Mr. Robot Review: 407 Proxy Authentication Required (Season 4 Episode 7)

In every sense of the way, Mr. Robot Season 4 Episode 7, “407 Proxy Authentication Required,” is THAT episode.

The episode that defines a series. The episode that defines an actor’s career. The episode you’re okay with waiting four seasons to see unfold.

We asked for answers and Mr. Robot gives them to us with a gripping bottle episode that masquerades as an elaborate Broadway play. Relying heavily on Malek, Slater, Villar and Reuben to relay a pivotal moment in Elliot’s origin story, the series manages to do the unthinkable.

This latest installment is a theatrical event to behold. Despite the heavy subject matter and the devastating ramifications, We are left craving more of the destruction this episode leaves in our wake. We are left feeling just as broken as Elliot and yet loving every second of these emotions we are experiencing because this is what watching good television should feel like — exhilarating, horrifying, and a little bit nauseating.

Everything about this episode is cinematic.

It’s hard to believe as much when the entirety of this latest installment takes place within two rooms. But the camera work and haunting nature of Krista’s lavish apartment makes the scope of each scene feel much bigger.

That’s in large part thanks to the unusually dramatic score that accompanies Elliot and Vera throughout the apartment. The classical music is so prominent at times it could be its own character, fighting for a piece in Elliot and Vera’s power struggle.

These overbearing spurts of orchestra music are something you would expect to hear unfolding in a classic movie or a play. You don’t quite expect a tv series to be accompanied by such grand theatrics.

But when you have a character like Vera taking up all the extra air in a room you need something to compete with him and this grand score does a fine job of that. Besides, the extra pizzaz feels necessary if Mr. Robot is to construct an episode as momentous as this. 

Mr. Robot leans into the theatrics of Vera’s showmanship by embracing the stage that has been set.

By breaking this storyline into five acts with title cards, the show allows the characters room to transition between scenes without the help of commercials and execute this risky play-like format with considerable ease.

There are times when the escalating music comes off as ridiculous and times where Vera’s rambling villain monologues threaten to stall the progression of the plot, but I appreciate what Mr. Robot is trying to do here because what it’s doing is incredible.

“407 Proxy Authentication Required,” takes some big swings when it could just as easily coast on the dialogue. In doing so, this series continues to demonstrate the payoffs of taking risks regardless of whether they will pan out. At the end of the day, Elliot is trapped but this show isn’t going to be trapped within the confines of its formatting.

Years from now, we won’t remember the ways in which this episode failed. We’ll remember all the ways in which this episode succeeded — and all the ways it brutally and beautifully broke us.

And boy, did this episode break us.

The window incident has hung over this series like an ominous storm cloud since the start and fans have waited knowing nothing good can come from knowing why Elliot jumped out that window. The initial reveal that Elliot’s father abused him is not particularly surprising. However, the realization that it was something much worse is damn near heartbreaking.

It’s the kind of bone-chilling epiphany you want to look away from but when the camera is committed to a close up of Malek and you’re seeing the horrifying accuracy of a man levelled by devastation, it’s hard to look away. It’s hard to do anything but hold your breath and watch this incredible actor chew the scene to pieces as his character comes to terms with unthinkable trauma.

I know it has been said countless times before this season, but after this heartwrenching performance, it bears repeating. Malek is a force to be reckoned with and his portrayal of Elliot in the final moments of this episode is a testament to his incredible emotional range as an actor.

The actor allows us to feel every inch of Elliot’s pain as we watched his face twist into a mask of horror and his body shrink farther and farther into the couch.

In any other circumstance, Malek would outshine the rest of the cast, but not Mr. Robot. This is a show that once banked on Christian Slater to headline this series and now every member of the main cast could easily headline their own series.

Act five includes one of the hardest scenes of this series to sell and yet every actor present understands the stakes of their performance. Slater is quick on his feet and the pain in his eyes is damming as Mr. Robot tells Elliot he can no longer protect him from the truth. Not to be left behind Krista and Vera have their purposes in the scene and they execute them beautifully.

Not to be outdone is the lore this show has been meticulously crafting for 4 seasons to make sure these performances don’t go to waste.

This reveal has consequences that can be felt across the entire series. You think back to Elliot’s no touching rule, his relationship with his mother, and those final moments with his father in the movie theatre. All these seemingly insignificant details make the punch of this reveal all the more painful.

The success of “407 Proxy Authentication Required” is a prime example of why more series should plan their ending before they start filming their pilot. 

It is difficult to find the words to describe what may just be the best episode of television to air this year.

This episode is far from traditional with its theatrics and incessant need to be different at any cost. Yet, not once does Mr. Robot’s showmanship get in its own way.

In fact, when Vera collapses with his brother’s knife sticking out of his back and the lights turn off one by one, it feels like just enough.

If there was ever an episode that defined a series, Mr. Robot just gave it to us.

What did you think of this episode of Mr. Robot? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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

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