In the latest ‘Mr. Robot’ recap, Darlene runs into a real life problem, Mobley and Trenton get paranoid and Dom draws closer to FSociety…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Hello friend.
One week ago on ‘Mr. Robot’ we learned that Elliot Alderson’s strange trip through his own mind that involved an extended stay at his mother’s house, a daily breakfast meeting with is pal Leon while waxing intellectual about ‘Seinfeld’ and even his computer hacker nightmare run in with a guy named Ray were all fabrications that helped him deal with the real situation he was locked in.
Literally.
Elliot has been in prison for the entire season, but following that revelation a week ago, ‘Mr. Robot’ shifts gears back to the FBI investigation into FSociety and Darlene’s attempts to run the organization in his brother’s absence. If this week’s episode is any indication, Darlene still has some work to do on her leadership skills.
After FSociety orchestrates another hack and revelation, the group faces extreme paranoia that the FBI is closing in on them — and just like the old saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t watching you.
Meanwhile, Angela is out on the most depressing date for July 4 while picking up an old dude and ditching her much younger date, who also just so happened to be a spy for the FBI.
And it turns out the Dark Army has also been keeping very close tabs on the members of FSociety ever since the Five/Nine Hack was executed.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘Mr. Robot’ titled ‘eps2.6_succ3ss0r.p12’
Operation Berenstain
In one random moment from last week’s episode, Darlene and the rest of FSociety were gathered around a computer when they all gazed upon a magical moment that was happening the next day. Now at the time it appeared to be a meeting in Congress where the Wall Street bull’s balls dropped through the ceiling as a subtle reminder that FSociety really is everywhere, but it turns out, Darlene discovered something even better during her hack into the FBI database.
It’s a conference call that was taking place the next day between many of the higher ups at the FBI to discuss an ongoing investigation known as “Operation Berenstain”.
On the call, FBI assistant directors and agents revealed that they’ve been illegally monitoring over three million citizens in hopes of tracking down the people responsible for the Five/Nine Hack while also detailing the real investigation into 17 likely suspects behind the computer bomb that took down E-Corp. Well actually that suspect list is down to 16 now that one of those people is dead — and that’s when Mobley realizes that the FBI must be talking about Romero, who was murdered a few weeks back. That puts Mobley into ultra paranoid mode that the FBI must be only a few steps away from arresting all of them, but Darlene tries to assure him that they’ll never get that close.
Meanwhile, Darlene puts together the latest FSociety video to release to the world on July 4 as she exposes the latest government surveillance program while essentially shitting on the FBI on a national holiday.
“The FBI has 3 million of you innocent citizens under surveillance for no reason. Their tyrannical rape of our private data ends now. FBI, be warned, your access to our lives is officially denied. Pursue us at your own peril. We do not authorize. We will not bow down. We will destroy you. We are FSociety.”
The video goes viral almost instantly and ends up broadcast all over the world and even gets a response from the original NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. It seems like a perfect time to celebrate — until the door opens and Susan Jacobs returns to her palatial smart home complete with four hackers inside who have been living there and operating FSociety in a house bought and paid for with E-Corp blood money.
Revenge is Sweet
When Susan comes home, it forces Darlene, Mobley, Trenton and Cisco to make a drastic move and tie up the E-Corp lawyer to protect their identity. While the Five/Nine hack ultimately cost people their lives — don’t forget the poor E-Corp guy who blew his head off on national television after the hack occurred — the group itself has never fancied itself as a bunch of murderers so they decided the only way to defuse this situation is to come up with the right kind of information to blackmail Susan into playing ball.
Some digging into Susan’s emails finds that she got a little too friendly with some of the judges she’s been working with over the years and that might seem like the perfect piece of information that would force her to play ball, but it turns out Darlene never had any intention of pitching a blackmail scheme in the first place.
Instead, Darlene visits Susan in the room with the heated pool where they’ve had her tied up since arriving home. It’s there Darlene explains to Susan how she first met her many years ago when E-Corp wiggled its way out of a water contamination case that ultimately took the life of her father and numerous other parents and children who lived in that same community. Darlene will never forget standing there as a four-year old little girl watching the television as a smirking attorney in a sea of suits laughed at the verdict when E-Corp got off once again and the families they poisoned were left with nothing.
Ever since that moment, Darlene has been quietly plotting revenge against not only E-Corp but that smug attorney who laughed in the face of tragedy. That lawyer was Susan Jacobs.
“I’m happy I get to look you in the eye. I’ve taken down your company. Taken over your home. And now, I have you.”
~ Darlene
Before Susan can explain anything or even attempt to reach a compromise, Darlene zaps her with a stun gun and she falls face first into the pool where she drowns while passed out in the water. Darlene explains that it was all an accident when talking to her cohorts downstairs, but this was something she’d actually dreamed about for years and now she had exacted personal revenge on someone responsible for her father’s death.
As gratifying as it was to eliminate Susan Jacobs, her death created more problems than it solved, not the least of which was how to get rid of the body.
Everybody Wants to Rule the World
Back at the July 4 celebrations, Angela is out on a date with a guy at a karaoke bar and while she’s supposed to be paying attention to some out of tempo bad singing, she’s paying far more attention to the FSociety video playing on her phone. While her date attempts to avert her attention back to him, Angela has a lot more on her mind — like the next drink that’s calling her name at the bar.
It’s there she runs into an old friend of the family who at first politely says hello before then admonishing Angela for turning her back on her father and the rest of the people who suffered at the hands of the E-Corp contamination scandal. At first, Angela tucks her tail to turn away and run but in a moment of clarity she confronts her former neighbor and reminds him that after 60 years on Earth, he’s still a plumber who’s one job in life is to literally clean up other people’s shit. Meanwhile, she’s 27, working for the biggest conglomerate in the world and making six figures.
So who’s the winner in this argument?
After that encounter, Angela decides to take the stage where she performs the most docile version of Tears for Fears famous song “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” before retiring to the bar for another drink.
Instead of returning to her date, Angela ends up talking to another older gentleman who knows she’s young enough to be his daughter, but that doesn’t matter much to her. She more or less picks him up on the spot because Angela has some serious daddy issues and what better way to resolve them than by picking up another grey haired father figure at the bar and having her way with him at home.
Paranoid
Following the events at Susan’s house, Mobley and Trenton retire to their own homes where paranoia washes over them like a cold bucket of water. Trenton can’t help but hear noises around every turn while wondering if somebody is watching her while Mobley actually pays a delivery boy to knock on his front door to ensure no one else answers. It gets so bad for Trenton that she actually suggests her family should move out of the city.
Unfortunately, Mobley’s worst fears are realized when he finally gets inside his apartment and five minutes later the FBI are knocking at his front door.
12 hours later while sitting inside an FBI interrogation room, Mobley comes face to face with Agent Dom DiPierro, who has some questions that connect him back to a guy named Romero who got shot dead a few weeks ago. While Mobley is quietly sweating through his two shirts, Dom is laying out how she found a trail back to him — the flyer she discovered at Romero’s mother’s house and a fan website started to pay homage to an obscure DJ named Mobley. As much as he wants to believe that the FBI sting has been orchestrated to tie him to FSociety, the reality is Dom is just drawing straws hoping to come up with some information that will lead back to the real culprits. She finally shows her hand when she asks him to remember anyone else that was at the listening party thrown by Romero where his favorite DJ Mobley was performing.
In other words, Dom really didn’t believe Mobley was behind anything other than being in the wrong place at the right time. Thanks to a dressing down from her superior, Dom is forced to let him go but that only puts Mobley into panic mode as he looks to erase his every fingerprint from what FSociety has been doing and he passes along a similar message to Trenton while asking her to meet him in the same location where Darlene first recruited them a couple of years ago on Thanksgiving.
Trenton gets the message and rushes over to the coffee shop — the same brand of coffee shop where we first met Elliot back in the pilot when he busted the child pornographer — but when she arrives, Mobley is nowhere to be found. She waits two hours but Mobley never shows. Did he finally feel the heat and just decide to run or did the Dark Army find another member of FSociety that was now expendable just like Romero? The latter seems to be the more obvious answer given how this episode ended.
I’ve Got Her
Following Mobley and Trenton’s exit, Darlene and Cisco realize they have to do something about the dead body floating around in the indoor heated pool upstairs that will eventually be discovered. So Darlene changes Susan’s mail to send out an automated response that she’s going to be out of commission for an extended period of time and along with Cisco, they take her body to the same dog kennel as last season when they burned up all their hard drives and information after the Five/Nine hack was executed except this time they were torching something a little bigger.
Namely Susan Jacobs.
On the way back from the impromptu cremation, Cisco attempts to comfort Darlene but truthfully she wasn’t in all that much need of comfort. She just killed somebody and there’s not a lot of guilt running through her veins. Still, Cisco suggest they go back to his place to get a good night’s sleep after the events that unfolded earlier in the day.
Back at the FBI station after releasing Mobley, Dom is grasping at the last clues in her investigation with Operation Berenstain just days away from being shut down. It turns out Angela’s date was actually an FBI plant who has been investigating her as well, although she never gave him anything worthwhile. In fact when she left with the old guy in the bar on July 4, it kind of hurt his feelings. Of course, Dom wants to know if the old guy was actually her contact at FSociety but her FBI friend tells her otherwise.
“I think she’s just into old dudes”
The next morning, Darlene wakes up to the sound of Cisco in the shower while she’s laying in his bed. With his computer wide open, Darlene decides to hack into his terminal and see what the Dark Army has been saying to him. When she gets inside, Darlene is shocked to find a photo of her laying in bed. There’s also a message sent to the Dark Army saying that he has her and a response stating that phase two can now begin.
When Cisco exits the shower, he finds his laptop smashed into pieces on the floor and an angry Angela standing behind him. A moment later a baseball bat comes swinging at Cisco’s head and we fade to black. It certainly appears the Dark Army is trying to cover its tracks by eliminating every member of FSociety systematically — Romero is already dead, Mobley seems to be missing and now Cisco had Darlene held while awaiting instructions.
From the look of things, Elliot is being released from prison next week and he’s going to be awfully surprised at what he finds when he returns home.
‘Mr. Robot’ returns next Wednesday night at 10pm ET on USA
