the television equivalent of murder. spontaneous in plot and violent in presentation, “master slave” (or “eps2.4_m4ster-s1ave.aes”) presents itself as disorderly but on further inspection becomes one of the most focused and cleverly construed episodes thus far. feels like every episode this season a layer is pulled back and we get closer and closer to what this show really is. haven’t been this excited to review an episode in forever. “just keep those eyes on the road” [SPOILERS] i see this episode as split into messy thirds: the first being elliot’s dream and wake-up, the second (and largest) being angela’s hack on the fbi, and the third being elliot’s flashback. i’ll spend most of this review focusing on elliot, as excellent as angela is this episode, elliot deserves all the focus. to call the dream sequence this episode (the first third) layered is an understatement. it explores the alderson family through the two obvious methods of showing and telling. starting with what is somehow the simpler one, both parents are shown acting according to the ways elliot has characterized them. his still unnamed mother is physically abusive to darlene, burning her with a cigarette and punching her multiple times. she is notably never harmful to elliot which i think connects to mr robot’s philosophy (which we will discuss later). mr robot displays his beliefs on stealing (which he introduced in the pilot episode) by ransacking an ecorp convenience store. considering (from what we know) mr robot was never an anarchist in his living days, it’s likely this is more so meant to represent elliot’s interpretation of him after his death: his father, killed by ecorp, getting revenge by robbing one of their stores. you can obviously see how this bleeds into elliot’s real life motives for five/nine and how it’s effected his schizophrenia-personality surrounding mr robot. the cadence surrounding the roadtrip itself, with elliot feeling powerless and uninformed, is allegorical for his “master slave” relationship with mr robot. there is more but it may go into spoiler territory for a few close future episodes. moving onto what’s said, mr robot becomes more complicated, please bear with me here. he constantly urges elliot to look at the “road ahead” (the future) and not look behind him (the past). the show says this really well when, after the sitcom cuts from gideon-cop’s death to the family back in the car, mr robot says “it’s been forever since that poor cop passed.” he then calls the future endless, “like that horizon out there.” i don’t want to equate a lack of writing to a writing decision, but i will point to shayla in relation to this, as well as the rest of the show… i’m still very early on in but here’s my take. mr robot is elliot’s way of coping, with momentary things like getting beat up but also with grander problems like his frustrations against the world. as that wonderful final scene establishes, from the moment he was created, “mr robot” was elliot’s dad giving him a way to cope with the news about his cancer. he internalized this: along with adopting always moving forward as his ideology, he would literally take in his persona as a way to deal with his grief (mr robot), keeping him alive. he as well uses it to cope with the real world: starting fsociety in his name. and as his father was his protector, this hallucination guides him and even “takes over for him” at certain points of pain. the opening dream sequence was something i initially viewed as malicious, but by the end it is miraculously reversed into a heartbreaking moment of elliot imagining his dead father protecting him. it is this dynamic that to me is the core of the show, that mysterious “specialness buried within the show” as i called it in my 1x10 review. this show’s later seasons are gonna be painful. -please do not ever discuss later episodes in the comments-