RECAP: MR. ROBOT S2EP5 - INGENUITY, TIP-TOEING AND EVERYONE ELSE
This week’s episode of Mr Robot starts off a bit lacklustre. Since Elliot is pretty subdued, the severity of the situation at hand (aka F SOCIETY BREAKING INTO THE FBI) seems pretty… eh. Elliot’s interactions with Darlene and his father take a massive backseat this week, and it’s everything other than those relationships that makes episode 5 the great episode it is.
My queen, Joanna Wellick, had heaps of airtime this episode. And I think we should all feel blessed. Joanna is ridiculously interesting, and super creepy. She’s put up a cloud between her and everyone else, so literally no one knows what she’s thinking or what she’ll do next.
Ingeniously sick.
She ruthlessly took out one of her accomplices; paralysing his entire body before killing him.
“We let him die with answers. Otherwise we’re nothing but ruthless murderers.” she says. But with the little words her security guard utters before shooting him in the chest and head, wouldn’t it leave him speculating in panic, allowing his thoughts to thrash about in his head while his body fails to succumb to his wishes for movements? Or maybe I’m failing to think outside the box. I don’t know.
It’s always so mind-blowing to come back to the fact that Joanna Wellick is also actually a mother, who cares so deeply for her son.
Dangerous but also, family-orientated? #getyouagirlwhocandoboth
And you thought last week had cringeworthy moments? This week was definitely worse. Angela’s ex-boyfriend, looking kind of gross, is so disgustingly nostalgic and it makes you want to fast forward through the scene. Choosing the bar they first said ‘I love you’ at, Ollie gives Angela his resume just in case there are any vacancies at E Corp, after buying her a Bud Light. Angela looks uncomfortable as she should be but I feel as if this was a moment that really shows how much she has grown.
Angela was obviously very meek and kind of a push over before, but now, she seems so ahead of the game and powerful. Though she still has a long way to go, as seen by last week’s interaction with Philip Price, she’s doing pretty well.
She also realised that Ollie was trying to record her for his benefit, and dropped his phone into that Bud Light. You go girl!
Angela also teams up with Darlene and fsociety to take down the FBI and Darlene is slaying in a military jacket. Very fitting to the situation at hand.
The FBI ends up in Beijing, led by Dom DiPierro’s no-shits-given attitude and AMAZING hair. Seriously, that blowout is some next level beauty; the Whiterose would be jealous.
Speaking of the Whiterose, we find out they’re actually a guy or is disguising themselves as a guy??? And it just so happens that this guy is actually Minister Zhang, the Chinese Minister of State Security.
So if we tie everything up from past episodes and this, the head of the Dark Army is also the Chinese Minister of State Security and is working with the head of Evil Corp, but also brought it down. Am I the only one that’s thinking that, soon enough, the Dark Army is going to take a front seat in this show? Maybe all that seems to be bubbling will rise up and finally we’ll get to connect the dots.
Let’s be real. Probably not. It’s Mr Robot; this show likes to keep us guessing all the time.
But Dom and Minister Zhang end up in a long conversation together, talking about deeper secrets and motivations. Both characters seem to be dancing around truths, with the internet speculating that those truths are mostly about their true identities.
Zhang shows Dom some dresses, and says that they belong to a sister. But Dom knows Zhang has no sister.
They seem to be spending lots of time together, which is so out of the blue because the Whiterose is so anal about their time. But a heap of clocks toil, and breaks that thought because of course, Zhang/the Whiterose was timing their interaction.
The following morning, Dom finds herself in crossfire at the FBI headquarters in Beijing and it’s really freakin’ intense. You follow Dom’s movements, so when she can’t see what’s happening, you can’t either. It’s fast and loud and nerve-wracking. But also reminds you, past the Wes Anderson-esque shots Sam Esmail provides, that Mr Robot makes you really experience what’s happening.
But it’s Elliot finding out that Ray is actually running a black market that seals the episode. The pages he flickers through shows the trafficking of teenaged girls, weapons and drugs. It’s hard to believe that someone as nice as Ray would run such a website, but then again he was pretty suspicious. Or maybe I’m still having problems separating Ray from Darryl, Craig Robinson’s character in The Office.
His snooping around gets him kidnapped, with the final shots of him being beaten by Ray’s henchmen.
Mr Robot is slowly rising up to something huge. I can feel it. With his father’s ghost not being a main character this episode, it allowed everyone to take a breath from how toxic that relationship is and to take a bigger look at the other people affected by Elliot and what he’s done. This was probably one of my favourite episodes of the season so far. The characters are growing, but as we find out information about some, we’re still left a mist with the others.
