Mr Robot 03×02 Review: undo.gz

“undo.gz” continues to prove that Sam Esmail is a lot smarter than me.  I’ve been doing weekly reviews for shows since 2013 and this is the only one that consistently makes me pause and think “I’m going to have to think on this for a couple days before typing.”

“undo.gz” seems to be a reference to Elliot’s main goal throughout the episode; to undo the damage he’s caused the world by attempting to take down Evil Corp.  The entire beginning montage shows him entering back into the corporate life, but this time for a much bigger and much more dominating company.  As always, the entire sequence was cut together beautifully.  It was a tad depressing, though, as is the case whenever popular media chooses to take on society’s mundane office job life.  Entertainment sure likes to remind us just how repetitive working a 9-5 is, doesn’t it?  I didn’t need the reminder, but at least it was pretty to watch.

This week’s episode also had a rather brutal death, which I didn’t see coming.  I honestly expected Johanna to last the duration of the show.  She didn’t seem like much of a hindrance to the plot or a danger to our characters.  Inconvenient, maybe.  Was it for shock value? Because if so, yeah I’m pretty shocked. How will Tyrell handle this? But more than anything I’m dying to know what’s going to happen to their baby.  Will Tyrell somehow get her back? If so, how? Is there going to be a flood of baby raising Tyrelliot fanfic for the next week? Because I can see that happening pretty quickly. Get to it, ficcers.  This was laid out on a silver platter for you.

We were shown Elliot essentially getting an upper hand on the FBI situation in “undo.gz,” which was great.  He knows he’s being watched by the FBI and he likely knows Darlene is involved somehow. I’m not sure what the extent of that knowledge is, but Elliot’s far from stupid. He not only has his technical skills, but also an innate ability to read people, even when he’s less than emotive himself.  That’s probably the real reason he was staying away from Darlene, as I doubt she’s actually a trigger for Mr Robot like he states.  If he did know for that long, though, I don’t know why he’d question Darlene when she was planting whatever that was behind his computer monitor.  Maybe he just wanted to give her a chance to confess to what she was doing.  Who knows.

Meanwhile, the Mr Robot situation is even more bizarre than usual.  At once Elliot seems to have some control as he looked to have willingly let him come out during his therapy session.  On the other hand, he doesn’t seem to actually be able to suppress it. While he stated that Darlene was a trigger (again, a questionable excuse), he doesn’t seem to realize that Mr Robot comes out for long periods of time with Angela.  Or… does he know?  Is he completely on top of everything this season? Does he have the upper hand on both the FBI and Mr Robot? Is he secretly listening to everything Mr Robot is doing? Am I careening down the Mr Robot speculation hell hole again? The answer to that last question is a yes.  Something’s gotta be up.  Reddit probably knows. They always know.

This week’s episode felt like it ended mid scene, which makes me even more anxious than usual. I miss the days where I could just hit play on the next one and not sleep until it was over.  This is the hazard of marathoning a couple seasons and then being stuck watching weekly like everyone else.  It’s probably for the best, though, because I definitely need to do some thinking on this one.

Author: Angel Wilson

Angel is the admin of The Geekiary and a geek culture commentator. They earned a BA in Film & Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz. They have contributed to various podcasts and webcasts including An Englishman in San Diego, Free to Be Radio, and Genre TV for All. They’ve also written for Friends of Comic Con and is a 2019 Hugo Award winner for contributing fanfic on AO3. They identify as queer.

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