Maaike likes to think she is the go-to person here at UCR when it comes to TV shows, but she might just be gravely mistaken. As someone who previously had way too much free time on his hands, I ended up using a decent part of it in watching TV shows. Everything from the light hearted (and slightly crazy) ‘Rick & Morty’ to the heavy hearted psychological thriller ‘Homeland’ was game.
In this little column I would like to tell you all about Mr. Robot, a show about the vigilante hacker Elliot and his adventure into the world of the underground hacker group ‘fsociety’ (similar to our real-world ‘Anonymous’). Another way to describe the show would be ‘Dexter, where he is not a murderous psychopath but a hacker instead’.
Mr. Robot is the story of security analyst by day, hacker vigilante by night, Elliot Alderson, portrayed by (as of this week!) Emmy Award winning actor Rami Malek. One of the first scenes of the show is where he exposes a coffee shop owner to be hosting a child porn server. This short scene not only shows how Elliot strives to make the world a better place in his own ways, but also how dark and real the show is willing to get. In the first episode Elliot gets recruited by the illustrious Mr. Robot into the hacker group ‘fsociety’, who strive to take down E-Corp (which they tend to call Evil Corp), the world’s biggest conglomerate.
The first and foremost thing that sets this show apart from any other show is its realism. A hacker in this show is not someone who wears a hockey mask behind the computer, but real people with real problems. Furthermore, the show displays the various methods and tools the hackers employ to achieve their goals, which are all accurate. Anything they do and use in this show, you could do and use yourself as well, if so inclined. The show is not only real in its portrayal of hacking, however, it is also simply real in general. This shows itself in the characters and their behavior, but also the setting of the show, which paints the world to be under control of the world’s biggest companies.
Mr. Robot is also refreshing in things other than its realism. The main character, Elliot, has an internal monologue throughout the show, for example. This is something I have not seen since Dexter ended, and it is a welcome change from other popular TV shows. It is also refreshing (and funny) in the way they name their episodes. To give two examples of this: The name of the first episode is ‘eps1.0_hellofriend.mov’, and the second ‘eps1.9_zer0-day.avi’.
What I enjoyed most about this show, however, was how it was able to completely blow my mind. I am not going to spoil anything, but if you have seen films like ‘Fight Club’, ‘The Prestige’, or ‘The Fifth Element’, you will know what I am talking about. The best thing is that they not only managed to do so in the first season, but also again in the second season.
All in all, I really cannot recommend this show enough. Mr. Robot is a show for anyone that likes a well-written, realistic story with some twists and surprises.
Steven van de Graaf, Class of 2017, is a Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science major from Barendrecht, the Netherlands.
