'Mr Robot' Season 4 Episode 6 sees Elliot drug Olivia, Krista helps Vera kidnap him and Dom refuses to kill Darlene on Christmas
"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee,” said Friedrich Nietzsche in 'Beyond Good and Evil'.
It has been a long, hard fight against Whiterose and the Dark Army. Along the way, Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) has lost people, manipulated people and hurt people. It has all been for the "greater good", of course.
Whiterose has been the silent Hitler-like figure of evil in creator Sam Esmail's alternative history. What would you do to get rid of a force of evil like that? For Elliot, the answer has been clear from the very beginning. Anything.
So when he has to drug Olivia Cortez (Dominik García-Lorido) to blackmail her into calling her boss to authorize a transaction so he can get his password, Elliot doesn't hesitate. Mr. Robot (Christian Slater) tries to act as his conscience but is overruled.
When he can't get through to Elliot, he talks to us instead. About dread, about crossing lines and the darkness that awaits when you've left all the lines behind you. For Elliot, Olivia was a connection, a reminder he could let people in.
In previous episodes, he reconnected with Darlene Alderson (Carly Chaikin) and, in a strange way, with Tyrell Wellick too. But the question never was about whether he should let other people in, but if others should let him in.
When Elliot turns up with a peppermint mocha at Olivia's doorstep Christmas morning, little does she know it is a trojan coffee, laced with her nemesis drug, oxycontin. When she drinks it, Elliot has "hacked" her in the physical sense.
As a drug addict, there is no telling if she'll be able to kick it again. So despite Elliot's rationalizations about the evil he is fighting and her "choice" to work for a shady overseas bank in Cypress, she tells him while she might be working for monsters, he is a monster - the kind that still doesn't know he is one.
She slits her wrists to end it all but Elliot saves her and then hands her the phone to make that call to her boss. None of this is easy for Elliot though, who still thinks of himself as a hero.
So despite knowing its a set-up, he follows Krista Gordon's (Gloria Reuben) instructions to meet her and is promptly captured by Fernando Vera (Elliot Villar) and his thugs and shoved into the trunk of their car.
Vera's kidnapping of Elliot is preceded by a nightmare Christmas morning for Krista as Vera binds her and gags her and tells her a story of a "little b***h" (himself), who was bullied repeatedly. It all stopped when he used his Christmas morning toy, an aluminum baseball bat, to crush his tormentor's skull and land him in the hospital.
The most sinister part of the story is when Vera, his eyes dripping with sincerity and compassion, tells Krista that he owned the bully after he held his hand, gently and with kindness, as he lay in his hospital bed. It is Stockholm syndrome 101 and Vera wants to try it with Elliot and he knows Krista has the key to breaking Elliot so he can "build him up" again.
Krista isn't immune to the Stockholm syndrome either. She gives up the secret to "cracking Elliot" after Vera tells her he won't hurt her after terrifying her for hours before that. She tells Vera about "Mr. Robot" and calls Elliot so Vera can kidnap him.
Dom (Grace Gummer) is in a similar situation of making choices on the razor's edge in this episode. After Janice (Ashlie Atkinson) tells her to bring in Elliot and Darlene, she invades Darlene's apartment just as she is leaving. She overhears Darlene talking about their GPS tracking pact and holds her at gunpoint.
Janice, ever the efficient Dark Army agent, tells Dom to kill Darlene if all they need is her phone to track Elliot. She gives her till 3:30 p.m. If anyone had a reason to kill Darlene, it would be Dom considering she is in the Dark Army's control because Darlene betrayed her. But unlike Elliot, she knows where her line is. She is not a murderer.
She hands Darlene the gun and the phone, telling her to kill her because it is the only way the Dark Army won't go after her family. But Darlene is no murderer either and she can't pull the trigger.
A second later, all choices are moot as Janice hulks through the door with her assistants. She is surprised at the state of affairs, surprised that Dom didn't kill Darlene and even more astonished at how quickly Darlene has wiped her phone so that it can't be used to track Elliot anymore.
All in all, it has been an interesting Christmas in Sam Esmail land. Our only hope is that when Vera "breaks" Elliot, we will finally get to meet the mysterious third alter.
'Mr. Robot' airs on the USA Network Sundays at 10/9c.
