Tuesday, November 15, 2022

Blu-Ray/TV Series Review: Mr. Robot: Season 1

 


Mr. Robot is a show that aired on the USA Network from 2015 to 2019, and starred Remi Malek as Elliot Alderson, who by day has a job at a reputable cybersecurity company, and by night is a hacker who takes down bad guys. He is approached by a group of hacktivists called society (as in fuck-society), whose goal is to take down a large, own-everything company called E-Corp, which basically uses the old Enron logo and is a metaphorical stand-in for any of the huge companies that basically run everything like Amazon and Walmart. Elliot has numerous mental issues such as social anxiety disorder and clinical depression and breaks the fourth wall by directly addressing the audience. The show has a lot of twists and turns that play out over the course of the ten episodes. By the end of the season, a lot is revealed but a lot is still unanswered. You find out there is a lot more to the storyline than what you necessarily think there will be at the beginning of the season.

For those who get the blu-ray, the show looks and sounds great in HD. There are not a ton of special effects, but the cinematography is very well done, and the show goes from looking dark and gritty to sleek and polished, depending on where particular scenes are being shot. The extras include a few deleted scenes and a short gag reel. The most extensive extra is on the second disc, a twelve-minute making-of featurette that includes interviews with the cast members and showrunner Sam Esmail.

Overall, the season is very good. Malek is great as the series lead, and it has a strong supporting cast including Carly Chaikin, Portia Doubleday, Martin Wallström, Stephanie Corneliussen, Michael Cristofer, and Christian Slater. I cannot say much about the roles of any of the other cast members because to do so would give too much away. While the show does take some creative liberties, it does try to be realistic with the computer coding and the portrayal of hacking. It is really a show that you will know very quickly if you like or hate it. It definitely uses a serial storytelling format in which the episodes build on each other and more of the story is revealed as the season goes along. It does have some swearing, sexual content, drug use, and violence in it, so it is definitely not a family-friendly show. When the show aired on the USA network, the word "fuck" was mostly bleeped out but in the blu-rays (and presumably the DVDs too) it is not.  One interesting aspect of the show is that it is set in the real world as it uses video clips from actual events and utilized deep fake technology to have real-world leaders, specifically President Obama comment on the events in the show. I definitely put it in one of my best series of the 2010s along with series like Breaking Bad and The Americans. If you have not seen the show and are looking for a good dramatic series, this is definitely worth watching.

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