Post Black Pills: mr. robot and the Cult of Society.

The Fake, the Fucked-Up, and the Lonely.

SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST THREE EPISODES OF MR. ROBOT.

mr. robot is a beautiful show. mr. robot is a beautiful show the way Mad Men is a beautiful show, but with a dash of Looking, the very gay (very, very gay—seriously, it's the one and only time I just couldn't bring myself to gel with the whole thing, before I thought more about it, anyway; there was a sex scene that actually helped me realize what the much-more-libby friend of mine had told me, before, that she had seen some gay-sex scene, I think, with her dad, or something, and it just really took her aback) but incredibly, almost miraculously beautiful show. It is like the cool parts of Girls distilled into a water.

Anyway, mr. robot is that, but also a show about how everyone around the main character, basically, is a fucking zombie, and that was before we all realized that everyone was a fucking zombie. Elliot shows up to the dinner party his boss invited him to, and he initially declined, with his drug-dealer that-day girlfriend. Of course, he already slept with her (this show does not paint Elliot, the liar and drug addict, as a particularly good guy, but he's the kind of bad this world needs, in that show), but he just that day asked her to go with him to the dinner party as a girlfriend. (How Sweet.)

Anyway, he shows up, and there is a couple, with his childhood friend and seemingly real love, Angela, and her cheating, disgusting NPC of a boyfriend, Ollie (of Course), and the other guy, a sort of pudgy guy who seems interminably alone. This is the world these characters live in, and We do. One couple that is seriously fucking fucked up, Elliot and Shaylah, one couple that is seriously fucking fake, Angela and "Ollie," and one guy who will never find love, because he's just a fucking marshmallow. (The other guy, don't remember his name, do care, but don't. Enough to look it up, anyway.) These five totally lost souls, with one being less lost (and he also being followed around by this mysterious fucking stranger), walk into their boss's (the drug dealer was the only non-employee) trendy apartment.

Elliot, the super-hacker who just, like, visibly shakes (Rami Malek had a weird energy, anyway), lies to his boss when he's confronted about a thing that the boss is actually right about, Elliot holding back on a key bit of information from the first episode in order to hide him from the fact that Elliot is responsible, ultimately, for the victim of a big hack he also recently solved, for them, for a client company, E(vil, as Elliot translates it) Corp, . . . anyway, Elliot lies to him to make it seem like he just really wanted to be sure about it, instead of putting the CTO's IP address into the hacker's root kit, or whatever—thus framing him—and the boss just hugs him. He is several layers removed from reality, as are all the people navigating his maze he talks about, where he never shows himself to anyone. He endures it. The Hug.

Anyway, meanwhile, Tyrell Wellick, the Swedish or whatever tech executive who earlier paid a homeless man about four hundred dollars to let him beat him up, is out at a gay club, seducing a clerk to get into his phone so that he can somehow manage a scheme he has to become CTO of E(vil) Corp, as replacement for the patsy. For Elliot. He fucks this guy (he is married to a smoldering foreign beauty, who is pregnant) in the ass and then installs some kind of software or something on his phone to help move his plans along. We aren't told much. Then he goes back home and his wife insists that he play some kind of bondage game with her, and insists on the ballgag, too. He spent a scene earlier in the episode slapping himself in the face as he said affirmations about getting the job.

This is a strikingly clear view of the world, and we're fucked. Or, maybe. But Elliot ends the episode descending into the Coney Island arcade ("Fun Society," missing most of the "Fun") like an old prince, sitting down, and beginning the real work. I can't wait to finish watching this show.