MrRobot

Ever get skeeved out by something being too perfectly aligned with your tastes and interests? That's how the first episode of Mr Robot made me feel. Just different enough for plausible deniability, but close enough to my tastes to make the hairs stand up on my neck. Cyberpunk outsider hero with a taste for military style backpacks and black hoodies hacks his way to justice. It's a good Show, Christian Slater has his character down, the conspiracy and evil corporation (which has an Enron logo), the insanity of the main character. I dunno, maybe it's looking at the things that I like for another angle, seeing how they are not good things.

The Bad

So many tropes. I'll say that there is very likely a bunch of trope-breaking later in the series, and so I'm not sure how upset I should be about these.

• The White cisgendered straight male hacker with poor social skills who of course is on drugs.
• The "Friendzoned" protagonist who has to "Save women"
• the fact that he is surrounded by women who seem to care for him but his "true Love" only dates jerks
• the tech is good enough to TV (narratively accurate?) and at least they get the words right. but stilted enough to make me wonder how bad it can get.
• Every Watch_Dogs criticism applies here.

Recommendations:

Did you like Mr Robot? Watch "Welcome to the NHK" and "Black Mirror". Welcome to the NHK is a more mundane take on the type of crazy the main character is portrayed with, but it sells the human ness of the madness. Black Mirror is full of Twilight Zone happenings involving near future and cyberpunk type conspiracies.

I'm going to watch the rest of the show, but that was a harsh feeling on the piolt. Lets see if it can keep these leads together and make something interesting.