Halt And Catch Fire She Designs A Game

HALT AND CATCH FIRE picks up three years after the contentious group meeting that resulted in Gordon, Cameron, and Joe splintering off on their own and coming together to develop one of the first web browsers. Things haven't turned out like anyone planned, but a huge reconciliation may be in the works for season 4.

Not enough people watch Halt and Catch Fire, which is a shame since it's one of the best shows on television. I hear a lot of arguments about how the show didn't really get good until the second season, but that's a load of BS. If you go back and watch the first season, the characters are all deep, three-dimensional beings, with hopes, dreams, and character dynamics that'll continue to play out over the course of the show. The second season allowed the female characters to take center stage, flex their business and creative muscles, and show they can out shadow the men with their achievements. It allowed Cameron and Donna to really take center stage and shine as their company Mutiny took off. It was a great season, but anyone who tells you to skip the first one and start with the second is an idiot, because you'll miss out on some great television.

The fact that AMC has given Halt and Catch Fire one last season to wrap things up and finish the story is a gift, since they could have just as easily cancelled the show after the second or third season. Its viewership is nowhere near the numbers of a Walking Dead or Mad Men, but its quality does actually approach that of Mad Men, a show that it has a lot in common with. Both shows are period pieces set in a business world where women don't have much representation, and over the course of both series the female characters break the glass ceiling and rise to power. Halt and Catch Fire takes place in the tech and web boom of the 90's, an almost wild west where no one really knew what was going to take off, and technology was advancing at a break neck pace. The show is anchored by the vision of its creators, Christopher Cantwell (not the white supremacist in the news for God's sake, read his twitter bio) and Christopher Rogers. Together with their writer's room, they've crafted an enthralling show filled with characters of real depth in an exciting time in technological history. If you're not watching this show you're really missing out.

A lot has changed in the past three years for almost all of the characters on Halt and Catch Fire. Each and every one of them has something missing in their lives, something they yearn for to make their current situations more meaningful and fulfilling. All of them are doing well professionally, but there's a hole inside of all of them they desperately want to fill. For some it's a creative void, for others it's relationship based, and for one of the group it's financial. The three-year gap between seasons is dealt with in an interesting way. Gordon and Joe are shown in short scenes cut to be a seamless march through time, as their early excitement about working with Cameron on a new web browser slows to a halt once she goes radio silent for large chunks of time. She lives in Asia with her husband Tom, which can make her hard to connect with. What could have been a huge advantage entering the market early, instead finds their idea late to the game due to delays and Cameron's absence. Gordon and Joe's company pivots to an ISP while Joe keeps his dream about the browser alive in the basement, all by himself. His separating himself from the rest of the company allows him to wallow in his anger and sadness, stewing in his solitude about the loss of both Cameron (the love of his life) and their missed opportunity. It isn't until their ISP business suddenly finds itself in a fight for its very existence against bigger powerhouses like AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy, that Gordon is able to pull Joe back upstairs to engage in their business and life again.

Cameron has her own reasons for falling off the face of the earth, one of which is that she's a famous video game creator working on her new game Pilgrim, trying to get it off the ground. Things aren't going so well, and her new game is not received as she'd hoped. She's finding her more challenging games overshadowed by action and fighting games like Mortal Combat. Back in California testing her game, Cameron shows up unexpectedly to Gordon's 40^th birthday bash/work celebration and runs into Joe. It's an awkward meeting after such a long time without contact, and she understands she let Joe down by not finishing the browser, but he's also hurt since she shut him out of her life in an attempt to save her own marriage. It didn't work, and Tom has asked her for a divorce, which is something she appears to be ok with. Past wounds are hard to get past, and the scar tissue of their relationship takes several attempts at communication before it begins to heal. When it does, it does so in a marathon telephone conversation/romance between these two that spans the course of two days of non-stop dialogue while problems in both of their professional lives take a back seat. These conversations are like a reacquaintance and courtship, which by the end of the two-part season premiere appears to put them in the best place they've ever been before. They're both older, wiser, and now know what they want.

Donna has changed more than any other character. When we first met her in season one, she was a supportive wife, mother, and anchor for Gordon. It wasn't until the second season that she really was able to break free from that role and really shine on her own for the first time. She has an innate business sense, but her cool, impersonal styling can overshadow it, which is how her and Cameron's company Mutiny came to an end. Without her entanglements with Cameron, or her husband Gordon since their divorce, she's become a powerful businesswoman and tech investor with Denise's firm. She's good at what she does, but she's so cutthroat and cruel at times it seems like the compassionate person we met at the beginning of the show has disappeared. She has a tendency to operate in a morally grey area where business is involved, and after a dinner conversation where Gordon reveals Joe's new crazy idea to create a website that indexes all of the world wide web and make it searchable, she manipulates a conversation with one of her tech investment teams to make it seem like they came up with the idea themselves. She's basically stealing Joe's idea in an attempt to beat Gordon and Joe to the punch of being the first Yahoo or Google, which will be a billion-dollar idea. Donna is appears to be bored with her work, but she's also not taken seriously by the men at the firm who believe the internet to be a poor investment. This is her opportunity to prove herself, and show that her best ideas are not behind her.

This idea of the best years or best ideas being behind them plays a prominent role for every major character in Halt and Catch Fire. Joe has been locked away like a monk attempting to create the greatest web browser, but has failed. Gordon has stopped creating tech, and instead has simply changed his business to supplying access to the Internet. Cameron was one of the most famous video game developers only a few years earlier, and now finds her new game cancelled by Atari. Donna feels the need to prove herself yet again to the men at the firm she works at, and Bos has slipped into retirement and found himself restless. This restlessness led Bos to make some terrible investment deals in an attempt to prove to himself and his wife Denise that he still has what it takes to jump on the next big thing before anyone else does, but his impulsivity has ruined him financially. He keeps his poor investment to himself, but does ask Gordon for a loan to float him until he gets back on his feet, something Gordon cannot do due to his wife's involvement with Bos's wife. Bos instead finds himself working as an advisor to the tech team stealing Joe's idea. No one wants to feel like their glory days are gone, let alone people who've ridden high on the crest of a wave of accomplishment. Will these characters find their way to the top once again, or will they have to resign themselves to the fact their day in the sun is over?

With only eight episodes left until the end of Halt and Catch Fire, we must savor every moment in this underrated gem. Hopefully it too can find itself riding on the crest of a wave, and end on a high note.

TB-TV-Grade-A-

Season 4, Episode 1-2 (S04E01-02)
Halt and Catch Fire airs Saturdays at 9PM on AMC

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For six months out of the year Jeff is holed up in his home with nothing to do but shovel snow, watch television, write, and dream of warmer climates.
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Jeff Iblings | Contributor