2015, 10 episodes. Elliot Anderson suffers from crippling depression,
paranoia and social anxiety, but still manages to hold down a
cybersecurity job. Except now he's being recruited by an activist
cracking group.
Or "hacking group", because even though the show's creator Sam
Esmail supposedly spent lots of effort on finding people who could
tell him what cracking was like in the real world, he didn't find one
who knew that once upon a time there was a difference between cracking
and hacking. Or he didn't care. Nobody here shows the slightest bit of
enjoyment in the computer work they do; it's all a means to an end.
In fact hardly anyone here gets any enjoyment from anything except
screwing each other over. It's just no fun. The direction matches
this: shots are mostly too dark, with occasional bursts of too bright,
and frequent mumbled conversations make this pretty demanding to
watch.
What it also isn't is in any way reliable: all we get is Elliot's own
impressions (which conveniently gives an excuse for all the female
characters to be incompetent fuckups, see it's not sexist writing
honest), which he admits he isn't reporting accurately. His mental
problems come and go when it's convenient that they should do so. If
the whole thing were to turn out to be his own paranoid delusion, I
wouldn't be in the least bit surprised. It's just another reason not
to care about all these horrible people.
And then episode four has an ecstasy-fuelled lesbian makeout,
presumably to try to retain the viewer's flagging interest. It comes
from nowhere, it goes nowhere, it's just titillation for the male
gaze.
Yeah, I know, I'm not enjoying this and I am enjoying Rizzoli &
Isles, than which cop shows do not get much more generic. Maybe I'm
just shallow.
This had a fine pilot episode, but for me it went sharply downhill
after that. It was renewed for a second season on the strength of the
pilot alone. I won't be returning.
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