Mr. Robot: _br4ve-traveler.asf Recap

Synopsis for: Elliot attempts to hack Vera out of jail in order to save someone he cares about; Tyrell’s “game” gets crazy; and Angela digs deeper into her mother’s death.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

This episode of Mr. Robot was actually pretty awesome in terms of general story structure and plot twists, but I’m so unbelievably pissed by the ending I can’t even form coherent thoughts.

The basic rundown is this: Vera insists that Elliot get him out of prison, and kidnaps Shayla to make sure he does it. Elliot comes up with a way to get him out, and also hacks into Vera’s network for his whole operation, holding it hostage in turn, to make sure that Vera lets both he and Shayla go when it’s over.

Solid plan, except it turns out that Vera’s brother Isaac doesn’t want him out of prison, because Isaac knows his brother will kill him first chance he gets for being indirectly responsible for his arrest in the first place.

Elliot convinces him to go through with the plan and just kill Vera first, but it doesn’t happen that way. After Elliot gets Vera out, along with literally every other inmate of the prison, Vera shoots his brother on sight.

Not only was Elliot’s insurance useless—Vera knew his whole operation was toast already—but when he demands they let Shayla go, Vera says she’s been there the whole time. He takes off and Elliot finds Shayla’s dead body in the car they’ve been riding around in all day.

I mean as viewers we’re supposed to be sad for him and frustrated that he risked his life and reluctantly let dozens of criminals go free to save someone who was already dead—and I am. This is his story. But why did it have to be Shayla? Why wasn’t the fallout from being forced to release all those prisoners enough character motivation?

The show has some serious issues with gender representation as it is, and they were finally giving Shayla a bit of complexity, but it turns out that was only to make it worth their while to fridge her—after she’d been raped, beaten, kidnapped, and drugged in previous episodes.

I’m honestly fuming. But unfairness and senseless tragedy in the face of the greed of others is definitely a running theme of the show.

On the upside, Angela finally got some solid ground under her. She framed Oliver for corrupting Allsafe’s network in order to protect her dad from identity theft, and now she’s practically on a bender trying do something about Evil Corp’s negligence that killed her mother and Elliot’s father.

She’s picking up Elliot’s fight all on her own. She knows nothing about his crusade, but they now share the central motivation of the show. It’ll be interesting to see how that intersects. Will he try to stop her? Will he help her? Or, since Elliot is reeling from Shayla’s death, is Angela carrying this torch on her own for now?

As I said, Elliot is an intensely guilty and responsible person. It’s a smart move to shift some of the war against Evil Corp onto additional characters, because I’m confident he will take it upon himself to do something about all the criminals he’s let out, on top of his desire to get revenge for Shayla.

And Tyrell is clearly about to make a desperate play. It’s pretty much downhill from here for Elliot.