‘Mr. Robot’ season 2, episode 3 video: The two sides wage war

There are two sides to a coin, and for Elliot Alderson two sides to a person. On one side you have relative peace, and on the other side chaos. Maybe one side is facing upwards, but eventually you have to worry about it flipping. Unless you have one of the crazy two-headed coins that is used by magicians here and there, eventually things are going to come up tails.

This may be somewhat of a silly metaphor, but it does paint some of the stakes that are present in the next new episode of “Mr. Robot” that is airing on USA Network Wednesday night. Elliot is waging war with his inner self, and while he may not want Mr. Robot to be there, he does not know how to tell him to go away.

Yet, maybe there is still a way! The promo alludes to a potential winner-takes-all showdown between the two parties, with the winner getting to exercise some sort of control. It’s an interesting scenario for Elliot to explore, but herein lies the problem with it: Trust. Can he really be so sure that Mr. Robot will keep his end of the bargain? Unreliable narrators have in many ways become a hallmark of this show.

If there is one thing that does give us a little bit of pause for the series, it is that the episode lengths for the show continue to balloon. Tomorrow night’s installment will run almost a solid 90 minutes including commercials; we will watch it before rendering a verdict, but sometimes you can stretch out your episodes more than you need to.