USA’s Mr. Robot
Season 4, Episode 5: “405 Method Not Allowed”
Directed & Written
by Sam Esmail

* For a recap & review of the previous episode, “404 Not Found” – click here
* For a recap & review of the next episode, “406 Not Acceptable” – click here
Elliot lights the van on fire with the dead guy inside, not long after saying goodbye to Wellick for what will definitely be the last time. Perfect timing for Darlene to stop and look up to the sky, seeing the dark smoke from the fire. She finds the smouldering van by the roadside, and her brother waiting not far. They drive off together silently. Hallelujah, Christmas morn has come!
Our hacker isn’t doing well. He’s struggling, falling to the floor while Darlene isn’t around. He also has to let Phillip know Tyrell’s “not coming to the meeting tonight“— understatement of the millennium. Price has other business, too. He gets a note to meet someone outside E Corp. Very clandestine shit. In the meantime, the holiday season, for Dom, consists of looking into the charred mess Elliot left behind on the road. Creepy taxidermist Janice reminds Dom of her place in the food chain.

The big holiday means plenty of people are celebrating. Krista’s looking forward to what is likely a much needed break from work. She suddenly decides, as if feeling a pang of the unsafe, to blow off family obligations and spend the holiday with her man. Might be a bad idea. She has no way of knowing Vera has her on his radar.
At a company called Virtual Realty, Darlene and Elliot are on their brother-sister hacker game. She heads in using a fake badge, which helps get the attention of the security guard at the front desk, allowing Elliot to hop the turnstiles and slip past without being spotted. Elliot does some quick hacking and makes it into the security room. His quick fingers get Darlene’s fake employee profile onto the system, so the guard is able to let ‘Dolores Haze’ through. She slyly gets the guy’s fingerprint on her conveniently forgotten smartphone.
Then the systems go down. Elliot and Darlene both head  up to the Kraftwerk office, where she sets up a portable fingerprint lifter to get the guard’s print for digital use. Brother does his thing, and they have themselves a usable 3-D fingerprint they can mould for their purposes. They sneak past more locked doors until they’re at another office, where Elliot prints new, different security card.

Phillip treats the E Corp sign outside the offices like his own personal Mecca, touching the stone upon which it stands as if it’ll give him power. He does as the note suggested, pays a trombone player nearby, and gets sent off to a dry cleaner somewhere. Where’s he being sent? And by whom? He gets a suit from the cleaner and the suit comes with a card from The Brentano. He knows this means the Deus Group will meet.

Out on that lonely road, Dom surveys the burned van while a forensics team pores over the crime scene. She isn’t getting much of the Christmas spirit. She can’t even bear to hear any seasonal tunes, but there’s no escaping them this time of year. She runs a red light and stops fast, looking back up to the cameras above, wondering how well she’s being watched. It’s suffocating her. Everywhere she goes there are eyes. She lures one of the local cops to the back of the station and slips a bug onto her computer, gaining remote access. She can’t stop thinking of having a normal life, too. One that might let her enjoy Christmas.
The brother-sister pair keep infiltrating Virtual Realty. Elliot deletes the profile for Dolores off the system. He’s got the security guard distracted with breadcrumbs along the way, but this guy isn’t a dummy. The guard follows clues all the way up to the server room. He checks on his phone app to see that his fingerprint’s been used. He quietly texts another guard downstairs to call the police. After that, he goes into the room for a look himself. The siblings are quiet enough to let him walk by, and Darlene continues hacking towards Cyprus National Bank. They only have seconds before everything comes online again, including the cameras.
And Elliot spies a potential way out.
The cameras are back online, and the guard’s so close to finding the brother and sister out, when Elliot plunges the place into chaos, setting off an alarm and turning off the lights in the server room. This is enough to allow Darlene her chance and she finishes the hack. They’ve still got to get out of there first. Cops are right outside. Elliot and Darlene rush out back. They’re spotted by the guard, held back by only a door. So Elliot hammers him and makes a run for it outside through the street, past the cops and into traffic. He runs for blocks and blocks, heading into oncoming cars to try losing the police nipping at his heels. He does a Home Alone and heads onto the ice of a skating rink in the park, knocking skaters over on the way.

Darlene goes back upstairs at Virtual Realty, risking the cameras. She decides to take off her disguise and put on a sweater she finds there. She passes through security like nothing ever happened. No big deal. She didn’t even have to run. Her brother’s out in the woods. Yet the cops continue to chase. Elliot slips onto a bus barely making it away. This still won’t stop the police. They head off the bus, forcing the hacker to run into traffic all over again for another chase. Until finally somebody hits Elliot with their car.
That won’t stop him, either. He has few options left, so he jumps over the side of a railing onto a street below where Darlene picks him up after tracking his position.

A new text and mission comes through for Dom: she has to track down Elliot and Darlene. Uh oh. Very conflicting. Is Dom going to do what she has to do? Or is her morality going to get in the way on this one?
Morality doesn’t bother someone like Vera. He’s going to use Krista to get closer to Elliot.
Another wonderful chapter in the series swan song.
It’ll be fun, and devious, to watch whatever’s going to happen now.

“406 Not Acceptable” is next time.