Hello friend.When we left season one of Mr. Robot, Elliot was following the instructions he was hearing from the voice in his head, manifesting as his father after he had (maybe) executed the largest upset to world financial systems in human history. He heard a knock on his door and the camera cut as he got up to answer. He wanted to save the world. What’s unclear going into season two is whether or not he can save himself.In the opening scenes, we learn that it was Elliot who executed the Evil Corp hack and not Tyrell, although Tyrell is there, walking around with that mask and likely the face behind it in the last fsociety video, taking credit. While Elliot is filling in the gaps for us, he takes us way back into his childhood, showing us the moment he fell out of/was pushed out of his childhood bedroom window. This resulted in a head trauma that his doctor isn’t terribly worried about, but all good friends can already imagine may be the source of his current disassociate disorder. If anything, we should be worried that Elliot hasn’t spoken directly to us yet in this episode.The first music cue is “Daydream,” from 1969, and it’s a fascinating choice. The song has been sampled and sample and sampled so many times and over generations that everyone who hears it will have a different reference point. Some will think of the Lupe Fiasco track, others go to Portishead, some might recognize the song sample from when the Beta Band used it (depending on how deep into High Fidelity you got), others might place it from The Pharcyde’s sample. At this point everyone’s experience with the song is a copy of a copy of a copy, which sets the mood for where your head should be and foreshadowing what he’s about to tell us.Joey Bada$$’s debut appearance as Elliot’s new friend Leon, who just discovered Seinfeld and relates plot points endlessly over meals, lets us know the time Elliot has spent without us is no more than a show about nothing. Without you, friend, his life has made no progress. He has been trying to socialize himself, though, and we meet the wallpaper of people who he’s surrounded himself with while we were going. He’s living with his mother (“She’s the strictest person I know…Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, right?”), with no computer or internet access and visiting Krista for therapy. Repetition is the trick he’s trying to keep himself normal.Finally, Elliot speaks to us. He doesn’t trust us, friends, but he trusts his father even less. It turns out that journal he’s keeping is a less than faithful transcript of his father’s rants and demands. It would seem the father who pushed him out of his bedroom window is withholding Tyrell’s location and has been habitually destroying Elliot – on this occasion, he shoots him in the head. We see shortly this battle for control isn’t limited to visions of his father hurting him, but includes his threats to hurt those who come in contact with him.A small note on the scene where the kids in fsociety masks take the balls off the bull in the Financial District: It is well known that rubbing the balls on that thing is supposed to be good luck. You’re bringing a plague on all our houses, hooligans.The best part of Darlene hacking the smart house of Susan Jacobs, the general counsel for Evil Corp, (played by Sandrine Holt who you know from House of Cards ) is when she shows up in Lolita sunglasses with a one-legged man in tow. It’s good to see you, friend. Since we last saw her, she’s become quite the social crusader and is the leader of the Five/Nine, filling the hole Elliot left. Exposition lets us know that what they did, destroying the debt records held by Evil Corp, seem to have made things worse, rather than better. She sets in motion a new hack, demanding $5.9 million dollars from Evil Corp. In the face of this new attack, Jacobs meets with CEO Phillip Price and last season’s newly crowned CTO Scott Knowles to explain that the banks will be down for five days, wrecking more havoc on a system in peril. My question is: how are they keeping this from the press and the public? We don’t see their new PR maven, Angela, until episode two, but could she be the mastermind keeping this hack on lockdown?