“Hello, friend.” That’s the first line of Mr. Robot, as its protagonist, Elliot Alderson — a cybersecurity engineer and hacker — hails the viewer before launching into his manifesto:

What I’m about to tell you is top-secret. A conspiracy bigger than us all. I’m talking about the guys no one knows about. The guys that are invisible. The top one percent of the top one percent. The guys that play God without permission. And now I think they’re following me.

These opening thirty seconds establish Mr. Robot’s two centers of gravity: the 1 percent are destroying the world, and our narrator can’t always discern reality from fantasy.