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Wordpress of my final blogpost: TV FINALES

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Wordpress of my final blogpost: TV FINALES

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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Angela's outfits reflect her independence and her want to be a leader. 

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Angela's outfits reflect her independence and her want to be a leader. 

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Darlene's outfits reflect her spunky and independent attitude. 

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Darlene's outfits reflect her spunky and independent attitude. 

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Elliot's outfits reflect his introvert personality.

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Elliot's outfits reflect his introvert personality.

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Rami Malek stars as Elliot, a brilliant cyber-security engineer, on USA Network's Golden Globe® Award-winning series, "Mr. Robot."

For his work on the hit drama series, Malek received an Emmy® Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama, a Screen Actors Guild® Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series and won a Critics' Choice® Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series.

Most recently, Malek wrapped production on "Papillon" opposite Charlie Hunnam. The remake of the 1973 Steve McQueen film is directed by Michael Noer. Malek plays the role of Louis Dega, originated by Dustin Hoffman. Upcoming, he will portray the iconic Queen front-man Freddie Mercury in the biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody" from director Bryan Singer.

In 2016, Malek starred in "Buster's Mal Heart," a surreal mystery film written and directed by Sarah Adina Smith, featured at both the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival and 2017 Tribeca Film Festival. In 2012, Malek was featured in Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master" opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams. He also notably appeared in the miniseries "The Pacific" as Snafu. His performance garnered incredible reviews and led him to being cast by Tom Hanks in "Larry Crowne" at Universal and Bill Condon in the last installment of "Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn." Prior to that, Malek was seen in "Night at the Museum" 1 & 2 opposite Ben Stiller, which marked his big screen debut, and had a memorable arc on the television series "24."

In 2014, Malek appeared in the feature "Need for Speed," directed by Scott Waugh, as well as the third installment of "Night at the Museum." He was also featured in Spike Lee's "Old Boy" opposite Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Olsen, and starred in "Short Term 12" with Brie Larson, directed by Destin Cretton.

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Mr. Robot Cast - Rami Malek as Elliot Alderson | USA Network

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As a senior network technician for cyber security firm Allsafe, Elliot protects corporate clients - including the ubiquitous Evil Corp - from security breaches and data theft. As a vigilante hacker, he monitors the people in his daily life and protects those he's close to from their own flaws, sometimes with unpredictable results.

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An interesting take on Elliot's struggle with addiction. 

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An interesting take on Elliot's struggle with addiction. 

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"I applaud showrunner Sam Esmail and his team of writers for being fearless enough to break the stereotypes involved with addiction and mental illness, and for creating such a layered character in what could have been a flat one-dimensional portrayal in lesser hands " (Bowie).

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With the exception of Mad Men, Shameless, and Nurse Jackie, I rarely ever learn anything new from television about the addictive mindset or the nuance of being an addict in recovery. I can now add the new USA drama series, Mr. Robot, to the list of shows that showcase addiction and mental illness in a unique way. The show deftly deals with addiction and mental illness, two issues that can often walk hand-in-hand, and the showrunner and writers do it well.

A little back story: I have been the copy editor on The Fix staff for nearly a year. While I have never had to deal with substance abuse myself, I have seen its effect on too many people in my life. On a daily basis, I read copious amounts of addiction and recovery information and this information has now become a part of my life. I find myself slipping addiction statistics into friendly conversations or wanting to illuminate friends on the growing heroin epidemic that is quickly infiltrating our society. I am no longer shocked that "regular" people are unaware of prescription painkiller abuse, or the reality of living with alcoholism, or the fact that naloxone is a game-changing medicine that can save lives. It's not like they're covering this information on the local news. The effects of the War on Drugs is only recently starting to trend in the news cycle with Obama granting clemency to a record amount of non-violent offenders but the coverage is microscopic compared to that of a celebrity's impending divorce or a popular wrestler's alleged racist tirade.

Addiction is not glamorous and is rarely discussed without stereotypes in the mainstream so I don't look at people any differently for lacking addiction awareness. But my veil has been lifted and I can see my daily work is quite ubiquitous. A ddiction is everywhere, including the entertainment I love. It can be found in the books I read and throughout the plots of the TV shows I watch. The addict trope is often portrayed in a derivative manner with the same set of familiar outcomes-the characters walk away nice and clean or eventually something terribly permanent happens. Mr. Robot has arrived to challenge the tired tropes with a different take on addiction and mental illness.

Sometimes I dream of saving the world. Saving everyone from the invisible hand. One that brands us with an employee badge. The one that forces us to work for them. The one that controls us everyday without us knowing it...

The psychological thriller centers around a young computer programmer named Elliot (Rami Malek) who works in cyber security. The audience is introduced to Elliot while he is riding the subway and in the middle of a possible schizophrenic paranoiac episode. Elliot informs us via voiceover that he has developed a relationship with the voice inside his head, whom he affectionally calls "friend." He internally wonders if he should name the voice but decides against it. He then begins to tell his "friend" of a top secret conspiracy about a powerful group of people that are secretly running the world.

"What I'm about to tell you is top secret. A conspiracy bigger than all of us. There's a powerful group of people out there that are secretly running the world. I'm talking about the guys no one knows about. The guys that are invisible. The top 1% of the top 1%. The guys that play God without permission...and now I think they're following me."

As Elliot sits uneasily in a moving subway car wearing his signature black hoodie, he sneaks a glance at two men in suits whom he believes are tailing him, though they never actually make contact. Elliot is an unreliable narrator and this device serves two purposes: To make us distrust what we see on screen and to allow us inside the head of an introverted, socially anxious paranoid schizophrenic.

Paranoid schizophrenia is one of the most common types of schizophrenia in the world, but it is not the only type of schizophrenia, there are a handful of subtypes including: catatonic, disorganized, residual, and undifferentiated. There is no uniformity within the illness; Half of all people with the illness have not received any treatment; and between one-third and one-half of all homeless adults have schizophrenia. The suicide rates of schizophrenics is very high with 10% of adult male sufferers dying by suicide. According to NIMH, people with schizophrenia "are much more likely to have a substance or alcohol abuse problem than the general population."

People who suffer from this illness are usually relatively stable, though they experience auditory hallucinations, delusions of persecution, or of having a "special mission," among other symptoms. Though he regularly sees a psychiatrist, Elliot has not been clinically diagnosed, as he makes rigorous attempts to hide his symptoms from the people around him. As the show progresses, we start to see examples of a larger conspiracy brewing in Elliot's workplace, which eventually leads him to take on a "special mission" with an anarchist hacker collective called Fsociety, which is lead by the enigmatical Mr. Robot (Christian Slater). Every decision and person that arrives into the story seems to fit a perfect piece of the conspiratorial puzzle. As a viewer, there is an ominous feeling of distrust because you get the feeling that this entire call to arms exists only in Elliot's head.

While the show has definite The Fight Club undertones (which is one of the reasons I love it), it does manage to depict a more realistic version of a paranoid schizophrenic than the 1999 cult classic. In Fight Club, the character with schizophrenia is depicted as an aggressor, when in real life, schizophrenia can have an almost dulling effect on the individual. documentary, Living with Schizophrenia: A Call for Hope and Recovery features firsthand schizophrenic accounts that illustrate the debilitating nature of schizophrenia and the stigma attached to the illness. These accounts sound similar to Elliot's journey, which also includes substance use disorder.

"If it weren't for QWERTY, I'd be completely empty."

Elliot is a drug addict. He uses morphine to stave off his loneliness. Like many drug users, he has a code. "The key to doing morphine without turning into a junkie is to limit yourself to 30mgs a day. Anything more just builds up your tolerance. I check every pill I get for purity. I have 8mgs Suboxone for maintenance in case I go through withdrawals."

This is the first TV show I've ever watched that has mentioned Suboxone, the medication used to treat narcotic opiate addiction. The drug is quite controversial though it has helped many users manage their opiate addiction when taken properly. I was absolutely thrilled to see it showcased and explained on a major cable network show because the more people that know about Suboxone, the better. The drug has the potential to save lives and sometimes it takes bringing things to the mainstream to promote awareness and make necessary change.

Elliot explains that Suboxone is difficult to get a prescription for so he is left no choice but to get it illegally. This is an all-too-familiar tale for users of Suboxone. Elliot gets his Suboxone from his neighborhood dealer Shayla (Frankie Shaw) but when her supply goes dry, he is forced to break his own code and retreat into the arms of morphine to get through his day. Elliot's morphine addiction reaches peak levels just as he is forced with the decision to either digitally snitch on Shayla's abusive supplier or shut his mouth and maintain his morphine addiction. He chooses the former and proceeds to go into heavy withdrawal.

We watch Elliot attempt to follow through with a major hacking scheme despite being in the early stages of withdrawal and he fails miserably. The hacker collective and Mr. Robot check into a motel and babysit him while he goes through a brutal few days of morphine withdrawal's greatest hits-sweats, nausea, tremors, and nightmarish visual hallucinations. Elliot makes it out the other side, but just barely. The few days post-withdrawal prove to be more difficult than he expects.

Mr. Robot is a tense, entertaining, thriller that manages to address mental health and addiction in a nuanced way. There isn't another dramatic show on air that handles the chaotic balance of mental illness and drug addiction with such attention to detail. What I love the most about it is the unpredictability. I don't know if Elliot will remain sober; I don't know if/when his schizophrenic episodes will progress and I don't know if Mr. Robot and Fsociety are real or just figments of Elliot's imagination. I applaud showrunner Sam Esmail and his team of writers for being fearless enough to break the stereotypes involved with addiction and mental illness, and for creating such a layered character in what could have been a flat one-dimensional portrayal in lesser hands.
Desiree Bowie is a copy editor for The Fix and a freelance writer. Please make note of The Fix Comment Policy

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mr. robot tackles schizophrenia and opiate addiction

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Mr. Robot Tackles Schizophrenia and Opiate Addiction | The Fix

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With the exception of Mad Men, Shameless, and Nurse Jackie, I rarely ever learn anything new from television about the addictive mindset or the nuance of being an addict in recovery. I can now add the new USA drama series, Mr. Robot, to the list of shows that showcase addiction and mental illness in a unique way.

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A fact check for the hacking displayed in Mr. Robot. 

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A fact check for the hacking displayed in Mr. Robot. 

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It's easy to be cynical about yet another hacker drama. Hollywood has burned us before with the overhyped and improbable BlackHat, the cliched and boring CSI: Cyber, and the WTF? Scorpion. Given so many cyberflops, the bar was admittedly low for USA Network's new hacker drama to succeed. And yet it does despite a few missteps, a convoluted plot that mashes together several headlines of the last few years, and a spotty supporting cast of hackers who so far show no evidence of hacking skills.

The primary reason for its success is Rami Malek, who provides a spot-on performance as Elliot Alderson, a high-functioning, seemingly Asperger-addled vigilante hacker. By day, Elliot spends his days toiling as a computer security whiz protecting the corporate clients of his cybersecurity firm employer, Allsafe; by night he exposes child-porn perps and cheating boyfriends. Elliot believes every problem can be solved with a hack, and he almost makes you believe it too.

But that's the side story, not the main event. The latter kicks in after Allsafe's biggest client, the conglomerate E-Corp, is struck by what appears to be a massive DDoS attack (distributed denial-of-service), and Elliot is called in to investigate-only to find that he's the target of the perpetrators as much as E-Corp is.

The mysterious culprits, who go by the name Fsociety, use the DDoS as a calling card to lure Elliot into helping them take down E-Corp-or, as Elliot refers to the corporate giant, Evil Corp-first by convincing him to plant false evidence to implicate E-Corp's own CTO in the hack, and then to initiate "the single biggest event of wealth redistribution in history." Fsociety plans to launch a socialist revolution by erasing all of E-Corp's data, thereby eliminating all record of debt and freeing the masses from oppressive capitalism. Or something like that. The details are a little murky.

The Marvel comic-like plot would seem overdrawn in the hands of a less skilled actor and writers. But Elliot's conflicted and complex nature, and Malek's highly compelling portrayal of him, pulls you in. Which leads us to the show's main draw-it actually gets hackers and hacking.

Mr. Robot understands the powerful psychological lure that hacking has for people who feel disconnected from, and excessively smarter than, the world around them. It also understands how such intelligence doesn't necessarily translate into emotional stability or maturity. Elliot may have the skills to take down a powerful corporation, but at his core he's just a boy pining for a girl; just a son mourning his dead dad. Elliot is Ponyboy for the digital age, a kid forced into early adulthood through tragedy (his father died of leukemia when Elliot was eight, possibly due to a toxic leak caused by his negligent employer). He's a complicated person with mixed motivations and hidden levels of character still to be revealed. It's a credit to Malek's portrayal that you want to stick around to see them unveiled.

And now, with a new episode airing tonight on the USA Network, we thought it was time to give Mr. Robot a fact-check. No show is perfect-but exactly how accurate is the promising drama?

What The Show Gets Right

Hacking as coping mechanism.
Hackers gonna hack. There are many types of hackers, and many motivations for hacking. But one of the things Mr. Robot really nails is the portrayal of a certain type of hacker who hacks to make sense of the world and connect to it. While Elliot displays some of the symptoms of someone suffering from Asperger's-avoids eye contact, doesn't like to be touched-there are hints that these peculiarities are more the result of nurture than nature, coping mechanisms developed after his father's death to deal with a cruel mother and a crueler world. "Never show them my source code," he says in voiceover. For Elliot, life is The Matrix, and he's always on alert to prevent anyone from finding the bug in his code that could be used to exploit him. But these are just surface coping mechanisms; hacking is his primary mechanism for controlling a world that he feels powerless to control and for making connections in a world in which he feels disconnected. "What do normal people do when they get sad? They reach out to friends or family," he says as he huddles in his apartment crying. "That's not an option [for me]."

Like many hackers, Elliot isn't interested in the rules of polite discourse: "I'm OK with it being awkward between us," he says, slamming a coworker who wants to bro-chill with him. His way of connecting with people, both ones he wants to embrace and ones he rejects, is to hack them. That's how he gets to know them-eschewing the small talk. He may not have outward social skills, but he excels at others. In one voiceover about his therapist, he notes with irony that "she's bad at reading people"; like any good social engineer, however, Elliot himself excels at the craft. Then again, he may not be the most reliable narrator-his method of reading people involves hacking them to uncover their secrets.

Hacking as a vehicle for social justice.
It would be easy to condemn Elliot for his breaches of etiquette and digital barriers-he regularly invades the privacy of his best friend and his therapist, then is outraged when another hacker picks the lock on his apartment door and invades his own privacy. His values might seem skewed, but like another TV character, Dexter, Elliot has his own moral code. There's a sense of righteousness to his hacking that lends it, if not forgiveness, then a modicum of understanding. When we first meet him, he's exposing the owner of a child porn site. And the breaches of his best friend and therapist-the closest person he has to a mother-are ostensibly done out of concern for their welfare, however misguided and presumptuous. Most hackers don't see their activity as criminal, particularly when it involves righting a perceived wrong.

It's this impulse for justice that apparently fueled the hacker behind the recent breach of Hacking Team, the maker of surveillance tools sold to repressive governments. It's also an impulse toward superheroism and a greater good that fuels Elliot; it's the bug in his code that Fsociety exploits to recruit him to their cause. Prior to meeting them, Elliot's vigilantism is focused primarily on damsels in distress-saving seemingly helpless women from the feckless men in their lives. But his motive for joining the cause against E-Corp becomes very clear once he learns that the company was possibly complicit in the deaths of his father and his best friend Angela's mother.

Creator Sam Esmail, who is Egyptian, has said in interviews that the show was inspired in part by the Arab Spring and the revolutionary spirit of his 20-something tech-savvy Egyptian cousins caught up in the uprising. "These are young people who are tech-savvy, who use technology to their advantage to channel the anger against the status quo and try and make a change to better their lives. That is something that's beautiful and fascinating to me, and that's what I really, really want the show to be about," Esmail said. "It's set in the world of technology, because I think that is a tool that young people can use to bring about change."

Intelligence in one area doesn't translate to others.
The show also understands the dysfunction that can result from super intelligence. Elliot is smart when it comes to computers and hacking, but his control in that area leads him to believe he can similarly control others. To deal with his loneliness, for example, he self-medicates with morphine. But to outsmart the addiction trap, he has rules for drug-taking that give him the illusion of control-to cut the power of the morphine, he takes suboxone, a drug for treating opiate addictions. It's the hacker mentality that simple logic can be applied to any problem.

Hacking Lingo
Mr. Robot doesn't just get hackers right, it also gets hacking right. The team behind the show is clearly interested in technical authenticity and have made an effort to get the lingo, the tone, and the on-screen code right. In the pilot episode's opening scene, Elliot tells the kiddie-porn purveyor that although the guy used the Tor network to anonymize his online activity and encrypt his traffic, the exit nodes in Tor bleed plaintext unless the sender encrypts the data end-to-end-he who controls the exit nodes controls the traffic. There are also references to Gnome, Linux, rootkits and .DAT files.

This kind of geek name-dropping can be trite if not backed by other bonafides, but the show delivers. Esmail has said he was adamant that the show wouldn't use green screens-a blank green screen used in production that gets filled in afterward (usually with nonsensical code) by the post-production team-or show implausible hacks (e.g., the ridiculous BlackHat scene when Chris Hemsworth's character hacks the NSA). We see the fruits of his insistence when the Allsafe staffers try to halt the DDoS attack and when Elliot types commands into a terminal window. Mr. Robot also isn't afraid to drop references that only a hacker or security pro would get. When E-Corp is struck with the DDoS attack, Elliot exclaims, "Is this a R.U.D.Y. attack? This is awesome!" It turns out the attack, rather than a botnet assault involving massive traffic-the source of most DDoS takedowns-is driven by a persistent rootkit/worm that was implanted by Fsociety on E-Corp's servers. There's even a nice scene when Elliot fears the Feds might knock on his door and in a manic fit to destroy his hacking evidence drills holes through his hard drives and fries his memory chip in the microwave. (Of course, going back to the whole relative-intelligence thing, he doesn't even think to flush his drugs down the toilet.)

What Mr. Robot Doesn't Get Right

A Paint-By-Numbers Ensemble Cast
All of this said, the show has a number of missteps, including the random assortment of silent supporting players in the Fsociety hacker collective led by Mr. Robot (Christian Slater). They include the requisite overweight geek with glasses and unruly hair, an African-American who seems more of a bodyguard than a digital wizard, a female hacker with attitude who has the ability to pick locks but so far no discernible digital skills, and a mousy young Muslim woman whose sole purpose has been to serve as foil for the show's worst line-Mr. Robot tells Elliot that the woman, who wears a hijab, might look harmless but "she's got some 'Allah akhbar' in her." We're told that the hack of E-Corp by Fsociety was uber sophisticated, but there's no sign yet that this troop is capable of such a feat. The characters in Fsociety are going to have to earn their hacking stripes in future episodes or risk undoing the goodwill Elliot's character has garnered from the audience.

IRL: The Ultimate Security
Mr. Robot tells Elliot that the members of his collective never communicate online, just IRL (in real life). They want to avoid the mistakes made by another hacker collective known as the Omegas (a clear reference to the Anonymous offshoot known as LulzSec) that were undone by their mouthiness online and their trust in a leader who turned out to be working for the Feds. "Our encryption is the real world," Mr. Robot says by way of explaining their reason for leaving no digital trail. But this makes little sense in light of the fact that Elliot is regularly followed by men in black from E-Corp-who could easily track him to the abandoned amusement park arcade where the collective hangs out.

US Cyber Command's Role
After Elliot helps foil the DDoS attack, E-Corp visits Allsafe's office to learn what he uncovered, and brings the FBI and US Cyber Command with them. The FBI makes perfect sense-but US Cyber Command? Either there's a plot point yet to be revealed connecting E-Corp to the military, or the writers misunderstand what US Cyber Command does: defend military networks (along with the NSA) and provide cyber support to military operations in the field. Even if it turns out there's a connection between E-Corp and the military, it would make more sense to involve the NSA-the infinitely more skilled technical arm of the military-than US Cyber Command.

Busting Cybercrime On Faith
When Elliot confronts the child-porn perp in the coffeeshop and lets him know he's turned over evidence of his crime to the Feds, it's like he's blown a dog whistle: On cue, several cop cars race to the curb outside, sirens blaring and lights flashing. Aside from the fact that this noisy entrance gives the perpetrator warning and a chance to flee, destroy evidence, or encrypt his computer, this isn't generally how cybercrime busts occur. Since forensic evidence can only lead investigators to a computer and an IP address at best, they generally want to catch the perpetrator in the act online, sitting at his keyboard while logged into his anonymous account-usually after an undercover Fed or snitch has lured him online at a coordinated time.

Clemency For Hackers
Likewise, there's a disconnect around Elliot's reason for seeking therapy. It isn't revealed in the first episodes-though it's clear he's not there by choice. The character bio on the show's web site says he was arrested for financial hacking and has been attending court-ordered therapy for nearly a year. Elliot isn't a minor, however, so unless later episodes explain why he's getting court-ordered therapy instead of serving time, that's going to be a plausibility issue. Courts and prosecutors don't coddle hackers with therapy, they throw the book at them.

All of these missteps are forgiven, however, whenever Malek is onscreen-which thankfully is nearly always. His performance, and his interactions with Slater as Mr. Robot, and with nearly anyone else for that matter, really make the show. For this reason, Mr. Robot remains one of the most promising debuts of the summer.

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Mr. Robot Is the Best Hacking Show Yet-But It's Not Perfect

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It's easy to be cynical about yet another hacker drama. Hollywood has burned us before with the overhyped and improbable BlackHat, the cliched and boring CSI: Cyber, and the WTF? Scorpion. Given so many cyberflops, the bar was admittedly low for USA Network's new hacker drama to succeed.

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Does Mr. Robot Break the Fourth Wall? | ScreenRant

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Sam Esmail's hacker TV series Mr. Robot has a habit of breaking the fourth wall - or maybe the show is doing something even more ambitious?

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Mr. Robot - Elliot about Society (Sub Ita)

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Il discorso che Elliot pensa sulla società nel primo episodio di Mr. Robot

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Mr. Robot is an American drama-thriller television series created by Sam Esmail. Let's see some awesome facts and trivia about the series!

1. It stars Rami Malek as Elliot Alderson, a cybersecurity engineer and hacker who suffers from social anxiety disorder and clinical depression.

2. Alderson is recruited by an insurrectionary anarchist known as "Mr. Robot", played by Christian Slater, to join a group of hacktivists.

3. The group aims to cancel all debts by attacking the large corporation E Corp.

4. According to Sam Esmail, he is fascinated by the hacker culture and wanted to make a film about it for around 15 years.

5. In the production, Esmail consulted experts to give a realistic picture of hacking activities.

6. Another inspiration for Esmail, who is of Egyptian descent, was the Arab Spring, where young people who were angry at society used social media to bring about a change.

7. Sam Esmail had originally intended Mr. Robot to be a feature film, with the end of the first act being someone finding out that he had a mental disorder while enacting a greater scheme.

8. However, midway through writing the first act, he found that script had expanded considerably, and that became a script more suited for a television show.

9. He removed 20 pages of around 89 pages of the script then written, and used it as the pilot for the series,[45] and what was to have been the end of the first act became the finale of the first season.

10. Esmail took the script to Anonymous Content to see if it could be developed into a television series, which was then picked up by USA Network. USA Network gave a pilot order to Mr. Robot in July 2014, and picked it up to series with a 10-episode order in December 2014.

11. Production began in New York on April 13, 2015.[48] Prior to its series premiere on June 24, 2015, Mr. Robot was renewed for a second season, which will include a minimum of 10 episodes.

12. In December 2015, it was announced that Sam Esmail will direct all 10 episodes in season two.

13. Sam Esmail has acknowledged several major influences on the show, such as American Psycho, Taxi Driver, A Clockwork Orange,[50] and The Matrix.

14. In particular, Esmail credited Fight Club as the inspiration for a main character who suffers from dissociative identity disorder creating a new manifestation of his deceased father in the form of a hacker, as well as for the anti-consumerist and anti-establishment spirit of its characters.

15. Commentators have also noted the parallel in its plot on the erasing of consumer debt records to the film.

16. In an interview, Esmail explains how playing the song that Fincher used to underscore the climax of his film ("Where Is My Mind?") when Elliot initiates the hack in episode nine is intended as a message to the audience that he is aware of the inspiration they took from Fight Club.

17. The narration by the protagonist was influenced by Taxi Driver, and other influences mentioned included Risky Business in its music score, Blade Runner for the character development, and the television series Breaking Bad for the story arc.

18. The series is filmed in New York.

19. Filming locations include Coney Island which serves as the base of operations for the hacking group fsociety.

20. As the production crew was unable to shut down Times Square for filming, the scenes at Times Square in the finale were shot late at night just before the 4th of July holiday weekend to catch the area at its emptiest.

21. Production on the second season began on March 7, 2016, resuming filming in New York City.

22. The languages Tyrell Wellick and Joanna Wellick speak between them, are Swedish (Tyrell) and Danish (Joanna).

23. Each episode name (Season 1) ends in a video file name extension like .flv or .mov, which are all popular video file formats.

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Mr. Robot Trivia: 23 interesting facts about the series!

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Mr. Robot is an American drama-thriller television series created by Sam Esmail. Let's see some awesome facts and trivia about the series! 1. It stars Rami Malek as Elliot Alderson, a cybersecurity engineer and hacker who suffers from social anxiety disorder and clinical depression. 2.

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Where to go if you want to channel your inner 'Mr. Robot.'

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Where to go if you want to channel your inner 'Mr. Robot.'

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Hello again, friend.

Season two of Mr. Robot kicked off last night, and in preparation, we spent the previous week binge-watching the first 10 episodes as a refresher course. Considering that the show takes place in New York, those of us who live and work in the area have been keeping score of all the locations we recognized onscreen-for example, Steel Mountain is actually a massive office complex in Rye, New York. While we (not so patiently) await next week's episode, we put together a running list of the New York City-based locations from season one you can actually visit, and possibly pick up a pair of new Prada shoes. Scroll down to find out the exact spots for a few of the locations you can check out yourself-mild spoilers ahead.

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A Guide to 11 Mr. Robot Locations You Can Actually Visit in New York

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Hello again, friend. Season two of Mr. Robot kicked off last night, and in preparation, we spent the previous week binge-watching the first 10 episodes as a refresher course.

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Rami Malek's take on Elliot's wardrobe... or lack thereof.

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Rami Malek's take on Elliot's wardrobe... or lack thereof.

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Photographer: Taylor Jewell/Bloomberg Business

"Could you imagine Elliot going shopping?"

Rami Malek is talking about the black hoodie, the one his complicated character, cybersecurity whiz Elliot Alderson, wears for almost the entirety of the first season of USA Network's breakout series .

If you've seen the show, then you know it's essentially Malek's sixth co-star, getting just as much airtime as anyone else in the startlingly talented ensemble cast (which includes Christian Slater-yes, that Christian Slater-as the titular character).

It's hard to imagine Elliot going shopping because it's hard to imagine him walking into a store. I wonder aloud if he has a stash of identical black cotton hoodies, or whether he just wears the same one every day.

Malek ponders the question as seriously as if I had just asked him to explain what a honeypot is to a non-hacker. "It's not that he's unkempt," he says. "There's just a level of callousness to the way he treats things like getting dressed. He likely prefers a uniform because it's one less thing to think about."

He wants to be clear about this wardrobe choice, because he had a hand in it. In fact, he was the one to suggest to the show's creator, Sam Esmail, that his character's look be a little austere.

"They initially came to me with sketches from the designer that included this very loud and colorful backpack," he says. "And I'm like, 'I can't wear this. This guy wouldn't wear this.' I kinda had this mild panic attack inside, like 'This is not the way I see things. Where are we going with this?' "

I work with a lot of celebrities in my job as a stylist, so it's rare that I get starstruck. But when I saw Malek for the first time-sitting across the runway from me last month at the John Varvatos show during New York Fashion Week: Men's-he looked like he belonged in a different movie from the rest of us. He was sandwiched between co-star Slater and iconic fashion photographer Bill Cunningham in a buttery-leather Varvatos jacket and slim-fitting jeans, legs politely crossed. A day earlier and I might not have recognized him (or even thought, Hey, isn't that the guy from ...?). But as timing would have it, I had just begun binge-watching the first three episodes of season one of Mr. Robot the night before.

The show is the sleeper hit of the summer, and Malek has been called masterful in his portrayal of the oft-kilter genius and unreliable narrator, Elliot. (His now-too-familiar raspy voice-overs are themselves worthy of Emmy consideration.) He's so perfect in the part, it's hard to envision the show with anyone else in the complex lead role. As TV critic Alan Sepinwall of Hitfix says, "The show is Rami Malek and Rami Malek is the show."

Malek kept to himself during the event-barely even chatting with his notable seat mates-and treated the spectacle before him like a performance piece that he was lucky to witness. (He later confirmed it was his first fashion week experience, and Slater had just invited him earlier in the day.) I was charmed. There was a magnetic elusiveness to him.

Naturally, I called my friends at John Varvatos the day after the show and said, "How can I get in touch with Rami Malek? I need to style him."

"I call it 'OG hoodie'-I can always tell if the hoodie in a scene is part of the B team"

"I really wanted Elliot's clothes to feel like it was a bit of an urban combat uniform," Malek says. "We needed the wardrobe to reflect his desire to disappear from the world. So I suggested a hoodie. Well, maybe I shouldn't say 'suggest.' "

What does that mean?

"Well, the show had gone to great lengths and spent beaucoup bucks trying to create the perfect 'worn-in' sweatshirt, but nothing was working," he says. "So I came in one day before we shot the pilot with my personal hoodie from B:Scott that I'd had for years. But I knew that I couldn't just offer it up like, 'Hey, look at this!' I knew that wouldn't fly, as everyone wants to come up with their own idea. So I just kinda paraded myself around the office until the powers that be said, 'Hey! Did wardrobe put you in that?' And I said, 'Oh, this old thing? I've had this for ages,' and they were like, 'Why can't he wear that?' "

Just like that, a TV touchstone was made.

"At first there were no doubles, so I ended up trying to preserve that one hoodie," he says, laughing. "I remember someone actually left my house in it, unbeknownst to me-after we had already shot the pilot. So I called them frantically and they must have been like, 'This guy's losing it. It's just a hoodie.' So they brought it back and then later, after they must have seen the pilot, I get this text, 'Oh, now I know why you were so adamant about getting that thing back.' "

Before long, the show's costume designer, Kim Wilcox, reached out to the designer and got 20 or so versions replicated-apparently it was the liner of a jacket B:Scott had made years ago. Still, "nothing ever feels to me like the original," says Malek. "I call it 'OG hoodie.' I can always tell right away if the hoodie I am wearing in a scene is part of the B team."

Since Malek is a real person and not his character, he is down for shopping. Last Friday, I took him to Carson Street Clothiers in SoHo to try some things on; he is a bona fide celebrity now, after all. He needs new outfits (or, as we call them in the styling world, "looks"). We decide to start with knits. Luxe ones, expensive ones.

Rami arrives wearing a faded pink T-shirt, frayed jeans (that matched my own, actually), and black high-top sneakers. He gives me a double-cheek kiss.

"I've never done that before," he admits immediately afterward. "But I feel good about it."

Up close, the first thing you notice about him is his mouth. It would be easy to say his eyes, which are wide-set and intense-part of what makes his vigilante hacker so compulsively watchable. But it's his mouth, with permanently pursed lips and a slanted grin, that gives his face its personality.

And as for those eyes, where Elliot's show disconnect and paranoia, Rami's are kind and engaging. He's also almost hypnotic with his eye contact.

He's small (5-foot-7), but there's a wiry manliness about him; he has a large presence, but few pretensions. He's also warm and polite, greeting everyone that comes up to him during the five-hour shoot, always looking them in the eyes. He's game for anything I throw at him style-wise and never once complains. Even when I ask the Los Angeles native to stand in the middle of Crosby Street with "New York City" sprawled across his chest in cashmere. He is, after all, the city's newest antihero. And he's embracing it.

"Actors spend their whole careers waiting to get a character like this"

At 34, Malek is perhaps most widely known for his small but memorable film roles as King Ahkmenrah in the Night at the Museum franchise, Benjamin in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn-Part 2, and Clark in The Master. And rumor has it that Mr. Robot creator Esmail's girlfriend, the actress Emmy Rossum, recommended Rami to him for the part of Elliot after seeing him in the HBO miniseries The Pacific.

"When I did The Pacific and I played Snafu, I walked away and I said, 'Ahhh, it's never gonna get better than that.' So I thought, 'Well, that was that' and moved on," he recalls. "Then I got to work with Paul Thomas Anderson on a film [ The Master] and was like, 'Wait, maybe it's not all downhill from here.' "

After all, Malek exclaims, "I still feel young! That's something that Christian would say."

"Then I got the gift that is Elliot and Mr. Robot," he says. "I think he's going to teach me a lot about myself as we travel down this winding road together. Elliot and Rami ... hand in hand, hoodie and hoodie."

The season finale of Mr. Robot airs Wednesday, Sept. 2, at 10 p.m. ET on USA Network.

(Updates in final paragraph for new air date of season finale.)

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Rami Malek, Star of Mr. Robot, Is Ready to Start Dressing Like a Grown-Up

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"Could you imagine Elliot going shopping?" Rami Malek is talking about the black hoodie, the one his complicated character, cybersecurity whiz Elliot Alderson, wears for almost the entirety of the first season of USA Network's breakout series .

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More about the creator of Mr. Robot, Sam Esmail.

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More about the creator of Mr. Robot, Sam Esmail.

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Sam Esmail serves as creator, executive producer, writer and director on USA Network's Golden Globe® Award winning series MR ROBOT.

After graduating from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Esmail attended AFI's directing program where he received his M.F.A. In 2008, he wrote his first feature screenplay, "Sequels, Remakes & Adaptations," which landed on the Black List, a survey taken by more than 600 production companies and film financier executives naming their most-liked screenplays. He followed that up a year later with his second Black List script, "Norm the Movie." His feature directorial debut, "Comet," was released through IFC in 2014.

Since its premiere, MR ROBOT has received three Golden Globe® Award nominations and two wins including Best Drama, a Peabody Award, a SAG® Award nomination, four Critics' Choice® Award nominations and three wins, two Writers Guild® Award nominations and one win for Best New Series, and three IPA Satellite® Award nominations and one win for Best Supporting Actor. The series was selected for an AFI Award for Television Program of the Year, won a Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Long Form Series, had its world premiere at last year's SXSW Festival where it took home the coveted Audience Award in the Episodics category and was an official selection at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.

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Sam Esmail serves as creator, executive producer, writer and director on USA Network's Golden Globe® Award winning series MR ROBOT. After graduating from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Esmail attended AFI's directing program where he received his M.F.A.

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"As for ratings, this show earned an 8.7 out of 10 on IMDb, which is surprising considering how well received it was by the audience. To further prove this statement, the show received an outstanding amount of thirty-one nominations and seventeen big wins – including two Golden Globes, two Primetime Emmy’s, and more."

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Sam Esmail talks about potraying what real life hacking looks like, unlike many other shows/movies. 

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Sam Esmail talks about potraying what real life hacking looks like, unlike many other shows/movies. 

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Cyborgs and androids are nowhere to be seen in the new USA show Mr. Robot. Instead, the drama is centered on a very human interior - the mind of Elliot, the unlikely hacker hero. From his first words - "Hello, friend" - his voice-over keeps audiences squarely inside his world.

"Elliot is sort of an internal, isolated guy who can't really interact with people socially, in real life, but online he can hack them and knows all the intimate, private details of them," Sam Esmail, the show's creator and executive producer, tells NPR's Arun Rath.

Elliot, played by actor Rami Malek, is a cybersecurity engineer by day and vigilante hacker by night. He uses his hacking skills to influence the lives of those around him without leaving a trace.

One day, he stumbles upon a secret society run by a man called Mr. Robot, played by Christian Slater. The group wants to destroy the modern economic system by wiping out all debt. Elliot is pulled into a web of anarchy and danger where all the moral lines are blurred.

"Who's good and who's bad in this show? I don't know," Esmail tells Rath. "I mean, you really can't pinpoint the clear-cut morality here, who is the person I should be rooting for or not. I think it's more interesting when it's messier 'cause I think it's just more true to life."

Interview Highlights
On putting the audience inside Elliot's head with voice-over
Taxi Driver was a huge inspiration. One of the things about Taxi Driver that's so great is that it's just a pure character piece. Obviously there's a plot and there's a story, but just - you are purely inside this guy's brain.

And when I went to write Mr. Robot, I just knew in order to really pull off this really tricky thing, to see the world through this guy's point of view, I needed just to immerse the audience.

Voice-over gets a bad rep a lot of times in screenwriting because people think it's lazy, whatever it is, but when it is done really well, it just adds this other dimension. It creates this sort of intimate relationship with the audience that you really can't do just with dialogue and scene.
On whether the "alienated young techie" character was inspired by people like Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning
No. ... Look, teen angst I think has been around since Holden Caulfield. ... I think it's kind of interesting that now it's associated with techies, I think it's a lot older than that, but it's cool the association has become more popularized with technology. ...

You know, it's weird, it's like the nerds are having their moment right about now.
On portraying the hacking world and making people typing at keyboards exciting
So I was a nerd growing up, and I was a big techie and I watched all of those terrible movies and all those terrible television shows. And it was actually, I think, more work to portray it as poorly as they did because they forced all these CGI graphics and all this ridiculous stuff to force the drama there. One of the rules I have on my show is that we don't green screen ... anything. So everything you see that we filmed is real. And so the actors, I really wanted them to react to what is actually going on on-screen.

But I gotta be honest, I'm not some genius over here, I'm just actually going through what a programmer or coder or cybersecurity engineer would do in a certain hack. And the funny thing is, even though people don't completely understand it, they get it. And it's almost like when you watch a medical drama, or a legal drama or whatever, I don't necessarily understand all of the terminology, but I get what's going on emotionally, I get what the stakes are.
On the positive feedback about the show from hacker groups
You know how much of a risk that is to not only do a show about technology and about hackers, but then to kind of ... reference hacker groups. There's a popular Twitter feed for Anonymous and it's all, you know, unofficial, but when they gave us kudos, I was in heaven.

I mean, that's a real huge endorsement. And look, if it went the other way it would have been totally bad.

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The Human Drama Of Hacking Fuels TV Thriller 'Mr. Robot'

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Cyborgs and androids are nowhere to be seen in the new USA show Mr. Robot. Instead, the drama is centered on a very human interior - the mind of Elliot, the unlikely hacker hero. From his first words - "Hello, friend" - his voice-over keeps audiences squarely inside his world.

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This padlet was made to provide a visionary guide to my critical analysis of the award winning television show, Mr. Robot. Enjoy!