Season 4, Episode 6: ‘406 Not Acceptable’

Dread, Mr. Robot explains, is that feeling of crossing a line you don’t realize exists until you’ve already crossed it. It’s that “My God, what have I done” sensation, when you find yourself in over your head and realize you’re the one who got yourself there.

And if there’s one thing the director Sam Esmail does well, it’s dread. His long takes, his slow zooms, his beautiful close-ups of big-eyed people staring in disbelief: They make him television’s poet laureate of waiting for the other shoe to drop, and knowing that when it falls, it will hit hard.

This week’s episode of “Mr. Robot” was all about that ugly feeling. It divides its time between three situations in which characters are held against their will, desperate to find a way out, waiting to see what their captor will do next. Throw in the composer Mac Quayle ’s increasingly ominous score and the cinematographer Tod Campbell ’s confidently stark camera work and you have a recipe for a very black Christmas indeed.

In all three cases, the captives are unable to meet their captors’ demands without breaking some important part of themselves clean off. For Olivia, the seeds of her predicament were planted a couple of episodes ago when Elliot slept with her in order to access files pertaining to the all-powerful Deus Group. Exploiting her history of addiction and child-custody disputes, Elliot returns to her apartment bearing a peppermint latte spiked with oxycodone. Once the drugs are in her system, the hook is set: He warns her that he will see to it that she loses custody of her child unless she helps him steal her boss’s login credentials.