New post Why “Mr. Robot” Deserves a Re-Watch
With the PHP critical vulnerability in the news this week, it seems an opportune time to recommend that everyone rewatch the television show “Mr. Robot.” Mr. Robot originally aired on the USA Network from 2015 to 2019, showing 45 episodes over 4 seasons.
In a nutshell, Mr. Robot is a thriller which follows Elliot Alderson (played by Rami Malek), a cybersecurity engineer and vigilante hacker with severe social anxiety, clinical depression, a drug habit, and dissociative identity disorder. He’s recruited by an anarchist named Mr. Robot (played by Christian Slater), to join the hacktivist group fsociety which aims to erase global debt by taking down E Corp (“Evil Corp”), the world’s largest corporation.
But, why rewatch it? There are several reasons. The first reason is the unreliable narrator. With all of Elliot’s issues, can you really trust what he’s saying? Are people really who they appear to be through his eyes? Part of the fun of the show is seeing the world through his perspective, a universe in which he’s much more comfortable in front of a keyboard than speaking to his therapist. However, throughout all of his interactions, he maintains the hacker mindset of secretly finding out as much as possible about those in his life, actively looking to exploit their vulnerabilities while often ignoring his own. Since he is an unreliable narrator, there are several times where the entire narrative of a character, or a plot point or two, shift from Elliot’s perspective to the reality of the situation. Often, viewers end up living Elliot’s delusions along with him.
The second reason to rewatch Mr. Robot is the compelling supporting characters. As with many Sam Esmail projects, Mr. Robot is populated by a host of compelling, fleshed-out, characters that viewers can really sink their teeth into, as far as routing for them, or just trying to understand them as people. There’s a gritty realism to Esmail’s character development.
The third reason to rewatch Mr. Robot is New York City. Who doesn’t love New York City? Having lived in midtown Manhattan for many years, I thought I knew New York and the five boroughs very well. Mr. Robot will take you to places in New York City, and upstate New York, that you may have never even heard of before. This isn’t the “Friends” or “Seinfeld” version of New York. This isn’t even “Law & Order’s” New York City. This is twenty-first century New York City as it really exists. This is the forgotten corners of the City, from gleaming towers to the desolate neighborhoods of Brooklyn and beyond. Mr. Robot makes New York City fascinating, even for those of us who have lived there for many years.
The final reason to watch Mr. Robot is the realistic hacking and hacking tools. This isn’t your typical television hacking where someone types on a keyboard for two minutes and then has access to NORAD. This is real life gritty hacking, where the biggest cybersecurity vulnerability of all is the people. Elliot uses Kali Linux, which is the preferred Linux build of hackers and cybersecurity professionals across the globe. Kali Linux comes with many built-in tools that can be use both to protect a system and to break into one. While making Mr. Robot, the producers hired cybersecurity consultants to ensure that what was shown on Elliot’s screen made sense as real Linux commands used as part of a hack. It’s the closest a drama has come to portraying real hacking.
Hopefully, I’ve interested some readers in rewatching Mr. Robot. You may have to find your own solution to watching it. It is no longer on Netflix, or any other major streaming service. It is available on DVD and Blu-ray, or perhaps you can hack a way to watch it for free.
