Show: Mr. Robot

Verdict: ★AMAZING★

How much I’ve seen: Season 1

Where you can watch it: Airs on USA, but the season just ended. The last five episodes are available to stream here.

This show had me from jump street. As soon as I saw the MR. ROBOT title screen of the first episode I knew I was watching something special. Imagine if Fight Club was about a group of Anonymous-style anarchist computer hackers, rather than a group of anarchist soap makers. If you liked Fight Club, you’ll almost certainly like this show.

I was surprised at how good the technobabble was too. It’s so common to see shows get that wrong. I think the details were a little off, but the terminology itself seemed good. (For example: they correctly referenced 256-bit AES encryption, which is a real thing; and they said it’s practically impossible to crack in any reasonable amount of time, which is also true as far as people outside the NSA know; but the attack was to encrypt financial records when they were already in a system. It makes no sense that they encrypted all the copies rather than destroying them all.)

I was surprised at how intrigued I am by the character of Angela. I was not expecting to care about her character at all, but her development through season 1 was really interesting, especially the scene in the shoe store in the last episode.

I will say, like Bloodline, I’m worried about season two. I hope this isn’t too spoilery, but the plot was completely resolved. They don’t have the element of surprise anymore either (although I saw that twist coming from the pilot).

Added bonus for me was that I recognized several shooting locations, because I’ve been at/in several of them.