The 10 Best Television Shows Of Summer 2015

3) Mr. Robot

“She’s just like everyone else, too afraid to peek over their walls for fear of what they might see. Not me. That’s what I do, I look.” If you knew what was good for you this summer, you were looking right back at the season’s shocker of a hit Mr. Robot. The show came from left field (aka the USA Network’s drama department) and has subsequently left people’s heads spinning with a season back-heavy with one blindside after another, all of which manage to surprise even more thanks to the series’ slow-burn pacing.

It’s so good, in fact, most don’t even feel the need to add the “for a summer show” asterisk similar dramas have needed in recent years, and was picked up for a second season before season one premiered.

So what the heck is it about? The quick version: a bi-polar, angst-ridden loner named Elliot gets wrangled into a technological revolution to overthrow the biggest, baddest corporation in the world (whom he subtly dubs “Evil Corp”) whilst simultaneously working for the very security firm hired to protect them. The catch: Elliot’s unreliable narration would make Edgar Allan Poe blush, and the show is shot in such an angular, obsessive way that it makes the rolling blocks of Manhattan appear dystopian and otherworldly.

Necessary, given each viewer is Elliot’s “imaginary friend” seeing the world from his point of view, which is as dour and necessarily cutting as every hack he performs on his various “friends” and “family.” Not exactly an upbeat 10 hours, but in today’s manic, technology-overloaded society, it does the one thing USA has been unable to do before with its slate of original programming: it feels necessary.