TV Review: MR. ROBOT: Season 3, Episode 7: Eps3.6_fredrick+tanya.chk [USA Network]

Mr. Robot Eps3.6_fredrick+tanya.chk Review

Mr. Robot: Season 3, Episode 7: Eps3.6_fredrick+tanya.chk doesn’t wow quite as much as its predecessors but still gets in a very big shock.

With the characters and the nation itself still reeling from the shock of the Dark Army’s attack on E Corp, Wednesday night’s episode feels like a respite from the high-stakes chaos of the last two episodes. Indeed, there are quite a few quiet moments here, such as Elliot’s (Rami Malek) therapy session with Krista (Gloria Reuben) and Angela’s (Portia Doubleday) obsessive viewing of news coverage of the attacks.

The scenes with Angela particularly stand out due to the way they portray the traumatic effect the attacks had on her. Nearly catatonic, she is transfixed by the images of destruction on the TV screen and unresponsive to Darlene’s (Carly Chaikin) attempts to draw her back to the real world. It’s disturbing enough to see Angela like this, but the show takes it another level by having her rewind the footage back and forth and state that the people are okay now because the damage has been undone. Doubleday’s delivery of this particular line is perfect, with her shell-shocked monotone doing much to convey the emptiness she must feel inside her.

Another uncomfortable scene involves Agent Santiago (Omar Metwally) trying to reassure his mother that she will be safe from retaliation from the Dark Army. The exchange occurs over the phone and we never actually hear what his mother has to say, but the troubled look on his face and the uncertainty in his voice (so conspicuously uncharacteristic of the hard-driving G-man) tell us all we need to know. It’s a short scene and once it’s over Santiago is back to his hardass self when arguing with Dom (Grace Gummer) about the investigation, but it makes a mark and shows us how vulnerable he must feel now.

But the real highlight of the episode is how it resolves the fate of Trenton (Sunita Mani) and Mobley (Azhar Khan). Not seen since the very end of Season 2, it’s revealed they’ve been captured by Leon and turned over to the Dark Army, who promptly kill them and make their deaths look like suicides. I’m honestly not sure how I feel about killing them off: on one hand, letting them live would have been predictable and probably tie the showrunners hands as to what to do with them. But on the other, it seems kind of cheap from them to have brought them back for one episode just so they could be killed off. Maybe my opinion will change as the season goes on, but right now it feels a bit gratuitous.

Leave your thoughts on this Mr. Robot review and this episode of Mr. Robot in the comments section. Readers seeking more TV show reviews can visit our TV Show Review Page, our TV Show Review Twitter Page, our TV Show Review Facebook Page, and our TV Show Review Google+ Page. Want up-to-the-minute notification? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, and Facebook.