Sign In

Why Mr. Robot Is Not a Great Show (Yet) -- Vulture

Not “big reveals” of who somebody’s sister or dad is, or exactly why a character is so sad and depressed. (Orson Welles kept insisting that the end of Citizen Kane did not actually “explain” Kane, but no one listened to him.) I am not particularly interested in finding out what’s real and what’s not, and what happened to Tyrell, and whether Elliot/Mr. Robot had anything to do with it; and I am not particularly interested in seeing another lovely, charming, trusting, troubled young woman fall in love with the hero, as Shayla (Frankie Shaw) did, only to be fridged (look it up) to amplify the hero’s distress and cause problems for his revolutionary cellmates. It’s an awesome show, but I don’t want it to be just awesome. I want it to be great. That means less Cinema de Dudebro and more of other kinds of cinema, and maybe more literature and history, while we’re at it. Less cool, more school. Less mystery-box puzzle-making, more poetry. This show is capable of it, without a doubt. The proof is right there onscreen. But it keeps losing its way, week after week. And the bug was there from the start.