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Mr. Robot - (2015 show) >

A psychologically-disturbed young man's fantasies spiral out of control as he pursues a lunatic's dream for economic anarchy.

Table of Contents [hide]

1 s01e01 - 2015-06-24 - eps1.0_hellofriend.mov
2 s01e02 - 2015-07-01 - eps1.1_ones-and-zer0es.mpeg
3 s01e03 - 2015-07-08 - eps1.2_d3bug.mkv
4 s01e04 - 2015-07-15 - eps1.3_da3m0ns.mp4
5 s01e05 - 2015-07-22 - eps1.4_3xpl0its.wmv
6 s01e06 - 2015-07-29 - eps1.5_br4ve-trave1er.asf
7 s01e07 - 2015-08-05 - eps1.6_v1ew-s0urce.flv
8 s01e08 - 2015-08-12 - eps1.7_wh1ter0se.m4v
9 s01e09 - 2015-08-19 - eps1.8_m1rr0r1ng.qt
10 s01e10 - 2015-09-02 - eps1.9_zer0-day.avi
11 Initial impression
12 Second impression
13 E100 - 2016-06-20 - Mr. Robot _dec0d3d.doc

s01e01 - 2015-06-24 - eps1.0_hellofriend.mov ∞

0:15 -- Dissociative identity disorder
0:45 -- While part of his stuff is valid, he is being paranoid.
2:30 -- Wireless with gigabit speed? Which doesn't .. well even if it existed the internet connection isn't associated with that.
3:00 -- Tor (anonymity network)
- A bunch of waffling bullshit which Tor specifically addresses.
3:30 -- 400 terabytes? Is.. is there even that much child porn?
6:00 -- AFK = Away From Keyboard
12:30 -- Steve Jobs
16:15 --
- Facebook
- George W. Bush
- Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
- Josh Groban
17:45 -- The "E" reminds me of Dell's logo.
18:15 -- Blackberry
19:00 --
- GNOME
- KDE
- Desktop environment
- Linux
21:00 --
- Morphine
- Junkie ~= Addiction
- Drug tolerance
- Purity, see cutting agent
- Naloxone
- Opioid overdose
24:00 -- Why would a cab company give .. any details? Wouldn't they just have the cab return in that direction for its next pickup?
25:45 -- DDOS = Distributed Denial-of-service attack
- "Security protocols" don't exactly exist..
27:30 -- Load sharing is distribution of the workload between servers, often coordinated with bringing more servers/etc online. This sort of thing is usually done in order to pull one of those servers offline for maintenance or replacement.
27:45 -- Rootkit
- .. and she would know what that is.
28:00 -- Computer virus, Computer worm
29:15 -- Nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
34:15 -- IRC = Internet Relay Chat
39:00 -- Single point of failure
40:15 -- .. without a CPU? You mean.. without a computer?
41:00 -- Back to the Future Part II
45:45 -- Gold standard
46:00 -- Too big to fail
52:45 -- Does this sort of thing even happen?
56:45 -- Well of course he was using an alias, this should have been assumed because of his lack of online footprint. Duh.
57:00 -- Ashley Madison
58:45 -- Keeping trophies is a bad idea, and anyone like him would know what.

s01e02 - 2015-07-01 - eps1.1_ones-and-zer0es.mpeg ∞

6:15 -- JFK (film)
8:45 --
22:00 -- Tape drive
22:30 -- "Ism all over them" is a reference to Facial (sex act), and semen in the eyes stings, I'm told, which is the reference to not being able to see.
23:30 -- He's dark. Way too fucking dark, and the lead character ought to get the fuck away from him, go to the FBI and be turned into an informant for protection.
36:15 --
- Coca-Cola, Pepsi
- McDonald's, Burger King
- Hyundai Motor Company, Honda
- .. or Eveready Battery Company, Duracell
- .. or Windows, OS X
  These sorts of binaries are examples of limited-competition. See also collusion.
43:45 -- David Koresh

s01e03 - 2015-07-08 - eps1.2_d3bug.mkv ∞

5:30 -- Wouldn't his knuckles get bruised?
9:15 -- Windows 98
9:45 -- "6 hour energy drink" = 5-hour Energy
11:15 -- Jessica Alba
16:00 -- Elliot is easy to read.. his friend.
16:45 -- Appletini
17:30 -- $12.. for a .. drink.
19:45 --
21:00 -- Starbucks
30:00 -- From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1967 book), by E. L. Konigsburg
- .. though she's probably talking about one of the movies.
30:15 -- Google Maps

Leukemia

43:00 -- Heightened levels of stress can absolutely fuck up a foetus.

s01e04 - 2015-07-15 - eps1.3_da3m0ns.mp4 ∞

16:00 --
- Hackers - (1995 movie)
- Tron - Legacy (2010)[doesn't exist]
27:15 -- HTTP 404
44:00 -- Daemon (computing)

s01e05 - 2015-07-22 - eps1.4_3xpl0its.wmv ∞

5:45 -- Raspberry Pi
8:00 -- Wikipedia
- I don't know who "mobly" is.
9:30 -- Yeah, you never know who turns out to be a raging bitch. Also, there are video cameras.
18:15 -- Obamacare = Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
18:45 --
- Hezbollah
- ISIS = Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
31:45 -- Microsoft

s01e06 - 2015-07-29 - eps1.5_br4ve-trave1er.asf ∞

14:00 -- Script kiddie
31:45 -- Wi-Fi Protected Access
32:15 -- 4G
36:15 -- MultiBlue Dongle USB BlueTooth V3.0 (BT300KMS)

.. his prints are all over the car, and the key to the trunk.

s01e07 - 2015-08-05 - eps1.6_v1ew-s0urce.flv ∞

1:15 -- So one guy walks upstairs, outside, with a black garbage bag that's not wholly-full, and doesn't even drop it with the others next to the road. He's in a work bib of some sort, like he works in a kitchen.
6:30 -- .. one month later.
10:45 -- .. is his boss talking about time off six months afterward?
11:00 -- Web design theft.. yeah, I did that.
13:30 -- Important data? On a CD/DVD? Nobody who's been around enough would do that sort of thing.
- I guess I should have noted all the artists and albums, but I didn't and won't.
14:45 -- Marissa Mayer?
19:30 -- Left-hand handshake.
- United States Attorney?
31:15 -- Chief technology officer
33:30 -- She's being abhorrently selfish, putting other people at actual risk.. threatening actual financial ruin.. for her fucking feelings.
36:45 -- No face-scratching?
39:00 -- Iran
39:30 -- Or they could have stayed in Iran. And had it soooo much better.

s01e08 - 2015-08-12 - eps1.7_wh1ter0se.m4v ∞

2:30 -- So I assume she's a whore.
3:30 -- Riiight.
11:30 -- Air gap (networking)
13:00 -- They're listing files/directories that would absolutely not be found on a server..
20:45 -- Well fucking good, no she didn't throw you in the friendzone so damned far that you'd share everything all the time for no reason.
21:45 -- Faraday cage
27:30 -- MMS = Microsoft Media Server?

s01e09 - 2015-08-19 - eps1.8_m1rr0r1ng.qt ∞

1:30 -- An 800MB hard drive?! Back then!?
3:30 -- Best Buy
- Holy shit, I thought it was newer than that.. but it was founded in 1966.
4:45 --
- Timecop - (1994 movie)
- Stargate - (1994 movie)
- Pulp Fiction - (1994 movie)
7:00 -- See also Fight Club - (1999 movie)
21:00 -- She's insane, but it's okay because she doesn't have any responsibility because of other stuff that happened when she was a minor and she was a minor so therefore she cannot give consent therefore her insanity really isn't hers and leave Brittany alone.
- 21:15 -- Yeah she got what she wants, and if he can't continue to serve his purpose he's out. Love? What's that?
29:00 -- ⌘-r refreshes a web page.

s01e10 - 2015-09-02 - eps1.9_zer0-day.avi ∞

2:00 -- Are we having a flashback?
4:30 -- Yeah, fathers shouldn't ever have custody.. they don't matter. He'll still be paying child support anyway. Their mothe-- I mean his chil-- I mean the children will be fine.
5:30 -- Proxy server (Proxies), Estonia
5:45 -- Physician–patient privilege
7:15 -- .. are those empty picture frames?
11:45 --
- BuzzFeed are a bunch of assholes.
- Gizmodo (and io9.gizmodo.com) are a bunch of assholes.
- Business Insider
- That's not CNN, and I don't recognize the logo.
- There is a Kim Wilcox in IT, but I don't know if this article is related to her.
12:30 -- $50,000/mo
18:15 -- This. This scene almost happened in real life.
20:30 -- United States Department of Defense standards specify this sort of action to properly "erase" data. See security.
24:45 -- Teleprompter
- I researched this but haven't put my notes up as of this writing.
33:30 -- Vimeo
36:15 -- Prada
37:00 -- Headset (audio)
47:15 -- What a terrible green-screen.
51:00 -- .. extras.
53:45 -- Nero, Lyre

Initial impression ∞

.. when I first watched this I didn't take any notes. My original summary opinion was:

Not only is this movie predictably-detached from the world and cultures it's trying to exaggerate, it insults the characters themselves. It is so thick with a falseness that it's more than unsatisfying. Mr. Robot is not recommended, especially for the impressionable brainwashed proletariat who are just watching to be entertained by the occasional buzzword.

.. instead of per-episode notes, I wrote:

Like Fight Club - (1999 movie), this movie examines corporatism. However, unlike that film, Mr. Robot is terribly lacking.

The lead character being brought into another world, being made to feel special. At no point does he take his analytical paranoia and direct it toward all the events and people in his life. His paradigm is so closed that he cannot see outside its specialized scope.

This closedness is probably what bothers me the most, even more than its catchy "hacker" bullshit premise. I can hand-wave all of the badness.. all of the lingo, tools, culture and so many things that just rub me the wrong way. I simply cannot get rid of the annoyance that the main character should -- in his context -- be way the fuck smarter about everything going on around him. (as with John Forbes Nash, Jr. in A Beautiful Mind - (2001 movie).)

But no, I can't even forgive, for my part, all the wilful braindead misrepresentation of culture. It's also as though the commands being used are the equivalent of name-dropping. It was the early mention of KDE and GNOME series that so cheezed me off that I kept it in mind for my future episode viewing.

I can see how the "hip" nature of this series can be sold to pointy-haired morons. I can see how this series can get off the ground and have an audience. There are so many shows which aren't created as art but are created as being a cog in the same fucking machine they pretend to be commenting on. Mr. Robot is one of them.

Second impression ∞

I re-watched this from scratch because it got recommended a third time. As I write this I've finished binging on the entire first season. Though it wasn't bad, it's .. I don't know, somehow unrealistic. I still feel that a "touched" person like that would easily be more capable than he appears to be. People often flag such a person and then have an "anything goes" sort of hand-waiving that would let a story go off the rails. This show does just that. The problem is with a core of the character not being true at all.

At any rate, all the technical bullshit wasn't so bad after all, and it's generally okay. I like the main blonde girl being not over-the-top hot but definitely making me pay attention both by being sensibly physically attractive and being a rich character. She acts like a grounding point for the show and her in it lets my mind take a break from the strangeness of the general show.

I like the Mister Robot character a whole lot, but the rest of the characters I don't care at all about. They weren't developed of course, so that's normal. I particularly hate the sister. Not the actor, the character. She's shouty and annoying.

E100 - 2016-06-20 - Mr. Robot _dec0d3d.doc ∞

Tales and spoilers from season one.

4:30 -- That character is shit, and I can't imagine how that could be award-winning.
8:15 -- That narrator is annoying, and there's a whole lot of time-wasting going on.. I think this will be a waste of time.
13:00 -- .. yeah, this is all a bunch of wankery.

Last updated 2020-05-13 at 15:03:20

spiralofhope

Mr. Robot season 1 notes