Mr. Robot Episode 2.10 eps2.8h1dden?pr0ccess.axx

Elliot wonders if Mr. Robot has been lying to him; Darlene attempts to do the right thing; Dom and the FBI get closer.

As the finale approaches, Mr. Robot allows our two favorite pairs of star-crossed lovers -- Elliot and Angela, Darlene and Cisco -- to share some tender moments before it all gets shot to hell (literally, figuratively, the whole shebang) at the end...

The Last Honest Man

The episode opens with a flashback of a meeting between Terry Colby, whose book, The Last Honest Man, is about to published, and Phillip Price. Phillip asks his then CTO to pull some strings with an ambassador friend around a UN vote to help pave the way for China to annex the Congo. It may be just an(other) example of Phillip's unassailable God complex or it could be a clue as to what Phillip and Whiterose have been scheming. Or both.

Joanna and "Ollie"

We don't quite find out why Joanna called Elliot "Ollie" or how Joanna's version of Ollie dovetails with the Ollie Parker whom Dom tells Santiago about (more about that below). However, we do learn that Joanna knows that Tyrell and Elliot were working together, that Sutherland messed up his job as it related to Elliot, and that Joanna makes Mr. Robot very, very nervous. When Elliot tells her he doesn't know where Tyrell is, she coerces him with a sexy whisper into tracing the calls she's been getting from the burner phone she believes Tyrell sent to her. Mr. Robot tries to warn Elliot away from helping this "psycho" but, you know, Joanna whispered in his ear so how could resist?

Bingo!

Dom gets called to the Smart House while the FBI is there tearing apart the place upon suspicion that Susan Jacobs has gone missing. Agent Yang sent for Dom because she has made a connection between the Smart House and the DC activists who pulled the prank. The activists were found in Maryland two days ago. A car chase ensued and while most of them were apprehended, one got away. A neighbor three doors down from Susan Jacobs' place spotted someone who is mentioned in Dom's code name case with another male getting into a cab. The composite she gets from the neighbor winds up looking an awful lot like Cisco, which looks an awful lot like the composite they got from the testimony of Ollie Parker (did Elliot rat out Cisco as Ollie Parker?). But Santiago won't give her the time to follow up on this fresh lead. He has to abide by the new agency rules, which require him to put out a "BOLO" through the media right away. To make up for it, Santiago tips off Dom that another agent has tracked down the cab driver, which leads Dom to Cisco's place. There she finds a picture ID that confirms both the sketches are of Cisco, a.k.a. Francis Shaw.

But "Francis" and Darlene are not at his place when Dom arrives because they're hanging out at the hospital, where Cisco has convinced Darlene to take Vincent, Darlene's fsociety DC foot soldier, after Cisco found him barely alive at Susan Jacobs' place. Darlene, as one of America's Newest Most Wanteds, should've listened to her instincts and her cold, cold heart and avoided going to the hospital. And they definitely shouldn't have stayed there for an hour while she shared a childhood story...

Mr. Robot Goes AWOL Too

Sutherland takes Elliot to a computer store so he can procure the necessary tools to hack Joanna's mystery burner phone. While there, an unknown call comes through. All Elliot hears is heavy breathing, which, like Joanna, he imagines to be Tyrell. The call freaks out Mr. Robot so much that by the time Elliot and Sutherland get to Elliot's place, Mr. Robot has disappeared. Which is all the weirder because Mr. Robot has been agitating Elliot to get back to his place since he left jail. What is he afraid that Elliot will find once he hacks the phone? Did Mr. Robot lie about Tyrell? While Elliot does his thing, he gets a message from Angela, who's using the alias Claudia Kinkaid (we're not sure if that's meaningful but there seem to be a lot of aliases coming up in this episode), asking him to meet her. While he waits for his trick to get the source of the blocked call from the carrier, he goes to meet Angela on the subway.

The Kiss

On an empty subway car, Angela tells Elliot that she's going to confess that she planted the femtocell. She is on her way to meet her lawyer now. Angela is not going to implicate him and Darlene but she can't keep pretending it's going to go away or that they can beat the system. She also warns him against working with his dad or whatever or whoever he is, which seems to resonate. While they hug goodbye, he kisses her (!!). His voiceover says that he doesn't want to leave her, but he does anyway at the next stop. With tears in her eyes, she looks away. When she looks back, there's a man and a woman standing before her in what she thought was an empty car.

Meanwhile, Back at the Hospital...

Dom and Santiago have arrived to speak to the nurse who called the tip line after seeing the sketch of Cisco on TV, but Cisco and Darlene are already gone. Santiago thinks they won't be coming back but Dom pieces together a timeline that leads her to believe that they don't know Cisco's sketch is everywhere. They must be planning to come back to check on their friend after the doctors have completed some tests, which means they're close by... Sometimes the Worst Decision is NOT Making One

Yep. They're at a nearby diner. Darlene should've trusted her instincts to bolt but once again, Cisco convinces her to pause while they think through their plan. Because just as Dom spots them in the diner window, radios for backup, and then goes inside to talk to and seemingly argue with them, a motorcycle pulls up outside with two guys in helmets. One guy gets off and starts shooting through the window. Everyone inside drops out of our sight. Dom pops back up and manages to hit the shooter. As soon as he hears the police sirens, he shoots himself dead (hello, Dark Army!) as his partner drives off. Dom runs outside, blood that is not her own splattered across her shocked and frustrated face, but the motorcycle is gone.