'Mr. Robot' Lets its Freak Flag Fly
Wow. This week’s episode of “Mr. Robot” opened with a white, wealthy businessman named Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallstrom) paying to beat up a homeless person. When the homeless person asked for “$300 this time?” and the businessman laughed and said, “Spoken like a true Capitalist,” I thought I knew for sure what I would be writing about this week. Boy, was I wrong.
The show’s main character, techie-genius Elliot (Rami Malek) and, what I am believing more than ever to be his Tyler Durden-esque alter ego, Mr. Robot (Christian Slater) sit in a typical pub-style bar early in the episode. Mr. Robot orders an appletini, and Elliot says to him, “I should kick your ass.” It was an atypical, lighthearted moment for this show. I should have known not to get too comfortable.
When Elliot then orders his own appletini, I knew something was up. The episode quickly took a hard left turn.
Show creator Sam Esmail could not have planned a more fitting episode in such close proximity to SCOTUS’s gay marriage decision. A few actual plot points are awkwardly thrown at the viewer over the course of the show, but kinky shock-sex dominates the bulk of the hour.
In an interview with Slate, show creator Esmail warned that “sex, the act itself, whether it’s homosexual or heterosexual, can be used for manipulation,” which he definitely introduces in this episode, and that “I don’t look at it as here’s my gay character; here’s my lesbian character. It’s our tapestry. We’re in New York City, people cross lines.” And, after watching this episode, it’s clear to see that using the now-trendy shock value of homo, as opposed to hetero, sexuality is a line that Esmail is all too willing to cross.
It is surely no accident that the only stable couple in this particular episode is Elliot’s gay boss Gideon Goddard (Michel Gill) and his husband. With the hetero couples either a) the man is cheating, b) they are pretending to be a couple for the evening but are in actuality just drug buddies; like Elliot and his hook-up Shayla, or c) the husband, in this case Tyrell Wellick, is off at gay bars doing “business deals,” as he tells his pregnant wife. Apparently gay sex was the only way he could think of to plant a virus on his co-worker’s phone before coming home to his pregnant wife, who apparently cannot make love to her husband without being tied up “50 Shades of Grey” style.
And if it is gay shock-sex you want, then Esmail gives it to you. The sex scene involving Wellick and his co-worker is complete with bare skin, sound effects, and bodily fluids. I’m sure the lauded praise from the left for such a "courageous" scene is pouring in as we speak.
Be prepared for the gay theme to continue. Esmail won’t stop with Elliot’s boss randomly coming out as gay to Elliot in a previous episode. In the Slate interview, he foretells that “you get involved in his home life; it comes to the forefront later in the season. There’s also another character who hasn’t been introduced in the pilot who’s a lesbian.”
So, after we’ve gotten comfortable with 'Mr. Robot’s' fascinating premise, in typical Hollywood fashion, they force in a homosexual agenda. You know, because it’s so vital to the hacker plotline…
