Geeky TV commentary - Mr Robot season 1 finale

Mr Robot aired, until tonight, on USA, Wednesday nights at 10pm.

Um.

What.

That episode was somehow simultaneously the most straightforward we've seen in weeks--and the most confusing. But confusing in what it means, rather than what it is, like usual. Let's see if we can figure it out:

Elliot wakes up in Tyrell's car three days after we last saw him taking Tyrell to the hideout. Tyrell is nowhere to be found and Ellliot has no memory of what happened there at all. He goes looking for clues and for Mr Robot--because he's got to have been the one in control, and therefore the one who remembers what happens. Darlene tells him that he set off the program on his own and it was a roaring success, and now the banks are all down and everything is different. He finds a flashdrive that just shows a video of him pushing himself off the pier.

Mr Robot doesn't show until he calls the cops and threatens to turn himself in, and then most of his plot is an ongoing argument with his delusions about whether he'll finally start listening to them and stop fighting it or not. It seems like he finally breaks down because he goes home when they tell him to, and watches the news footage when they tell him to, and then someone knocks on the door and BAM, cliffhanger!

We know how I don't like cliffhangers. That one would've been SO MUCH WORSE if they hadn't announced the second season before the first even aired.

Man. What.

Meanwhile, Angela has accepted the job at Evil Corp, at least partly, I would guess, because Elliot won't talk to her and tell her anything of value in the matter. But the guy she's assisting, who is supposed to calm the populace about the threat of the hack goes wildly off script and kills himself on the air. Which would be why they didn't show this episode last week. She's told to get over it and get some new shoes that don't have blood all over them, and finally stands up for herself when the shoe salesman tries to tell her off about working for them--which is great, but is also why on their behalf?

She goes to the dude's funeral, but her new old rich guy mentor says he's glad the guy killed himself and won't lose any sleep over it because the guy was terrible--and then gets terrible himself when he says he can't stand weakness. Angela is the only woman  in the room through the whole scene, and it looks like she's fallen into the Illuminati or something; he says she's there because she's refreshing and bold and different, and that's what they need. He almost definitely knows more than he's saying.

Darlene and the other hackers of fSociety get rid of the evidence at an animal shelter's incinerator and free all the dogs (and hopefully keep them, though we never see them again), and then have a huge party at the secret base to get lots of strangers' fingerprints all over whatever other evidence might be there. She's thrilled about the whole thing--to her, they've done exactly as they should have, no matter how much Elliot disagrees.

Ellliot's psychiatrist's cheating boyfriend contacts her with the lie that he's dying so that she'll talk to him, and says that the dog Elliot took from his abusive self was chipped, and when he took her to the vet for that thing she ate the other week, they scanned the chip and notified him. He's been looking for him and he doesn't think that he should be allowed to invade people's privacy like he does, and he wants her help to take him down. She doesn't want to hear it.

Gideon knows he's going down with the security company that let this happen, and he's not pleased about it.

Mrs Wellig and the baby are creepy, and she sounds perfectly polite as she asks Elliot when he last saw Tyrell, but somehow makes it sound like a threat. Elliot is sure she's lying to him and not saying what she knows about what happened to him.

And through the whole thing, there are riots in the streets, protests all over the place, news footage of cops in swat gear and riot gear, soundbites from politicians and CEOs--the whole system is rocking, and the poor and indebted are happy, and the rich are very upset. After the credits, BD Wong, as we're more used to seeing him, talks to Angela's new mentor about some problem in the Congo that he knows the cause of, and about Nero playing as Rome burns.

What does any of this mean?

It was a bold choice, having the virus's execution happen off screen, but that winds up working out so that they can feed that mystery into the next season without continually withholding it--it happened, and the after-effects are very interesting, but it happened while Elliot was in a fugue state or something, and he doesn't remember it. A lot can happen in three days; what creepy mysteries will unfold as he figures out what happened?

So here's the questions we're left with:

• What will that cheating creep do about knowing who Elliot is?
• Will Angela get free of the sort-of-Illuminati she's fallen into, or will she be set up as the opposite of Elliot or their sacrificial lamb or their new queen?
• What happened to Tyrell? Did Elliot kill him or did he take the chance to run off--or did they come up with some other plan that he's away enacting?
• Will actual-fSociety break up, or will they start expanding and keep altering how the world works?
• Will people start claiming they're in fSociety when they're really just freelance loons?
• Was that Elliot in the fSociety TV hack-cast?
• If Mr Robot is a now-sentient semi-independent entity, and he's fed up with Elliot's BS, what will happen to Elliot? To him? To the flashback-family? And how much of the rest of the world is also a hallucination?
• Is that mentor the new baddie they need to take down?

It was an amazing season. It was like a ten hour long movie, with an amazing soundtrack and gorgeous cinematography and makes not sense but somehow still told a cohesive and intelligent story that is addictive and sort of unnerving and deserves all sorts of awards that it probably won't get because they like to give Emmys to much more ordinary shows. 

Maybe the rest of TV will take a few hints about the quality and artisticality and trusting that your audience is smart enough to keep up.

What did you think of the finale? What do you think happened in those three days, and what do you think any of it means?

Comment below, or come talk to me on Twitter!

Geeky TV commentary - Killjoys season 1 finale and Dark Matter 1.11

NOTE: I seem to have lost my ability to post over on my Examiner page, so I'm moving the show over here! I'm just going to do what I did there, but since I no longer have the chance to be paid for it here, please consider tipping if you like my posts? Thank you!

Killjoys aired at 9pm on Syfy Friday, and DarkMatter airs at 10 until the finale next week.

This week in space, things get kinda intense.

Killjoys:

In the finale here, everything finally came together! Mostly. Johnny and Dutch were called away by Rich Lady to guard her as she attended the ceremony where seventh-generation indentured servants were meant to be upgraded to middle class on a better world, but she's still as shifty as she always was. She got her hands on that generational bomb that they found a few episodes ago and wiped out the whole new family that was meant to be middle class without so much as a blink of her perfectly lined eye!

And while they were doing that, they found out that they were only there because Khlyen wanted them there--which of course made them super keen to not be there. A Level Six almost got the drop on Dutch, licked her because that's what gross henchmen do, and then got splattered by Johnny because you don't mess with Dutch when Johnny's there. Along the way, they find out a number of things:

• Dav has spotted Khlyen, who has taken back his liquid computer; he's following him and winds up getting beaten up and kidnapped by him
• Khlyen has killed Carleen because no woman Johnny is friendly with is ever allowed to live except Dutch*
• The Company has decided that Oldtown is too much trouble and they're just gonna frag the place

They head back and go to rescue Alvis from prison so he can muster his revolutionary forces (because the massacre that seemed to be his people in the beginning was totally hired martyrs, as they found out when they went into the tunnels to make contact with Alvis's people), but before they can get him out, he's using the most awesome prayer beads ever to bust himself out. He goes back into his tunnels to help save people from the carpet bombing, because he knows how to get into big old bunkers that were built underground during terraforming and never used.

Meanwhile, Pawter wanted Johnny to find her mother and tell her that she's sorry and she loves her, and being that he's the best human being on the show, he tries to, but her mom says she has no daughter. That makes Pawter refuse to go with them when they evac a few people on Lucy; she stays with Alvis in the tunnels.

Pree goes with them, but he almost doesn't leave his bar. It's good that he lives because it might be a dealbreaker if he hadn't!

The local military man stays in the bar and apparently gets blown up with a heartbreaking old couple and a sad hooker and it's a shame because he was almost getting interesting.

And Dav wakes up in Red 17 which turns out to be a crazy-secret base on Arkyn, the so-called failed attempt at terraforming where supposedly no one ever went! Fancy is there, but he's all hooked up to machines and who knows what's going on with him. Or, now, with Dav.

At the beginning of the episode, Dutch was still balking at letting Dav back on the ship (which is maybe illegal anyway, if this was official business, since they all divorced last episode?), and by the end she was wanting to stay where the bombs were to save him, without knowing where he was, and records a fierce "I will find you" message. All very epic, but it would be more convincing if the two of them had had more time to actually build up something other than sad looks and fighting. There are moments of the good stuff, but mostly they don't feel like they match up--though when he's on his best behavior and being all pining and understanding, he's less of a jackass and it's easier to like him.

The episode as a whole was bonkers. There was so much going on, and our main characters were all sort of flailing around trying to figure out where they should go and what they should do, but no one can resist the downward spiral into a cliffhanger, so we're left at a clear breaking point--but with no resolutions. What's happening to Dav and is that what they meant to happen to Dutch? Does Khlyen really feel like he's protecting Dutch or did he just say that as an excuse for how bent he is? Will the revolution be able to fight the full might of the Company carpetbombing them? Will the tunnels hold out? Will this finally make Dutch and Johnny pick the side of the downtrodden and not just skimming the surface of their problems when the warrant calls for it? Will the team get back together--and will they keep the other awesome members they keep finding and not keeping on the ship with them, like Pree, Pawter, all those dead girls?

Other stuff:

• Apparently, it was Khlyen who killed Dutch's husband back before she met Johnny, not her, and he did it, he implied, because she was caring about him too much--which is why he didn't kill Dav when he could have. It's hard to believe that doing whatever Red 17 does will work out any better for him than killing him would have, though.
• I don't feel Dav-Dutch much, but I'm fine with it. I'm super-divided on Johnny-Dutch tho, because on the one hand, he obviously cares more about her than about anyone else ever, and it might explain why none of his other relationships are exclusive or permanent. But on the other hand, they're such a perfect team. 
• Alvis doesn't like all pain, apparently.
• Johnny knows the prayer word for word; did he study to be a Scarback? Were they raised religious but he doubted too much? Is he just someone who learns stuff because he can?
• That tunnel lord (the Rat King?) and his sick sister need to survive the bombing because they were only out of the tunnels because Johnny told him to get her to a doctor.
• Did they just break ties with their rich benefactor? Did she just take over the rulership?

Dark Matter:

We're still a week away from the finale on this one, but that doesn't mean it's any less exciting. And the best part here was that most of the action happens because of the ladies.

Two is out of the airlock. Three takes it very badly, and when they're moving the crew to the vault to keep them out of the way and take over the ship, he and Four try to fight back--and get beat up. Not long after, they pull One back out and beat him up with a purpose, trying to find out what he knows about some big hidden haul that he's either forgotten, or that he never knew because he's not really Jace Corso, though he can't say that because then he's expendable. They drag Five in and threaten to break her fingers to make him talk--and then they threaten to molest her, and that's way worse. And also lazy writing.** They're interrupted before they get anywhere and the two of them have a bonding moment over how important Two was to both of them. 

He goes back in the vault and they take Five to fix the FTL, because apparently the coupling they had to send Anne Droid out to fix before has come uncoupled again. They send Wonder Twin One, the tall boy twin, out to fix it and he's there for about three minutes before he says something breached his air supply and then his signature floats off the schematic as he dies on the intercom. It's Two! She didn't die, as we all knew she wouldn't because she's got Wolverine's healing power, dragged herself over to stop him from fixing the engines, and then got herself back into the airlock. As soon as there was air, she was fine and it was super-fast and awesome, and then she went about taking out the baddies with her bare hands and their own weapons. 

Meanwhile, a ship that the hijackers were supposed to meet up with to sell off that cargo has arrived, and she takes out those soldiers, too. The ship spooks and leaves them without a buyer, and then Two makes it to the bridge. The boys are all suffocating in the vault, and she puts Wexler*** into the airlock where he put her, and gets him to tell her what the new lock code is. Five gets them out and tells them about Two. Two shunts him out the airlock anyway. 

He deserved it, but it's a turning point for her--she hadn't really killed anyone like that before, it was always in combat and defense. How will she handle it? Five also killed someone, but she seems to be handling it just fine, which indicates that she's either tougher than they all think, or she's done it before and she's not so innocent as she seems, anyway.

Once the ship is their own, they decide to sell the cargo themselves, and make off with the money, but the device, once fully powered off, hollowed out the planet they sold it to, and they almost got caught in the gravity distortions. Was that intentional? Did they sabotage it? Was it already sabotaged? Was it a fluke? They seemed as surprised as anyone, so if it was intentional, it wasn't them--or at least current-them.

And when they finally reactivate the woefully under-used and under-appreciated Anne Droid, she does a round of medical tests on Two to see how she survived, and finds out that she was never born--she's a synthetic being, every bit of her manufactured to precise specs and infused with nanites more advanced than the ones in Anne even--which is illegal and doesn't officially exist, so she'll probably be killed if anyone official finds out who / what she is.

Which begs the question: was she always synth, or is she also a replacement for the original, the way One was? 

That commonality puts One back on her side, which is great, but her not-quite-humanness makes the others twitchy. Again. Come on, people. 

It was great watching people bond this episode, even if the reveal about Two undid all of it soon after; One and Five don't get a lot of downtime together, and she's been in his farmboy memories, so they should have at least that in common as well as Two. He's also bonding with Three this episode, over their mutual esteem for Two, also, but in a manly, dudely way--like revenge. Those two are so fun as partners; they should be like the criminal version of buddy cops, regardless of Two. 

It was also great seeing Three really upset--he took Two's "death" and their complicity in it really hard, and the fierceness of his anger was actually more convincing of caring than One's sad moping. All of their reactions were pretty interesting--Four shutting down to "meditate" and focusing on logic and reason over emotion, Six's trying to keep the peace and make sure everyone understands everyone. The boys getting oxygen-drunk in the vault as the air ran out was great, too, especially since the girls were outside kicking butt.

And it all leads into the two-episode finale next week, when that dead planet and all their enemies have got to come back to haunt them.

So what did you guys think of this week's episode? And the all of Killjoys Season 1! The full-season review of that will come later, but what were your favorite parts? Your least favorite parts? Share in the comments below!

NOTES:

*Which is stupid and lazy writing and a waste, and if they don't make it a reason for that or fix it next season^, I'm gonna be even more annoyed.

^And there had better be a next season because #RenewKilljoys yall.

**Falling back on rape-threats to use a lady against a man is always lazy, and I'm disappointed.

***That name was used here, was previously on 12 Monkeys, and someone on Twitter said it was also used on Sharknado; what's up with Syfy using that name? Is it a clue? An in-joke? I MUST KNOW.

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