Of all the sinister developments on last week’s penultimate episode of the first season of Mr. Robot—USA’s breakout summer thriller, which regularly deals in psychosis, drug addiction, and large-scale data hacking—one of the most sinister came in the form of a job offer. Angela, former cyber security worker turned yuppie Erin Brockovich, has spent the last few episodes piecing together a class-action lawsuit against E Corp, a massive conglomerate responsible for an ecological disaster that killed her mother—and Mr. Robot protagonist Elliot’s father.

Though her case seems rock-solid, Angela quickly realizes no one in cyber security will ever hire her again, and that she can’t will her way into a job at a law firm. A former E Corp executive appears at her house. “A suggestion,” the man sneers. “If you want to change things, perhaps you should try from within.”

We see most of the world of Mr. Robot through the filter of Elliot’s paranoia, which occludes and reduces its complexities. Every time a character mentions E Corp, for instance, Elliot hears “Evil Corp.” Mr. Robot is a purposefully cinematic show—creator Sam Esmail likes to quote film history, from Fincher to Kubrick, whenever possible. Here, he alludes to science fiction’s long history of evil conglomerates, from Blade Runner’s Tyrell Corporation (there’s even a character named “Tyrell” on Mr. Robot) to the Alien movies’ Weyland-Yutani.

Elliot doesn’t distinguish between the traditional sci-fi “evil corporation” and a place like E Corp. Mr. Robot asks why we do.

The evil corporation typically stands in for the danger of mixing capitalism with some larger hubris. “We went too far,” say the people who made artificial intelligence (Cyberdyne, Terminator), or tried to revive dinosaurs (InGen, Jurassic Park), or decided to breed radioactive spiders (Oscorp, Spider-Man, though actually, that worked out okay). In these stories, the heroes do the kind of economic and moral regulation both the Federal Reserve and Norman Rockwell would be proud of: family, duty, basic decency. Something has to keep business in check.

But when we get glimpses of the world in between the torn seams in Elliot’s narration, it’s harder to call E Corp an “evil” corporation in the traditional sense. There are no off-the-books R&D or plots to bribe world leaders, no villains cackling about their next transhuman innovation. E Corp holds a ton of consumer credit debt; that it was once responsible for a chemical spill; that its CEO Phillip Prince speaks with the charismatic fervor of a Jeff Bezos or a Steve Jobs. In one episode, a few male executives joke about how women only get ahead by sleeping their way to the top. In other words, look closely and you’ll find E Corp has its ethical slipups, but it’s only about as evil as any real-life company that sells you phones, loans, eggplants, or Elsa dolls. Elliot doesn’t distinguish between the traditional sci-fi “evil corporation” and a place like E Corp. Mr. Robot asks why we do.

To send up E Corp’s corporate culture, Mr. Robot provides Tyrell Wellick, a Swedish ladder-climber in the grip of American Psycho-sis. Tyrell tries to seduce and murder his way into a position as Evil Corp’s CTO. But as the season goes on, it becomes clear that his Macbeth-like plots (and his Lady Macbeth-like wife) are actually a poor fit for E Corp’s amoral way of doing business. “I loved this company,” Tyrell tells a boss as he’s let go. Not that the company cares. Life at E Corp is far too bland for things like emotion or Shakespeare. When Angela confronts an executive about the details of a 1993 meeting crucial to her lawsuit, all he can remember is that he was drunk, it was raining, and they had shrimp cocktail.

Angela’s job offer is, in many ways, just setting the table for Mr. Robot’s second season. Though Mr. Robot was initially conceived as a feature-length film, this is a moment where its new format shines: Serialized television is exceedingly good at depicting compromise. In the first season of The Office, Jim tells the camera that he would rather jump in front of a train than have a long-term career at Dunder Mifflin. He sticks around for eight more seasons. In its fifth season, Angel made its characters executives at the literally evil law firm they had fought against in the last four. They get more resources, but they also have to make some nasty concessions to the also literal Powers That Be. HBO’s two-season wonder Enlightened followed a woman who took the rare stance against pervasive evil (a company known as Abaddon, a likely E Corp partner), at great emotional expense. On TV, characters might hit on some horrifying truth, a là “Soylent Green is people!” But in the next episode, they still have to eat.

The characters on Mr. Robot all have to decide whether or not to keep eating the Soylent. Like many of the show’s bystanders, Angela’s trend-happy ex-boyfriend Ollie is happy to buy into the system—until, of course, it screws him over. Elliot resists pretty much every trend, but that only seems to fuel his paranoia and instability.

And then there’s Angela, standing in that dark room, pondering her job offer. If she takes it, she might convince E Corp to create a non-profit wing or rewrite all their policies on toxic waste. Her hire would make for good PR, and she’d be able to pay off her father’s debts—as Michael Scott might say, that’s a win-win-win. Mr. Robot understands the gravity of all those excuses, and yet, it reminds you, they are still excuses. It might be easy to work for E Corp, and it might make you happy too, but you should know what the E represents.