On Tuesday, October 13th of this year, former basketball player and two-time NBA champion Lamar Odom was found unconscious in a Las Vegas brothel during an extended stay. I was absolutely shocked at the news but not completely bewildered at the cause of the latest chapter in Lamar’s tumultuous story. With each passing day, small trinkets of information leaked into the mainstream media that provided additional fodder to the already growing narrative surrounding this incident. Premature obituaries, speculation as to whether or not that “Reality star” brought TV cameras with her to his bedside and the cause of this incident dominated the news cycle that week. The cause? Drugs. A nearly lethal concoction of multiple narcotics were said to be contributed to the stroke that Lamar suffered that Tuesday afternoon. Sadly, as previously mentioned, I was not surprised that drugs played the role as catalyst for this predicament.

The former NBA 6th Man of the Year has battled drug addiction, publicly and privately, for quite some time. Many people blame his high-profiled relationship turned marriage for his malfeasance. One could form an opinion that Odom’s drug habits were exacerbated by becoming being engulfed by and entrenched in the reality television world; that may be so, but at the end of the day, he was a man that suffered from an addiction which claims the lives of thousands of Americans each year. Quick aside: Reality TV star Lamar Odom? Come on. Certain news organizations should do their homework when it comes to the subjects of their news story. He was an NBA player first and foremost, not just an ancillary piece in a dark vortex of a family television show. Scott van Pelt sums up this sentiment and speaks volumes in this short clip about this matter.

We all know, or at some point in our lives, have known someone that is dealing with addiction. Albeit, said addiction may not be apparent or explicitly shown by the person dealing with that problem. Narcotics, alcohol, and sexual addictions are some of the more prevalent vices that tend to get out of hand. We all have our vices: maybe it’s an extra piece of red velvet cake after a stressful day or the occasional cigarette after a long week at the office. It could even be binge-watching several movies in a two day span in order to escape reality for a weekend. Addiction is not always illegal activity but addiction is human. There is an illusion of control, however, for the more serious types of addiction. Once all control is lost, like in Lamar’s case, some dangerous repercussion could occur. Even though he did not come out completely unscathed, that man should be extremely fortunate that he is still alive today.

Everything in moderation, even moderation. – Oscar Wilde

Enter Elliot Alderson, the protagonist, maybe the antagonist, of the USA television thriller “Mr. Robot.” The show takes place in New York City with a plot that centralizes around Elliot who is a security engineer by day and a vigilante, serial hacker by night. The “Batman” of the coding community if you will. At first glance, Mr. Robot does seem like a nerdy television drama aimed at a demographic that is fluent in HTML colloquials. Hell, even the titling of each episode is further proof that this show is only geared towards a specific coding audience (“eps1.0_hellofriend.mov”, “eps1.2_d3bug.mkv”, “eps1.8_m1rr0r1ng.qt”). But I am telling you, as a layman when it comes to the topic of tech speak, this show is still incredibly captivating without trying to display an arrogant intelligence over the viewer.

The intensity of the main character’s eyes shown in the YouTube clip above can be viewed as a centralized theme of the entire first season. No, not Elliot’s crazy eyes per se, but the piercing intensity that his gaze exudes. Even the most mundane and banal of scenes from the show feel like they have a heightened sense of importance due to the great acting and camerawork that when into the production of Mr Robot.

Elliot, who is played by the immensely stoic Rami Malek, has a plethora of problems that rattle his day-to-day existence. As a self-described a socially anxious human being “that doesn’t know how to talk to people,” Alderson copes with his daily stressors by playing pharmacist while concurrently playing the sickly patient. If you couldn’t already tell by that maniacal stare, he is very much a drug addict with Morphine as his go-to entree. Oddly enough, he also consumes suboxone, which is normally used as a detoxification medicine to help a person who is addicted to opiates such as Morphine. The running theme of an illusion of control was established within the first 10 minutes of the pilot episode.

Elliot has an unconventional method of learning more about the people in his life that he interacts with. A normal, rational human being would strike up conversations with friends, family members and co-workers, all the while, genuinely or facetiously, may indulge in similar interests and topics. One could build a rapport through banter or converse about serious world issues. Either way, direct communication is typically the way most people interact with people they see frequenty. Scroll back up to the previous picture. Does Elliot look like a regular person? Absolutely not! He is the kind of person that Antoine Dodson was telling you to avoid back in 2010.

Our main character “connects” with his friends, co-workers and therapist by hacking into all of their personal data to view their bank accounts, online shopping habits and what music video they last watched on YouTube. He doesn’t do this for any monetary gain but one could argue that he is rich due to the wealth of information he has obtained over the years. Nothing makes you feel closer to a friend than knowing their Social Security Number, I guess.

The primary plot of Mr. Robot branches off into several complex sub-stories that involve all of the main and ancillary characters of the series, which eventually comes full circle by seasons end. By full circle, I don’t mean that the show comes to a resolution point in terms of the storyline. I am sure that the majority of people who have finished season 1 are just as perplexed by the events that transpired in the last few episodes. No one has all the answers to the questions that the showrunner, Sam Esmail, provokes you to think throughout the entire season.

As I mentioned earlier, Elliot is a software engineer for a tech security company called Allsafe. He is considered to be one of the brightest employees that they have on their staff. Allsafe is the electronic security defense team for the largest corporate conglomerate in this dramatized version of America: E Corp, or Evil Corp as Elliot calls it. Picture a summation of Apple, Walmart and Amazon. The magnitude of those three major corporations would be comparable to E Corp’s stature in this fictional society. Elliot’s co-worker, and long time friend (giving his good old buddy Morphine a run for its money) Angela (played by Portia Doubleday) have personal reasons for calling it Evil Corp which will be revealed in later episodes in this season.

E Corp gets flooded by an attack from an online hacking community, similar to Anonymous, named fsociety. The explanation behind that name is pretty straightforward. Elliot, being the virtuoso on the keyboard that he is, saves the day by diffusing the network attack on the servers before any real damage occurs to the system. Hooray, problem solved! However, this is just the tip of the tip of the tip of an iceberg that is about the size of Antartica. We are formally introduced to the show’s titular character Mr. Robot, played by Christian Slater, as Elliot rides the subway car back to his New York City apartment some time after the hacking incident. “I think you should come with me,” Mr. Robot boldly proclaims. “But only if you didn’t delete it.” “It” refers to the infected file that Elliot discovered when he stopped the attack on E Corp. We come to find out, in the process of Elliot being courted to join fsociety, that Mr. Robot is the man behind the diabolical plan to start an e-revolution by crashing all of Evil Corp’s servers, which would essentially render everyone to become debt free. A mission ethos that is comparable to Robin Hood.

All of the information from the previous paragraph above happens in the span of about one episode. The only complaint that I had about this show was the general pacing of the first few episodes. It is pretty damn slow at first. This is understandable because there is a great deal of backstory that needed to be established in order for the foundation of the plot to remain rigid. I almost punted on the entire series after episode two, saying to myself that I can’t sit through another predictable USA network drama that really has no substance and is only “unique” because there aren’t too many serious tech-based television shows (i.e. Silicon Valley). I powered right through the 3rd episode and thought: “I watched season 1 of ‘Ballers’, in it’s entirety, I should be able to get through this series as well. By the 4th episode, my codependence for this show rivaled Elliot’s disposition for Morphine. A bit of a hyperbolic statement in the last sentence but needless to say, I became hooked. Luckily for myself, I was a few episodes off the pace of the latest viewing. I proceeded to spend approximately 180 minutes on that beautiful Saturday afternoon binge-watching Mr. Robot. It doesn’t get more millennial than that right there.

Joyous. Distraught. Stressed. I can’t believe I garnered the ability to become stressed over a fictionalized storyline that had no direct impact on my life. The plot twists in this story are heart-wrenching. The attention to detail by the entire staff – writers, actors, cinematographers – is phenomenal. The realistic depiction of a darker, more grayscale version of New York City is aesthetically pleasing and intriguing as well. The most minutiae of artifacts eventually play such a profound role in the grand scheme of things to come in the following episodes. It’s a slow, architectural build to the crescendo or apex of the storyline, which is placed down on the foundation of the script, one brick at a time. I feel like I’ve already said too much.

Each character has a strong dynamic with the other people in the show, as well as an introspective conflict that they must deal with on a daily basis. I enjoyed the way the storyline didn’t focus to heavily on Elliot or get bogged down on coding and it’s complexed jargon. The sub-plots delve into the fictional souls of the supporting cast with each person has their own vice or distractions that further perpetuate their illusion of control. One of the co-main characters, Darlene (played by Carly Chaikin, 2nd from left pictured above) is an extremely talented hacker who hides behind her personal struggles by having the whole party girl persona. Her storyline seems inconsequential at first glance but it eventually becomes an essential thread interwoven through the fabric of this plot, just like most of the people encountered in the first few episodes.

The Wellick’s, played by Martin Wallstrom and Stephanie Corneliussen (possibly my favorite character in the show), are by far the strangest, yet most intriguing Husband/Wife duo that I’ve ever seen. So strange.

This series is a must watch. Hands down, in my opinion, the best debut drama series of 2015. The fact that this show is on USA network completely blows my mind! I’m using to seeing happy-go-lucky shows like Psyche, for example, dominate the majority of the schedule for this network. To be honest, USA is all about making series that are mediocre and pretty bland, (Burn Notice, Royal Pains, I’m looking at you). They have the type of shows that make one say “_______ is on it’s 3rd season?” not because you think the show should have been cancelled already, but because you legitimately didn’t know that show existed and it’s somehow on it’s 3rd season. For a perfect example, I did not see one single commercial for this show, yet it lasted for 3 seasons before getting cancelled this past October. Flying below the radar in spectacularly ordinary fashion is skill that USA has perfected. A show this dark, this graphic and this well-produced belongs on a channel like HBO or AMC but I really feel like USA is pushing the envelope when it comes to Mr. Robot. This could signify the network turning a new leaf in order to stay competitive when it comes to other outlets (Netflix, Cinemax, even Amazon is making a strong push towards television series dominance). I didn’t think USA was capable of putting out such a well crafted show and I am looking forward to season two of this series, as well as potentially series to come from this network.

You can watch all of season 1 right here. Scroll down really quick to the first episode and DON’T READ ANY OF THE RECAPS ALONG THE WAY.