Possibly the most underrated episode of the season, I understand it doesn’t do much in terms of plot progression with fsociety and e-corp but it is the most personal episode to Elliot’s character thus far, showing how he copes with the loneliness he feels in his life has always been such an important and meaningful theme to me and this episode really did it in such a profound and personal way. Also Tyrell’s plot line is absolutely insane as usual!! Spoilers: In the opening of the episode we’re shown a heartbreakingly intimate glimpse of Elliot’s first memory of the little time he spent with Shayla, a surprisingly wholesome moment in his otherwise chaotic world, in which they were sitting outside of his apartment while listening to Pictures of You by the cure. Their conversation, while a bit awkward is really sincere and genuine, you can sense how important of a role Shayla played in his life from so early on. She seems to be one of the few people aside from Angela, thats capable of breaking through his cold and distant exterior, connecting with his awkwardness and poor social skills in a way that others rarely do. From Elliot’s subtle but content expression look on his face after she left it looks like he felt that way too, he also felt some sort of growing attachment to her. Anyway the main takeaway from this conversation is that Elliot wanted to buy Suboxone to which she said she could get it for him form Vera, “He’s supposed to be a fucking psychopath but if you want I could call him, you might be worth a psychopath, I don’t know, maybe”. Such a casual comment but it hits like a truck knowing that it foreshadowed her death which is technically Elliot’s fault as she considered him to be worth a psychopath, essentially creating a domino effect. Elliot’s response to Shayla’s death reveals how deeply her loss has affected him, even if he said he felt like he was moving on from it in the beginning he very clearly isn’t. Throughout this episode Elliot copes with her loss by clinging onto the small things she liked, such as saving the album disintegration by the cure as his last memory to remember her by. Although id have to say that the most personally resonate thing to me here was Elliot’s comparison to Shayla as an anecdote, it was absolutely soul crushing to hear and I hate how accurate it is, how we drift apart and the people who once meant everything to us in some point in our lives will eventually be forgotten and they’ll forget you, those profound moments you shared with them, good or bad, will turn into nothing more than faint and distorted stories. What was once the person he cared the most about will one day become a story to tell, “I knew a girl who died”. Here he also said he feels like he’s already past Shayla’s death which is even worse as people usually detach themselves emotionally after dealing with trauma as a way to cope, which is definitely what he’s doing, so I can only imagine his mental health worsening from here on out. Angelas investigation against Terry Colby is really interesting, as soon as I saw that he had a portrait of himself in his apartment I could tell he was a self centric narcissistic wealthy middle aged man and he definitely is, his attempt at bribing her so she could forget about what happened to her parents reveals his perception of power in which he believes that wealth can erase accountability. Angela’s persistence in this situation emphasizes how driven she is by her moral principal compared to others, that would sell out for money. I really love her character so far and can’t wait to see what happens with this case. Tyrell was absolutely insane here and I feel like im constantly repeating myself saying this for almost every episode, but he’s genuinely such an intriguing and weird character, yet here he reaches all time low making incredibly desperate power plays that just put him in worser situations than he already was. His decision to fire three men with no reasoning after overhearing them making fun of executives for going gay just to go up the corporate ladder is one of the most impulsive things he’s done so far, driven by his hurt ego and obsession with having control. He feels increasingly powerless with each day that he isn’t CTO, his actions in this scene are more than reactions but desperate attempts to feel some sort of dominance towards anyone, even if that’s three random men he couldn’t care less about. Although his growing desperation for CTO reaches an all time low during the party, which sets up for his worst act yet, where he kills Sharon (the CTOS wife) impulsively after originally attempting to seduce her on the rooftop. His motive being that she mocked him during the party for exposing his greatest fear, weakness, since he gave up fighting for the CTO position as soon as there’s an obstacle in his way, the obstacle in this case obviously being her husband. Choking her on the rooftop was his last desperate attempt to have some sense of authority next to the current CTO and weirdly enough release his stress, i mean there’s not much he could enjoy about his promotion after losing one of the most important people in his life because of it. The scene in itself is really beautiful, it starts off increasingly passionate and the fka twigs needle drop really elevates the entire thing. At first i just though he wanted to choke her cause he’s a freak like that, but his emotions take the best of him as he ends up killing her, its also a bit ironic considering how this moment shows his need to dominate juxtaposed with his inability to control his impulses. Tyrell’s reaction is really sorrowful when he acknowledges the gravity of his situation and how wrong it was that he actually took another humans life over this, immediately regretting it and not knowing what to do he throws her body off the roof. The fact that he is so ambitious, willingly committing such immoral and illegal acts just to maintain authority really intrigues me for the other probably insane things his character might do as the show goes on.