp relief in a sequence in the season premiere in which a high-tech, digitally controlled home in downtown Manhattan goes haywire and the owner is forced to take shelter elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the character who is the center of this series – Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek, at left in the photo, with Christan Slater), the withdrawn, enigmatic computer hacker – has adopted a completely analog lifestyle as the new season begins. This means no computers, no cellphones, no digital devices of any kind. By denying himself access to the devices that are now front and center in the lives of all of us, Elliot feels in control of his life.

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Meanwhile, the woman with the high-tech home has been robbed of her ability to control her own environment by the very technology that was supposed to make her life so much easier.

The complexity of the wired world and who really controls it is the central theme of “Mr. Robot” this season, as it was last season. As the new season begins, the world is dealing with the aftermath of last season’s epic computer hack that wiped out most of the world’s banking records and, in theory, the debt obligations of billions of ordinary people.

The secret society of hackers who undertook this cyber attack foresaw a liberated future for the debtors. But in the new season, that outcome is by no means a certainty. Instead, there’s just chaos. And worse, the banks are still seen as having control over their customers’ money and lives.

So who controls the wired world? The hackers in their zany masks? Or the governmental-financial power structure? “Control is an illusion,” goes the tagline for Season Two of “Mr. Robot.” Even Elliot is not quite in control of his surroundings, despite eschewing all of the technology that tethered him to the networks of the modern world (except TV networks, apparently, since he encounters newscasts blaring on TV sets wherever he goes, whether he likes it or not).

The good news about “Mr. Robot” is that the show has lost none of its flair going into its second season. It’s still one of the best-written dramas on TV, perhaps even more so. The spoken words in the scripts for the two episodes USA Network provided for preview are a pleasure to listen to.

“Mr. Robot” just might be the most cynical drama on TV. It sees a world in which no one really has control over their own lives – even the people at the top of the government/banking pyramid who think they do. Here in the real world, the political pundits keep telling us that this is how everybody feels these days during this current presidential campaign season. So “Mr. Robot” is not only well-written and cynical, but timely too.

The second season of “Mr. Robot” starts Wednesday (July 13) with two back-to-back episodes beginning at 10 p.m. Eastern on USA Network.

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