The Bleak Cynicism of Mr. Robot

You might wonder, watching the past few years of prestige television, if drama is having an identity crisis. As comedy increasingly encroaches on its territory, tackling subjects like depression, captivity, racism, abortion, and mass shootings with sensitivity and intellectual heft, drama seems to be compensating by going full-throttle toward bleakness. Season two of Netflix’s Daredevil was a gory, 13-episode slog through mutilated body parts and sexualized torture; Starz’s The Girlf