Why 'Mr. Robot' Is One of TV's Best Shows

This past Monday night, every major social media platform you can think of was hacked—kind of. Smack dab in the middle of a Facebook Live Q&A with the creators of USA's buzzy hacker thriller Mr. Robot, an anonymous (pardon the reference) figure clad in the mustachioed mask representing the show's fsociety hacking collective interrupted the feed with a threatening-sounding message: "You deserve something new, something unexpected, something you've never seen before."

The gambit was more treat than trick, though: what followed was a livestream of Mr. Robot's Season 2 premiere, which was then streamed on Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, and USA's website—and within hours, every stream was wiped from the internet faster than you could say "Raspberry pi."

From a marketing standpoint, the ploy was clever, but it wasn't so much an alignment with the show's smash-the-system messaging as it was a self-satisified wink within the system itself. (In case you forgot, the show's central protagonist Elliot Alderson isn't the biggest fan of social media.) All in all, the scheme was a rare misstep for Mr. Robot, which is unquestionably one of the finest dramas TV has to offer right now—and given its risk-taking, try-anything narrative approach, it has no right to be as good as it is.

Much like Elliot's stream-of-consciousness voiceover narrative, Mr. Robot is always moving. It's packed with near-constant fourth-wall-breaking monologues, disorienting dream sequences, kinky BDSM scenes that would make a Showtime programming executive blush, philosophical therapist conversations rivaling The Sopranos's own fraught doctor-patient relationship, and anarchic hashtag sloganeering that makes #OccupyWallStreet seem subtle in retrospect—all this, airing on a cable network owned by one of the biggest media corporations in the world and previously best known for mildly pleasant carbon-copy procedurals.

In less capable hands, these elements would likely congeal into a simultaneously silly and self-serious program worthy of low-level ridicule; instead, creator Sam Esmail (who wrote and directed the 12 episodes in Mr. Robot's second season, a rare feat of auteurism even in modern TV's boundary-free landscape) has so far delivered a show that's slick, compelling, and compulsively watchable.

The fact that Esmail's pulled this off—specifically, making a show about hacker culture that feels resolutely modern and doesn't resort to stale, goofy stereotypes—is one of two major twists that Mr. Robot has capably pulled off. The second twist, which takes place in the dizzying final three episodes of Mr. Robot's first season, is too jaw-dropping and perfectly executed to spoil here (the show's first season is free to stream for Amazon Prime members, so just watch it now), but it concerns identity and self, themes that last night's excellent premiere, "unm4sk," dove headlong into.

"How do I take off a mask when it stops being a mask?" Elliot (played as ever with smoldering intensity by the incomparable Rami Malek) asks the audience during the 90-minute episode. It's a question plaguing all of Mr. Robot's primary players in the two-part episode—which, keeping in line with the cinematic aspirations expressed by Esmail on last night's post-show Talking Robot, is separated by a brief and dramatic "INTERMISSION" title card.

Elliot continues to wrestle with last season's revelations, struggling to regain control of his mind while piecing together who he is (and isn't) and what he's done (or didn't do); the mostly-still-MIA Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallström) appears in a brief flashback donning a literal mask, his true self still unrevealed to Elliot and the audience at-large; Darlene (Carly Chalkin) wrests control of fsociety by assuming a newfound sense of purpose that isn't wholly convincing to those around her; and Angela Moss (Portia Doubleday) has seemingly become a wholly different human being as the newest public relations star of Evil Corp—sorry, E Corp—a mask of her own that she's trying to keep from falling off.

Even the beleaguered former Allsafe founder, Gideon Goddard (Michel Gill), is incorrectly charged with being a "crisis actor"—specifically, an actor serving as part of a manufactured distraction by the government—before his narrative in "unm4sk" suddenly, shockingly concludes. Gideon's fate embodies the tougher questions asked by Mr. Robot, themes that cut deeper and more personally than tech security, wealth distribution, and government chicanery: Are we who we really say we are? How do we know for sure? And if other people think we're someone different, does our own self-perception matter at all?

And perhaps the greatest hurdle Mr. Robot faces in its second season is an identity crisis of its own. Before that earth-shattering twist, Season 1 was a sexy, deeply intriguing urban noir (not unlike Netflix's astounding Jessica Jones from last year) that provided a healthy dose of humor and self-awareness along the way. Post twist, there's nothing funny about Mr. Robot anymore—save for the quirky, Seinfeld-obsessed tangents of Elliot's new friend Leon, played very capably by NYC rapper Joey Bada$$.

While no one was in danger of mistaking Mr. Robot for a comedy to begin with, I worry that the show could collapse under the weight of its own self-seriousness if it continues down such a dark, tortured path. Still, "unm4sk" is a satisfying, stylish episode of TV that finds Mr. Robot avoiding the pitfalls of past enigmatic TV phenomenons (looking at you, Lost) by forcing us to ask just enough questions with the promise of (some) answers to come. Whether Mr. Robot can sustain this impressive level of momentum relies on whether Esmail continues to value narrative risk-taking over continuing the series down the overcast, foreboding path it's currently heading down. After all, trying on different masks can be fun, too.

You can watch Mr. Robot Wednesdays at 10 PM on USA.

Follow Larry Fitzmaurice on Twitter.