Recencies van critici

Am I up or down on Mr. Robot? Neither. It annoys and frustrates me, not always for good reasons, but I can't stop watching it because even at its least coherent, it's more assured, more mysterious, and more viscerally intense than any other drama on commercial television. That, and Rami Malek's now Emmy-winning performance in the lead role. He's the most original lead actor on television, and he's playing a character who, culturally and generationally, means something.

Entering into its second season, USA's Mr. Robot is still operating as unchallenging protest pop art enabled by the very corporations it criticizes. The heroes remain sexy in an "alternative" way that already felt hokey in the 1995 film Hackers, but that has come back into fashion now that the 1990s are old enough to serve as catnip for the corporate nostalgia machine.

I think Mr. Robot is one of the best new shows of the year, I couldn't wait for each weekly episode to air, and I'm thrilled it's coming back for a second season, but, at the same time, every episode, I couldn't stop thinking about its disappeared ancestor: I wonder if this guy's seen Rubicon. The conspiracy, the debt to seventies thrillers, the lone troubled genius with the sad eyes, even the actor Michael Cristofer playing basically the same role. I see Rubicon when I watch Mr. Robot.

The series is ridiculous in description and enthralling in execution because of Malek's natural charisma and his way with creator and head writer Sam Esmail's frequent jeremiads against the powerful and moneyed.