Rating: 4/5 stars

Two years ago, USA Network introduced the world to arguably its first great show in five years. The show was “Mr. Robot,” and it introduced viewers to Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek, “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb”), a young hacker recruited into an underground hacker group called F-Society by their leader, Mr. Robot (Christian Slater “Way of the Wicked”). Their goal was to take down E-Corp, jokingly referenced by everyone as “Evil” Corp, a massive company that had its corporate claws in every form of business on the planet.

Elliot’s interest in taking them down came from the death of his father, who died from cancer after inhaling toxic fumes at a company under E-Corp’s control. The other main characters introduced were Darlene (Carly Chaikin, “Suburgatory”), Elliot’s fellow F-Society Hacker, Angela (Portia Doubleday, “Her”) Elliot’s childhood friend and crush who is constantly trying to climb the corporate ladder at her and Elliot’s company, and Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallström, “Ego”), an executive at E-Corp who gets passed over for promotion and is looking for a new way to advance.

After one season of awesome subtlety followed up by a second season that for the most part dragged its feet, season three is off to a terrific start, moving at a breakneck pace in only its first two episodes, giving viewers a whole new story with a very different set of stakes and, for the most part, keeping to a straightforward story with no twists (yet).

Malek kills it as Elliot, once again showing that he is the master of conveying emotion through bug eyes. Seriously though, Malek proves for the third time in a row that he is ultimately a tortured being who really does not know what he wants for himself, only that he wants to help people, and he is finally realizing that everything he may have done has only made things worse.

Despite Malek’s amazing, Emmy-winning performance delivering once again, the true scene-stealer is Slater as Elliot’s elusive and agenda-pursuing alternate personality/dad manifesto, Mr. Robot. The reason is that this time, Elliot and Mr. Robot have completely opposite agendas. Mr. Robot has the one-up on Elliot in that now, he can take over Elliot whenever he wants without Elliot being aware that he is not in control. This is shown in a particular scene in episode two “Undo,” when Elliot shifts to Mr. Robot while in the presence of his therapist Krista. Mr. Robot made clear that he was not a puppet to be controlled, truly allowing Slater to show his dark side in what really was a scary scene.

The rest of the supporting cast was a bit on the back burner, with the focus really shifting to Elliot and the opposing force of the Dark Army, as Darlene, Angela and Tyrell all had little to no screen time between both of the first two episodes.

A couple other returning faces who did indeed steal the spotlight were Michael Cristofer (“Year by the Sea”) and B. D. Wong (“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”) as E-corp CEO Philip Price and Minister Zhang, also known as White Rose, leader of the Dark Army. These two encounters over the last two years have made for some of the darkest and simultaneously entertaining moments throughout the show, and they do not hold back here either.

Sam Esmail continues to show that he truly has taken David Fincher’s shooting style to heart, continuing to show the progression of the story through subtle, smooth camera movements, very shadowy lighting and mostly little dialogue (aside from Elliot’s inner monologue that opens and closes both the episodes), and mixing that with a sharp, quick editing style that speeds the story up to 1,000 when things go down.

It may have had a few bumps along the road, but Mr. Robot is back and it is indeed better than ever.

Photo: Mr. Robot via YouTube.com