Season 2, Episode 10: ‘eps2.8_h1dden-pr0cess.axx’

The ugliest scene in this week’s “Mr. Robot” is also its most elegantly constructed. It serves as the climax and endpoint of the episode, which, like the previous few weeks’ installments, had been a steadily mounting drumbeat of dread. Acting on equal parts intuition and plain good detective work — both of which are ignored by her superiors, as usual — the F.B.I. agent Dom DiPierro realizes that the two major fsociety suspects who’d dropped off a wounded associate at a local E.R. had not fled the scene fearing discovery at all. They’d simply stepped out for a bite to eat before returning to check on their comrade’s condition, and if she wants to catch them before they return to the hospital, find it swarming with law enforcement, and fly the coop for real, she has to step out, too.

So out she heads into the darkened Manhattan streets — cluttered with uncollected trash, sparsely populated by strapped civilians — searching for her quarry. The lights dim as she runs in the direction of the few restaurants left open at this time of night, with E Corp’s rolling blackouts providing her sojourn the atmosphere of a dark fairy tale. Slowly our main vector of information shifts from sight to sound: the slap of her shoes on the pavement, the buzz of failing electrical wires, the keening whir of car alarms, squealing tires stopping short in the sudden absence of streetlights and stoplights, the pulsating hum and ominous strings of composer Mac Quayle’s never-better score.

A crosscut to Elliot and Angela, holed up on a subway car where she reveals her intention to turn herself in, prominently features fake ads reading, appropriately enough, “Phase: Excellent Audio for Discerning Listeners.” Their achingly romantic kiss, both a first and, it seems, a farewell, establishes a tone of terrible finality even before Angela is cornered by imposing figures, their faces obscured.

The orchestral portion of the score has crested and fallen by the time we return to Dom, who runs, panting, to the foreground of a static shot showing the restaurant (in reality, Lupe’s in Soho, for those who care) where her suspects, Darlene and Cisco, have retreated for a late meal. Still out of breath, she picks up her phone and summons all units to the location.