Nothing says Christmas like an antisocial hacker dealing with existential dread and vicious alternate personalities. But Mr. Robot is nothing if not a TV series that loves to upend our expectations. The Emmy-nominated USA TV series created by Sam Esmail and starring Rami Malek will be wrapping up its fourth and final season during the happiest time of the year in what Esmail calls “one very long Christmas special.”
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Update: Mr. Robot will end its award-winning run on USA Network after its upcoming fourth season, Variety confirmed. The fourth season is set to air sometime in 2019. Our original story continues below.
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Mr. Robot may be powering down soon. The acclaimed cyber drama has won USA all kinds of accolades and praise for the past three seasons, but as Sam Esmail‘s prestige series heads into its fourth season, its stars are suggesting that this will be the end.
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Mr. Robot dream team of show creator Sam Esmail and star Rami Malek are set to reteam for a thriller for Universal. Esmail will direct Malek, who will play an undercover Muslim FBI agent in the adaptation of a memoir, American Radical.
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When it comes to broadcast and basic cable channels, television programming has always had to be more careful about what it says on the air. However, in recent years, basic cable has cared less and less about saving the sensitive ears of the viewing public. No, they’re not just swearing willy-nilly during daytime television, but some of the more late night programming on basic cable has started to care less and less about tiptoeing around language.
In fact, SyFy and USA, both networks owned by NBCUniversal (a subsidiary of Comcast), are now throwing caution to the wind and will be dropping f-bombs without censoring them on air, and they already started to let them fly earlier this year. Read More »
The Mr. Robot season 3 finale may have tied up plenty of loose ends, but it left us with even more questions. Where will Elliot go now? What will Angela do with that earth-shattering revelation from Philip Price? And just what is up with that end credits scene?
The third season of Sam Esmail’s dark hacker series hurdled toward its finale earlier this week, only to quietly wrap up with a return to the beginning. It’s not the promise of a better, alternate world that Esmail kept dropping hints of, but of a world that its denizens — Elliot, mainly — can strive to better.
But there’s another season planned for the USA Network show. Where can Mr. Robot go from here?
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(We’re going to kickstart our weekly discussion of USA’s Mr. Robot season 3 by answering one simple question: who had the biggest mental breakdown in this week’s episode?)
Long after the final credits rolled for “Shutdown,” the lyrics of Nancy Sinatra’s “Bang Bang” echoed in my head. “Bang bang/ He shot me down / bang bang / I hit the ground / Bang bang /that awful sound /bang bang / my baby shot me down.” I say Nancy Sinatra (sorry, Cher fans) even though the version of “Bang Bang” that was played in this episode was the Chinese version of the song, because it perfectly captures the haunting, quietly tragic mood of “Shutdown.”
The gripping third season ended not with a bang, but not quite a whimper either. That’s not to say “Shutdown” was a bad episode — far from it. It was a deftly paced and surprisingly subdued season finale for Mr. Robot, a show that writer/creator Sam Esmail has built up to regularly shock and upend audience expectations. But there were few complex machinations in the season 3 finale. “Shutdown” hinged on vulnerable character confessions and moments of clarity, as well as a few shocks of visceral brutality that Mr. Robot has become known for. Instead of an explosive follow-up to an adrenaline-packed and plot-heavy season, Esmail went for a different surprise: that of humble introspection.. And damn it, Esmail did it again.
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The revolution isn’t over yet. USA Network announced that Mr. Robot has been renewed for a fourth season, shortly before its third season finale airs.
This renewal comes on the tail of the most invigorating season of the grim hacker show yet and star Christian Slater‘s third nomination for a Golden Globe for his work as the title character.
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(We’re going to kickstart our weekly discussion of USA’s Mr. Robot season 3 by answering one simple question: who had the biggest mental breakdown in this week’s episode?)
Mr. Robot season 3 has been a return to form for the USA Network show, reminding us that it is one of the best and most invigorating shows on television. “Stage 3” takes that momentum and brings it to a brief halt — though writers Kyle Bradstreet and Courtney Looney try their best to make an episode about moving plot pieces as gripping as past weeks have been. The penultimate episode of Mr. Robot‘s third season is set-up, moving the chess pieces across a board that only Whiterose (BD Wong) truly knows. It better be a damn good finale.
Elliot (Rami Malek) and Darlene (Carly Chaikin) have essentially gone AWOL, deciding to take matters into their own hands by facing the daunting united front of the Dark Army, E Corp., and the FBI. But Elliot’s active distancing of himself from Mr. Robot may come to haunt him as Christian Slater‘s frustrated alternate persona becomes powerless in the face of Elliot’s obstinance.
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(We’re going to kickstart our weekly discussion of USA’s Mr. Robot season 3 by answering one simple question: who had the biggest mental breakdown in this week’s episode?)
Following up last week’s dour episode, Mr. Robot takes a trip down the cinematic rabbit hole. “Don’t Delete Me” has Elliot (Rami Malek) once again grappling with his guilt, but this time it’s not limited to the thousands of people who died in the E Corp explosions, but over Trenton and Mobley being framed for them. His ensuing depression results in him taking a subtle step back from reality — the entire episode is once again deeply embedded in his POV, shot in the widescreen 1.85:1 format.
It lends to the surreal quality of the episode, as Elliot wanders through New York cleaning up loose ends and trying to atone to Trenton and Mobley’s families. But their rejection of his efforts only sends him down a deeper spiral that finds him sitting alone at a deserted beach on Coney Island, with a bag of meth pills in hand. It’s a dark image for an episode that turns out to be one of the season’s most hopeful yet.
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Mr. Robot is arguably the most distinctive series on television — a moody and haunting techno-opera that floods viewers with a crushing sense of isolation. Much of the credit can be given to showrunner Sam Esmail‘s cinematic eye, maintaining a house style of low lighting and negative space that lend to the oppressive environment — along with a stylistic gimmick every now and then in the form of a long-take episode or a sentient emoji.
But you can’t make a moody show without mood music, for which Emmy Award-winning composer Mac Quayle is responsible. Quayle won an Emmy for his work on the first season of the USA Network drama, but he continues to produce award-worthy work with his exclusively electronic, dissonant score.
We spoke to him about how he creates the synth-heavy Mr. Robot score, and his upcoming live performance of the USA Network’s popular soundtrack.
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