Mr. Robot season four: A show delightfully booting back to root
As S4 begins, Elliot and Mr. Robot seem to be on the same page again.
In retrospect, it was never just the attention to technical detail or the unique visual stylings. Part of what made Mr. Robot's first season a modern classic was how it blended familiar TV formats-Elliot would take down small timers or execute highly hackable heists in episodic of-the-week adventures while the show built up longer season arcs. It's a formula other modern shows like Buffy, Justified, or Mindhunter have used to great effect, combining satisfying procedural watchability with slowly built histories and battles. For Mr. Robot, that blend allowed viewers to quickly get familiar with Elliot on a deeper level, as his technical capabilities and internal struggle with mental illness revealed themselves through a variety of situations. Those two character traits became the hallmark of the whole series.
In subsequent seasons, however, Mr. Robot tipped heavily toward that second TV format with only a few select exceptions (like when Angela hacked an FBI base camp). The show's overarching plot became more and more complicated as a result: S1's showdown between Elliot and his cronies against E-Corp evolved into a situation where this highly skilled hacker working for a Big Tech/Finance corporation contractor has been duped into executing an attack against the big corporation on behalf of a Dark Web syndicate that maybe controls the global economy... huh?
Whatever the show's fourth and final season ultimately has in store, Mr. Robot seems to be tapping back into its roots based on last night's premiere ("401 Unauthorized") and the early season episodes that follow (Ars had the opportunity to watch the first four). Yes, there's plenty of plot to plow through to see whether Elliot or the Dark Army will come out victorious. But after a second season that frustrated the show's larger audience and a third season that quietly reset the world, Mr. Robot is willing once again to devote time to doing what it does best: sketching out deep character portraits while simultaneously executing some highly entertaining self-contained adventures.
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