How Much Of Mr. Robot Is...Like, Real?

How much of Mr. Robot is...like, real?

I don't mean in the sense of "could this really happen?" -- I mean how much should we assume that Elliot's perception of events lines up with what's actually happening within the world of the show? In the pilot, we learned that Elliot has trained himself, as he puts it, to replace every "E" in "E Corp" with "Evil," so that even when other characters or TV chyrons mention the company, "Evil Corp" is how it's always known. So if we already know he's editing dialogue on the fly from the people he interacts with to make that substitution, what else is he altering to tell his version of this story, whatever it is? (For the record, I hope the answer to this one is "not much." My tiny mind will not be able to keep this already pretty complex world straight if I have to mentally correct for an unreliable/delusional/narcotics-addled narrator on top of everything else.)

Is this a clue???

Compare the last shot of the pilot from the "previously" segment to the first shot of "eps.1.1_ones-and-zer0es.mpeg."

Is this just reflective of the fact that Rami Malek's hair changed from the time the pilot was shot to when production resumed after the show was picked up? Or does it mean something? DO YOU SEE WHAT I AM SAYING?!

Are they serious with these episode titles, btw?

If you thought "eps.1.1_ones-and-zer0es.mpeg" was an extreme typo, it is not: it's the actual title of this show's second episode, coming hard on the heels of the pilot, a.k.a. "eps1.0hellofriend.mov." Next week's episode is "eps.1.2_d3bug.mkv." I get what they're trying to do, but (a) no one will ever use those episode titles -- they're just going to go with season and episode number since WE ARE LIVING IN A SOCIETY, and (b) even that is confusing now because in the show's naming convention the first episode is Episode 0! Think before you try to get cute with data people might want to use to find/organize/discuss your show, show.

Did the Evil Corp job offer even happen?

Getting shoved into a black SUV and ferried to a room filled with like a dozen lawyers seems like a paranoid fantasy, but is it? Elliot holds firm to his anti-Evil Corp beliefs and turns it down -- as we already know, he doesn't care about money -- but that doesn't stop him investigating Tyrell, which he finds so easy for someone who's a CTO that he assumes it was a trap. But before Elliot gets freaked out by how suspiciously cinchy it was for him to dominate Tyrell technologically, what he sees is also suspiciously generic.

Granted, I'm predisposed to think anyone this Aryan-looking is probably up to no good, but this weird face on Tyrell also seems like it could be Elliot's misguided idea of how normal people look happy on vacation.

Is Tyrell even real? Is Mr. Robot???

Should we assume that any character we don't see doing things independent of Elliot is an Elliot hallucination? At first I was like, well, no, Mr. Robot's real, because we saw him talking to Darlene, and this week Darlene shows up at Elliot's place. But if both Darlene and Mr. Robot have no lives that we see except where Elliot's path has crossed theirs, that doesn't necessarily mean anything anyway!

What's the rap CD guy's deal?

Since the scene at Angela and Ollie's apartment exists separately from Elliot (other than her placing a call to him that he ignores), we can probably trust that Ollie the idiot really did put a burned CD he got from some hustler on the street and thus turn on his computer's webcam.

Is this guy trying to get to Elliot via intel he can gather from spying on Angela? Or is Ollie more than just the cheating frat goober Elliot's taken him for?

So if Mr. Robot isn't real, what happened here?

After angrily refusing to participate in a plan to blow up a natural gas plant (that would take out its real target, a neighbouring data center) because it may kill innocent people, Elliot finally meets up with Mr. Robot again and, under duress, tells the story of how his father died: a former Evil Corp computer engineer, he got cancer Elliot blames on the company (which I would have thought was a stretch had not a character on Halt And Catch Fire just also received a potentially fatal diagnosis due to exposure to substances used in computer hardware development just this week). Elliot wouldn't keep his father's secret with regard to his health, telling his mother, and Elliot Sr. got so angry that he shoved Elliot hard enough to send him falling out a window and then never spoke to him again. (OR DID ANY OF THAT EVEN HAPPEN?! For the sake of not getting marooned in this cul-de-sac, let's agree for now that it did.) Seems like Mr. Robot already knows that story, though, because he's just as appalled by Elliot's disloyalty as his father was, and enacts the appropriate punishment.

Based on the scenes from next week's episode, it seems like Elliot does get injured by abruptly departing the railing...

...except he doesn't break anything? Not even, like, his wrist by trying to break his fall? On these rocks?

Did "Mr. Robot" lure Elliot to a high railing, induce him to tell this story, and then "push" Elliot because he's a projection of Elliot's mind and Elliot just needed a frame around which to throw himself down onto the beach?

Is Elliot ever going to be a responsible dog owner to Flipper?

Elliot, this poor dog isn't randomly choosing to void his waste on your bed. He is sending you a message, which is that you should walk him. IF IN FACT YOU EVEN HAVE A DOG AT ALL.