Is The Third Season Of 'Mr. Robot' Any Good? Here's What The Reviews Say
The first season of "Mr. Robot" got rave reviews and Rami Malek won an Emmy for his performance as Elliot Anderson, anarchist hacker extraordinaire. When creator Sam Esmail took over responsibilities for writing and directing every episode of the second season, the results were less electrifying (oh, and there are spoilers for seasons 1 and 2 ahead). The show returns to USA for "season_3.0" at 10pm on October 11th, but critics have had the chance to watch six episodes. Is "Mr. Robot" back to being appointment TV? Here's what the reviews have to say:
'season_3.0' Feels Like Course Correction — In The Story And For The Show Itself
Season three finds both Elliot and Mr. Robot more focused in their efforts to get back to the way things used to be. For Elliot, it's undoing the hack that erased EvilCorp's loan records, which backfired by strengthening the company and hurting the world. For Mr. Robot, it's going back to the more propulsive, less introspective mode of the first season, after large chunks of the second took place entirely inside Elliot's head. Given how great Malek is — not to mention how creative Esmail can be at portraying the unreality of it all — Elliot's head is usually an interesting place to be, but like a lot of season two (which had more episodes, almost all of them significantly longer than average), it can risk becoming too much.
[UPROXX]
Elliot is our narrator and guide, and Mr. Robot increasingly becomes the corrupting influence. In Season 3, the two are increasingly at war, as Elliot is being manipulated by two sides who want him to go through with — or stop — Stage 2, a plan that would blow up a New York storage facility holding E Corps' paper backups.
[Collider]
The Conflict Between Malek And Slater Is More Intense
Mr. Robot is here, in a strange new way that lets Christian Slater add deeper shades to his phantom. At this point, you either accept Mr. Robot or you don't — the show long ago slipstreamed from any notional Multiple Personality Disorder reality to full-fledged Mr. Hyde superhero logic. It's a leap you should take: Slater's first introduction in season 3 is one of the show's most quietly awe-inspiring shots, eerie and grand.
By establishing that Elliot and Mr. Robot are individual personalities, a whole new dynamic between those characters and others in their sphere has been established, one which takes the base level "Fight Club"-esque relationship introduced in Season 1 and really goes to town. It's like watching an adrenaline junkie borrow a buddy's jet ski and drive toward a thirty-foot wave. This isn't a new idea, but you've never seen it implemented to this degree before.
[As] season three picks up and races forward, the series continues to poke fun at itself, mostly for the fact that defining the rules of when Elliot is himself or when he's Mr. Robot is confusing. Season three leans into that confusion in some episodes so strongly that you begin to wonder if it's a wise choice. Where you fall on that will depend on either your understanding of dissociative identity disorder or your willingness to just go with it in the service of the story (and the entire concept of the series, really). But at least by openly addressing that it's all a bit off, there's a wink that allows you to have some fun with it.
Bobby Cannavale's Character Irving Is An Entertaining Addition
Irving is such a self-evidently ridiculous character that he brings an element of levity to every scene he appears in. You'll see it almost immediately in the premiere, when he escapes a car chase in a manner I never would have considered.
[Vox]
The show has also given the boot to the original F Society and instead introduced more of the Dark Army, including Bobby Cannavale as a kind of middle manager in that organization. But though Cannavale works the hell out of the character, there's not much there for him to go on, because he's more or less just a walking connective plot point.
[Collider]
Cannavale's a treat, in full character actor mode, sporting a pencil mustache and a spiky pompadour, coupled with a high-pitched outer-borough accent. The eccentricity of it risks Irving coming across as more tic than man, yet Cannavale and Esmail ride the line so that Irving can be both the funniest person on the show and a genuine threat to whoever tries to interfere with the master plan.
[UPROXX]
Esmail's Love For Long, Uninterrupted Takes Continues
Esmail directs every episode, and his love of long one-take shots could be considered ostentatious were it not so affecting. It helps that the technique is saved for moments so dramatic you're not necessarily looking for the cut (though you should be, because goddamndoes "Mr. Robot" find fresh approaches to the single shot). There's some groundbreaking work on display here…should you choose to engage.
The season really doesn't come together until Episode 5, which is shot (Birdman-style) like one long take. It's a horror-filled nightmare in a high-rise, where we first follow Elliot and then Angela (Portia Doubleday) through an increasingly chaotic set of scenes.
[Collider]
The premiere features one of Esmail's now-trademark long takes, a hallucinatory walk through an underground hacker club. Part of the pleasure of season 3 is how Esmail resets the show's psycho-thriller interiority in recognizably modern surroundings. There's a montage in episode 2 where someone starts a new corporate job, and the music is "New Sensation" by INXS, and the song's chirpy pep runs wonderfully counter to the seemingly banal setting. It gets to that Scorsese place, man, where you hope the montage goes on long enough that the band starts to invent new verses.
Sometimes The Stories Feel Self-Consciously Muddled
Still, there are so many interlocking agendas and conspiracies and secrets that the show feels more like work than it originally did, no matter how much Esmail tries to pare things back to the basics. Beat to beat, it can still knock me off my chair, but then we get back to keeping track of who's really loyal to whom, when Angela might or might not be telling the truth, or what Tyrell's motivations are, and the episodes can start feeling much longer than they actually are.
[UPROXX]
Form over function is still far too prevalent in this new run of episodes, and a lot of the momentum is bogged down with a sudden desire to be completely transparent with audiences. That could be a response to backlash of Season 2's twist where we find out Elliot was in prison for the first few episodes and living out a fantasy in his mind, but the result is that every character now takes a lot of time to spell out exactly what is going on, how, and why.
[Collider]
The Angle 'Mr. Robot' Takes On Trump May Be Too Much
While Season 3 still technically takes place in the year 2015, don't tune in expecting a reprieve from the political scene in 2017. From a key monologue in the first episode, followed by many subsequent elements, Esmail ensures that Trump's presence is felt on a deep, almost self-indulgent level.
Not all of [the Trump jokes] work, which is partly why comics and series like Veep don't try to tackle the man head-on; but give Esmail and Mr. Robot points for going right at it, because the bits work more often than not.
Its commentary on Trump often feels clumsy and ill-advised, like all of the characters are somehow in a time travel movie about trying to return the world to the "correct" timeline. And because the show has been on hiatus for over a year (since September 2016), and because its second season was met with a decidedly mixed reception, and because so much has happened in our world since then, season three tends to feel like an artifact from another place and time, one picked up through accidental transmissions that somehow permeated into our present day.
[Vox]
TL;DR
Both character and show are in a more promising place when we return to them. Mr. Robot may never again be as shiny and sleek as it was in its debut, but it's become easier to focus on the many things it does so very well.
[UPROXX]
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