Anyone watching “Mr. Robot”?

17 points by smacktoward ↗ HN
Any other HNers out there watching USA Network's new hacker-themed drama series "Mr. Robot"?

http://www.usanetwork.com/mrrobot

If so, what do you think? I've been enjoying it so far -- so much in fact that I feel like it might be cool to have a weekly thread here to discuss new episodes, if there's enough others watching to make such a thread worthwhile...

25 comments

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Note: submitter here. I have no affiliation with either the show or the network. (There's contact info for me in my profile if you wish to validate this.) I'm just digging it and thought other HNers might be digging it too.
Just watched the first episode yesterday. Really good so far and looking forward to it for sure!
A weekly thread to discuss a TV show?

On Hacker News?

For fuck's sake, people.

It's a relevant (and GOOD) TV show that many people here (coders/hackers) can relate to. What's wrong with that?
There're any number of other sites that are good for this: reddit, 4chan /tv/, dozens of others.

Maybe we should be using Hacker News to, I don't know, show off cool hacks and build projects, instead of living vicariously through stereotypes on TV?

>Maybe we should be using Hacker News to, I don't know, show off cool hacks and build projects, instead of living vicariously through stereotypes on TV?

Not mutually exclusive.

(comment deleted)
I have been it watching it since the first episode when it was launched and I am totally hooked to the show. Some of the tech/jargon they mention are highly accurate and I really enjoy that. The last episode even had Raspberry Pi and also Python [0]. Pretty cool!

[0] - http://i.imgur.com/cGN3FQw.jpg

I like that on the remote server he prefixes commands with a space so they won't get saved in the history file.
Am I the only one who tried if the IP is online?
I liked it, but it is getting worse every week. It started very cool but then everything is downhill... Hope they recover the spirit
I stumbled over it last week. Being in Germany I prever legal ways to watch it and ended up on Amazon. After watching the first episode I was so hooked that I bought all 4 available Episodes and had a long night. Now I am waiting for the 5th to show up but Amazon does not give a hint when it will be availabe.

"He´s too old for a long password. I must be missing something."

I love it.

Haven't checked it out yet, but it's getting good reviews so I will at some point.

"Halt and Catch Fire" is another great show currently airing that HN crowd would probably enjoy. It's a period piece set in Texas during mid 1980 personal computer revolution. Pretty accurate on the technical level and has top notch actors/production.

My friends in the industry seem to like it a lot, but I couldn't make it through the first episode. It's like the sterile hybrid of BBC Sherlock and Fight Club, with the computer plotline of the movie Hackers and DDOS substituted for Gibsons.

If you're watching Mr. Robot now and haven't watched at least the first two seasons of BBC Sherlock, stop what you're doing and switch shows.

Halt and Catch Fire was, I thought, a lot better than some of the reviews I'd read.

I've only watched the pilot of Sherlock and found it so-so. Is the rest comparable?

I got sucked into Elementary a bit (Lucy Liu is very good, didn't expect that), but decided after half a season, it's not that great to justify the investment of time.

Sherlock isn't perfect. But: apart from (to my ears painful) tech jargon, everything good about Mr. Robot is done better by Sherlock. Sherlock also does a bunch of stuff that Mr. Robot doesn't --- it's not humorless, the dialog has a point and isn't just the narrator from Pi (seen Pi? Watch Pi before Mr Robot!), there are multiple dimensions of conflict and they work differently (Mycroft/Sherlock, Moriarty/Sherlock, Watson/Sherlock, &c).

Sherlock is no The Wire, but Mr. Robot makes it look like that sometimes.

(Caveat: I'm now only 2 eps in, but OTOH: consensus seems to be that Mr. Robot gets worse, not better).

Okay. I never "got" The Wire or The Sopranos, either.

Adequate, sure! Best TV series ever? Strange.

I liked The Wire, particularly Season 4, but I too like a lot of things more than it. What are your favorite shows? I'm always looking for recommendations.
Firefly is great, albeit short.

I was forced to watch Buffy, but while the first season makes you cringe, it is pretty good. Not as stellar as people claim, but really good. I think Joss Whedans masterpiece wasn't Buffy, it was Toy Story. But do watch the musical episode "Once More, With Feeling"!

Babylon 5, of course, if you can tolerate the (even for the time) bad CGI.

I've just watched DS9 from beginning to end, something I had wanted to do for 15 years now. Hasn't aged well, and I hadn't seen it in English before. Avery Brooks' overpronunciation is painful, but it is the best Star Trek series by far.

Friends was something I've enjoyed as a teen, and later as an adult. It was a totally different experience as an adult. I think that's worth a lot, to have a depth that appeals differently to you in different stages of your life.

Modern Family was way better than expected.

ALF is a bit painful to watch nowadays, it also hasn't aged well.

Golden Girls are probably still great, The Cosby Show definitely is!

Boston Legal is fun, fun, fun! Hey, why shouldn't Nantucket be allowed to habe its own nuclear weapons? But do watch all the newer Star Trek series before BL, so you can appreciate the ST heavy cast.

Dallas! Oh my. Incredible how old Victoria Principal is today.

ER was great, but I haven't seen much of the last seasons. I also liked Chicago Hope, but it clearly lost.

The 2004 Battlestar Galactica. Probably the most modern TV series of its time, great themes and issues, pretty current, fantastic buildup to the big finale and then... disappointment.

Game of Thrones, if only for the shock value ;-)

And at last, the Tv series I've probably enjoyed most in the last few years: the first two seasons of Veronica Mars. But make sure you can stomach it, the season finales are sickeningly evil (especially season 2).

Hey cool thanks, that's great! I haven't seen many of those, but I liked Firefly, BSG, GoT, and VM S1-2 (haven't seen S3). I've seen Buffy S1 and the musical episode, I probably should revisit it.

My top recommendations would be Twin Peaks, My So-Called Life, Freaks and Geeks, Sports Night, and Arrested Development. I like a lot of shows that get cancelled "early".

The "myth arc" episodes of the X-Files are worth it, but don't try to sit through all 9 seasons. Recently, Better Call Saul is awesome for the emotional depth and film noir aspects, and the previous Breaking Bad to which it's a prequel is still a masterpiece even though I find the premise implausible. The Walking Dead is seriously addictive too.

I loved the first episode but the rest were just meh.
Mr. Robot showed promise in the first episode, until he got near a computer. Then it became ridiculous.
spoiler Mr. Robot is Elliot