Killer Serials: MR. ROBOT, Season Finale

Last updated on: September 8, 2015 at 8:42 am by J. Ryan Parker

Killer Serials: MR. ROBOT, Season Finale 2015-09-08T08:42:53-07:00 J. Ryan Parker

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Killer Serials is a partnership between Theoblogy (Tony Jones) and Pop Theology. Having wrapped up the third season of Orange is the New Black, we moved on to Mr. Robot. Read on for our thoughts on the season finale. Inline image 1

mr robot

TJ: The first thing I want to do is encourage any readers who haven’t seen this show to watch it. In what I think is a stroke of genius, Mr. Robot is available many places to stream, from Amazon to USA Network’s website. It’s a frenetic show, with visuals, acting, and music that I’m guessing will all contend for Emmys.

RP: So I thought this was an almost flawless season finale. Rather than feeling cliched, the intersections of scripted content and real world events felt fresh and challenging. From the Ashley Madison dumps to global market meltdowns and, unfortunately, to on-air killings, the writers and creators of Mr. Robot are certainly paying attention to the world around them and allowing it to shape their work.

TJ: That’s definitely something that caught my attention. So much so, in fact, that they delayed the season finale by a week because there’s a scene that was hauntingly close to the on-air murders in Virginia last month. It’s like Mr. Robot is portraying a world that we hope will never come, yet is strikingly similar to our world.

RP: At the end of the next-to-last episode, Elliott tells Tyrell, “I wanted to save the world.” In the finale, we see “Lenny” talking to Elliott’s psychiatrist. He complains about how Elliott hacked him, exposing his flaws and sins to those closest to him and the rest of the world. I started thinking about how this might be one avenue for salvation. Our flaws are laid bare. Jesus does this throughout the Gospels. It can sound cheesy, but Jesus is this great spiritual hacker. Oh, and Elliott executes the hack, disappears for three days, and then returns!

TJ: Speaking of returns, who guessed that the cheating husband, Lenny, would come back into the picture? Even what would be a disposable character in another show becomes a linchpin in this one. And what Lenny reveals is that Elliott is not infallible—the microchip in the dog he stole and then took to the vet uncovers his name, showing that even Elliott can be hacked. I’m hoping we’ll find out more about that in Season Two.

RP: Angela’s story line is becoming more interesting, and I can easily see her being folded into EvilCorp as one of its new leaders in the second season. One of the greatest lines of this season is her shopping for new pumps: “I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but I’ll try the Prada next.”

TJ: There is definitely something going on here—her name is a play on “angel,” but that line you quote immediately made me think, “The devil wears Prada.” And she’s now working for the Devil, right? Because, seriously, Philip Price, the CEO of Evil Corp, is Satan incarnate. The question is whether Angela is getting inside to gain access and bring him down, or whether she’s trading in her wings for a pitchfork.

The big question for me is why Price and all of his other uber-wealthy friends are completely unconcerned about the hack that has supposedly wiped out all of their wealth. There’s something going on that we don’t know…

RP: Finally, there couldn’t have been a more perfect song choice to conclude the season than “Sound and Color” from the latest Alabama Shakes album of the same name.

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