'Mr. Robot' Season 2 in Review: Identity Crisis Run Amok

A recurring motif put our divided-mind anti-hero Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) -- and by extension, us, his "hello, friend" buddy -- in the backseat of a car and took us for wild rides by mad men and toady tools. This was the premise of the madly meta "Mr. Robot" sitcom, when Mr. Robot (Christian Slater), Elliot's rogue alter-ego and frequent altered state, seized the wheel of his consciousness and took him on a great escape. This was the cliffhanger of last week's trippy and tricky outing, with Elliot riding shotgun in a cab with a dark passenger he thought was dead, Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallstrom). He freaked and demanded his immediate release, a hair-pulling panic that might have spoken for us, too. Such was the thrill, frustration, and meaning of season 2, a saga of identity crisis run amok in a high anxiety culture on the blink and on the brink. All of its characters became unreliable narrators of themselves, and their distortions and their dimness became threatening to everyone as they executed reckless campaigns for change. Each of them had ideas for how to make the world great again.