‘Mr. Robot’: The Bully, the Bat and the B*tch

Four seasons in, and it goes without saying that USA’s Mr. Robot is meticulously constructed. Visually, thematically, plot-wise, everything is carefully filtered through the lens of creator Sam Esmail’s camera. But this week’s episode, “406 Not Acceptable,” written by Amelia Gray and directed by Esmail, stood out for beginning with a story told by monstrous crimelord Fernando Vera (Elliot Villar), and then playing out iterations of that story throughout the episode; over and over again, until it eventually morphed into something new.

Spoilers for Mr. Robot Season 4, Episode 6 “406 Not Acceptable” past this point.

More or less, this week’s episode picks up right after the end of last week’s dialogue-free hour, with Vera holding therapist Krista Gordon (Gloria Reuben) hostage in order to get information on her former patient, Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek). Honest question: does anyone tell long monologues about their past that work as metaphors, outside of a drama? Probably not, but thanks to Villar’s snake-like delivery, it works.

It also helps that the story breaks down to the level of a myth about the Bully, the Bitch, and the Bat. In the story, which may or may not have happened to Vera when he was younger — Gordon later, possibly correctly, surmises that Vera was the Bitch here — a bullied kid who loves baseball gets a bat for Christmas, and proceeds to nearly murder the kid who had bullied him for years. The way Vera explains it, what he’s looking for in Gordon is for her to be the Bat. He doesn’t see himself as a Bully, even though he’s monologuing and aggressively eating grapefruits with a very sharp grapefruit spoon. He just wants her to give him another Bat, information on Elliot that will allow him to break his target down.

Meanwhile, Elliot is playing out the situation on his own. Running out of time to destroy the global conglomerate known as the Deus Group, he tricks former drug addict Olivia Cortez (Dominik Garcia) into drinking a peppermint mocha laced with Oxycontin. In the back of his mind, his alternate personality Mr. Robot (Christian Slater) is becoming uneasy with Elliot’s actions… In the process of trying to save the world, Elliot has become The Bully, and he’s using Olivia as his Bat, very much against her will.

The third storyline finds Dominique “Dom” DiPierro (Grace Gummer) confronting Darlene (Carly Chaikin). Thanks to blackmail from hacker group The Dark Army, Dom is being forced to get information from Darlene, and then kill her. Here, the story takes several forms: Darlene once slept with Dom to get info, making her The Bitch, and that led to Dom being in the situation where she’s now the Bully.

There’s a turn in the story, though, info that Vera leaves out until he’s gotten Krista to accuse him of being The Bitch. He explains that in the second half, once The Bully was lying in the hospital nearly dead, The Bitch went there to see him. The Bully thought The Bitch was there to finish the job, but instead he sat there and held his hand until he was released. And after that, The Bitch owned The Bully. That’s Vera’s plan for Elliot: to break him down, then build him back up with love.

…And that’s what everyone in their own, individual storylines does. Elliot pushes Olivia too hard, and she tries to commit suicide. Once she’s broken, he’s able to appeal to her humanity, explain the Deus Group has caused multiple massacres, including the death of her own mother, so she helps him get the access to their servers he needs. Dom nearly kills Darlene in a harrowing scene, before realizing that in order to get away from the Dark Army, Darlene needs to kill her (she doesn’t, and thanks to some last minute finagling by Darlene, they both manage to stay alive).

But worst of all, Vera successfully breaks Krista with this story, and his aggressive grapefruit eating. She gives him Elliot’s file, which reveals his biggest secret, the way to break him down: Mr. Robot. Elliot gets a phone call from Krista and rushes to her aid, fully knowing it’s a trap, only to be thrown in the trunk of a car by Vera. Now it’s Elliot’s turn to become The Bitch. The big question though is, now that Mr. Robot is wary of Elliot’s motivations, will he become The Bat Vera needs? Or will the dual personality once again become The Bully who nearly destroyed the world back in Season 1?

Mr. Robot airs Sundays at 10/9c on USA.

Where to watch Mr. Robot