S03.E04: Rules Of Honorable Play

[Tara Ariano]

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Donna and Cameron have a hard time coming to a mutual agreement on their acquisition. Meanwhile, Gordon discovers the importance of teamwork through laser tag.

[Primetimer]

The normally awesome John Bosworth mopes his way through this episode. Then again, everyone's a bit unhappy except Gordon, and isn't it weird to read that sentence?

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[ketose]

So, Joe MacMillan is Al Gore now?

Dammit Boz, don't let Joe get in your head! I'm not sure how far Bosworth has fallen, (although jail is probably a good indicator) but odes he need to be a rain maker to be happy? Then again, everyone else on the show is one step from misery anyway.

So, at what point are they going to kill off Gordon because it seems like where they're heading. Maybe they can make him incontinent first and really humiliate him. Of course, Cameron is an ass again and will be sleeping with the other programming guy within 3 episodes.

[Dowel Jones]

Let me say this right off the bat.  I am certainly glad that the computer industry was taken over by adults by the time I became familiar with the products.  If this show were biographical, I shudder to think....

Boz realizes that he is viewed as the comic puppet, useful only for show and glow.  That would make anyone with an ounce of self-respect more than just a bit morose.

Did Gordon ever bring his ailments up with Donna last season? It would seem that it would be Topic A between them.

My much younger self gloried a bit in the ham radio sequences, but I never knew that CQ came from a French phrase.  Then Gordon lost it for me by droning on about his home troubles over public airwaves.  I was just waiting for his contact to shoot himself while on the air.

[mjc570]

I really hope they're not going to spend too much time on this Cameron back story.  Yeah, I realize she is the central character, but the time for that has passed.  I really don't care why she is the way she is, I would prefer to see her grow up a bit and become a better businesswoman.  They should take that episode time and use for Diane, who is totally awesome.

I'd really like Gordon to get some respect for his bravery (in continuing to work with his physical situation), and technical and managerial skills.  It really seems like he is the only one is getting anything done at Mutiny, or is able to get any of those immature jerks to do any work.  I don't know how realistic their work antics are, but it's tiresome to me.  I'd really like SOMEONE besides Gordon (and Diane) to be good at his or her job. 

I don't care who Joe is based on (jobs, Ellison, whoever), but please make him less cartoonish.  Although I did like the way he just crushed that homophobe. Can the show please present some evidence that Ryan actually is a valuable asset and not just a waste of space?  Why haven't they followed up on him inventing Bit-torrent (sorry, I'm not very techie, so that may not be the right term).

Finally - I did love Donna's little manipulation.  I probably shouldn't, but finally someone is recognizing that Cameron needs to get her act together,

I hope I don't sound too negative, I really do like the show.  I am somewhat apprehensive, though.

Edited September 8, 2016 by mjc570
inadequate proof-reading. Sorry!

[hincandenza]

17 minutes ago, mjc570 said:

I don't care who Joe is based on (jobs, Ellison, whoever), but please make him less cartoonish.  Although I did like the way he just crushed that homophone. Can the show please present some evidence that Ryan actually is a valuable asset and not just a waste of space?  Why haven't they followed up on him inventing Bit-torrent (sorry, I'm not very techie, so that may not be the right term).

Homophobe, not homophone.  A homophone is someone who thinks it's disgusting when one word sounds like another word. :)

Ryan is right out of the Aaron Sorkin playbook: a character we're told repeatedly is super smart, but who never actually acts smart- unless, like Sorkin, you're the kind of not-terribly-bright person who thinks being smart simply involves speaking too fast, throwing out memorized facts and figures, or speaking passionately about doing things you never get around to doing.

24 minutes ago, mjc570 said:

I'd really like Gordon to get some respect for his bravery (in continuing to work with his physical situation), and technical and managerial skills.  It really seems like he is the only one is getting anything done at Mutiny, or is able to get any of those immature jerks to do any work.  I don't know how realistic their work antics are, but it's tiresome to me.  I'd really like SOMEONE besides Gordon (and Diane) to be good at his or her job. 

Despite their constant belittlement, if either Gordon or Boz were to leave Mutiny, it would close its doors about a week later- probably after the building catches fire and they accidentally delete all their source code.  Wait- sorry, wrong tech show.  In any case, it's not actually clear that any of the Lost Boys have written a single line of code since they got to San Francisco.  Their intra-office Nerf game is totally on point, though, so I guess they got that going for them...

[tennisgurl]

Joe is still an asshole, but I did cheer when he crushed that homophobic guys hand. I guess the best way to keep Joe from being the biggest jerk in any given room is to find a BIGGER jerk for him to share space with!

Cameron is just getting on my nerves. I know that shes always been confrontational and difficult with people, but this is just ridiculous. What is even her deal with these guys? And, if these guys are wasting company time, what the hell are the other people doing? They mainly seem to just screw around on their computers, and have nerf gun fights. It actually looks like the two guys Cameron wants to fire are the only ones doing work, besides our main characters. 

I do like that Donna fibbed a bit to Cameron, for the good of the company. Normally I would be calling Donna out on lying to her business partner, but Cameron is being so damn childish, I almost feel like Donna has to treat her like a child. 

Gordan is actually working hard and trying to keep on keeping on, despite being surrounded by idiots and literally DYING. Gordan can be difficult, but I have to give him credit for being a professional, when so many other people arent. And, again, the man is probably on deaths door! I will be amazed if he makes it through the season. 

[ketose]

1 hour ago, tennisgurl said:

Gordan is actually working hard and trying to keep on keeping on, despite being surrounded by idiots and literally DYING. Gordan can be difficult, but I have to give him credit for being a professional, when so many other people arent. And, again, the man is probably on deaths door! I will be amazed if he makes it through the season. 

Can't they just reverse Gordon's brain damage like they did in Rocky 6?

[2AT]

Joe and Cameron seem to be having the same problem.  Once you take on a partner or take someone else's money or have people whose livelihood depends upon your actions and decisions (even more pressing in the case of the Mutiny staffers who picked up stakes and moved thousands of miles), your company is not YOUR company anymore.    

In the case of Cameron, she needs to stop expecting grown folks to cater tantrums and demands because she created Mutiny in her basement or wherever.  And when she does find out that Donna lied she better not pull some "you betrayed me" nonsense because at least Donna didn't create secret backdoors so she could spy on customers, manipulate a child or cause unnecessary conflict and delays because she can't let go of a code she wrote all by herself.  Just as she could argue that her end justified her means, so could Donna.

In the case of Joe, and contrary to his pronouncement last week, he is not the company.  He may be the founder and the face of it, but he has people to answer to as well.  However, Joe was right to crush that jerk's hand and I hope that he and Ryan can come up with something that either satisfies the board or is an opportunity to walk away with something bigger on the horizon.

[Hanahope]

On 9/7/2016 at 0:16 AM, ketose said:

So, Joe MacMillan is Al Gore now?

Hah, I was thinking the same thing.  Joe is creating the Internet now.  And is "SF" how some people referred to San Francisco?  Down in LA, my friends referred to it either as Frisco or SanFran.  

I loved lazer tag back in college.  Like paintball, but less messy.  And my favorite LT place was more futuristic than jungle.

Cameron is so immature, but Doug is definitely a douche.  Greg or Craig seems alright.   

[dubbel zout]

12 hours ago, mjc570 said:

I really hope they're not going to spend too much time on this Cameron back story.  Yeah, I realize she is the central character, but the time for that has passed.  I really don't care why she is the way she is, I would prefer to see her grow up a bit and become a better businesswoman.  They should take that episode time and use for Diane, who is totally awesome.

Ditto. Cameron is still very young, so her behavior doesn't necessarily need explanation. That said, it would be nice to see her step up and start shouldering her share of management responsibilities instead of leaving it all to Donna.

I need more things to happen. I feel like every season shows the same problems as the previous, just in a slightly different setting. Mix things up a bit, Show.

[Scott]

On September 8, 2016 at 6:06 AM, Hanahope said:

And is "SF" how some people referred to San Francisco?  Down in LA, my friends referred to it either as Frisco or SanFran.

My understanding is that people in San Francisco and the Bay area don't like "Frisco".  I've heard it called "SF", and more often than not, just "the City".  

[Hanahope]

Yes, I know that they don't like Frisco, we always used to chuckle over that and call it that anyway. :)

[scowl]

I finally watched this. Well CrazyCam is back! She's protecting her precious spaghetti code from the dumb people who don't love it as much as she does. This brings back two great memories from me. I apologize in advance for the boring tech stuff in this post.

Back in 1991 there was a guy who wrote a tool from scratch and the code was terrible. He was pulled off of the project and he was furious. He couldn't believe that they were going to hand his code to... me, who else? He wouldn't talk to me or help me figure out the crap he wrote. He thought that this thing would be his dynasty. There are even adult programmers who act like this.

More recently I had to fix some old code that was very interesting indeed. The code should have been a simple decision list but the guy who wrote it thought that would be boring so he used set algebra to tie variable values into a formula  whose value then decided what the code would do. To make it maintainable (hah!) he put a large "truth table" in the comments to describe the "inputs" and "outputs". This is like a Tic Tac Toe board with X's and O's to show "true" or "false". Cameron would have loved it. It only took me a day to rewrite the entire thing.

The languages in this show don't sound right to me. I didn't hear about C++ until about 1989. We didn't use it because it was big, slow, and programs took forever to compile even on our fast mainframes (it took your little "hello world" C++ program and turned it into a giant mass of C that all had to be compiled). Even Objected Oriented programming was an academic topic as far as I remember. And PL/M? I can't remember anyone using that but maybe that's exactly the kind of thing Cameron would use.

I still have the same complaints: Ryan sounds like a wide-eyed little boy instead of a super-smart programmer and the Mutiny programmers do nothing all day. Why aren't their bosses yelling at them to get to work.

And that brings me to one of my favorite memories thanks to that guy using the three-letter f-word in front of Joe. In the summer of 1981 I was a kid working at a doomed game company. Six of us had a work area not unlike what we see on this show, except we actually worked and were normally quiet and respectful. Except for this one day. Someone brought in Devo's new single, "Working in a Coal Mine" on a cassette and we all started rocking out like the boys on the show. It was raising morale to the roof.

Well, our older boss who preferred Led Zeppelin and Foghat peered at us through the window in his office, then he stomped out and screamed at the top of his lungs... "Turn that faggot shit OFF!!!" We did not laugh. We immediately turned it off and got back to work. We were actually scared of him. 

[scowl]

On 9/7/2016 at 9:19 PM, ketose said:

Can't they just reverse Gordon's brain damage like they did in Rocky 6?

Or like they did with Kelsey Grammer in Boss when they didn't know what to do for a second season?

[ganesh]

Ok, Cameron, sure, you can keep track of it in your head. If you can't document your code for wider use, then it's not code. I love how awful Cameron types though. I think it's perfect. I wonder if it was an acting choice or directed.

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Yeah, I realize she is the central character, but the time for that has passed.  I really don't care why she is the way she is, I would prefer to see her grow up a bit and become a better businesswoman.

I feel like we took a step back to last season Cameron. I don't expect her to get along with the swap meet guys seemlessly, but I also think her behavior regressed. 

On 9/7/2016 at 7:26 PM, Dowel Jones said:

Did Gordon ever bring his ailments up with Donna last season? It would seem that it would be Topic A between them.

Yes, he did go to the doctor and she did know about it. At the start of this season, it seemed like this was an ongoing thing. 

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 I don't know how realistic their work antics are, but it's tiresome to me. 

I think it is realistic, but as a tv show, we've seen this enough and there needs to be some development here. Is Gordon a respected figure for them? I think so, and I would have expected this situation to be moving forward. I get there's new people involved, but it shouldn't be like this. 

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Why haven't they followed up on him inventing Bit-torrent (sorry, I'm not very techie, so that may not be the right term).

That would actually be really interesting!

On 9/8/2016 at 7:06 AM, Hanahope said:

Down in LA, my friends referred to it either as Frisco or SanFran.

Don't say Frisco! They hate that. 

Weren't there allusions to Joe's orientation in S1?

Edited September 10, 2016 by ganesh

[dubbel zout]

17 minutes ago, ganesh said:

Weren't there allusions to Joe's orientation in S1?

I thought it was more that Joe will sleep with anyone who can advance his ambitions. Gender doesn't matter.

Edited September 10, 2016 by dubbel zout

[ganesh]

Totally fine with Donna lying to Cam. Grow up. She may have legitimately crashed and missed the dinner, but she knew it was important to be there. 

They need to figure out what to do with Cam. Even though it's a business partnership doesn't mean she has to be both "business" and "coder". Let Donna make those big decisions. Talk over things like firing the guys with her. Cam seems fine with making decisions about the C++ bridge, etc., and the directions of Mutiny; like buying the swap meet. 

They're kind of going around in circles with her, and I'm wondering if they really know what to do with the character. There should be more growth than there is. And I didn't have a problem with her being picky about wanting to buy a house and stuff like that. I can buy that. I actually think she likes living with Donna, Gordon, and the kids. 

[shelwood]

Ok, Cameron, sure, you can keep track of it in your head. If you can't document your code for wider use, then it's not code. I love how awful Cameron types though. I think it's perfect. I wonder if it was an acting choice or directed.

  Quote

Yeah, I realize she is the central character, but the time for that has passed.  I really don't care why she is the way she is, I would prefer to see her grow up a bit and become a better businesswoman.

I feel like we took a step back to last season Cameron. I don't expect her to get along with the swap meet guys seemlessly, but I also think her behavior regressed. 

  On 9/7/2016 at 9:26 PM, Dowel Jones said:

Did Gordon ever bring his ailments up with Donna last season? It would seem that it would be Topic A between them.

Yes, he did go to the doctor and she did know about it. At the start of this season, it seemed like this was an ongoing thing. 

  Quote

 I don't know how realistic their work antics are, but it's tiresome to me. 

I think it is realistic, but as a tv show, we've seen this enough and there needs to be some development here. Is Gordon a respected figure for them? I think so, and I would have expected this situation to be moving forward. I get there's new people involved, but it shouldn't be like this. 

  Quote

Why haven't they followed up on him inventing Bit-torrent (sorry, I'm not very techie, so that may not be the right term).

That would actually be really interesting!

  On 9/8/2016 at 9:06 AM, Hanahope said:

Down in LA, my friends referred to it either as Frisco or SanFran.

Don't say Frisco! They hate that. 

Weren't there allusions to Joe's orientation in S1?

Not allusions to Joe's orientation, we actually met his ex-boyfriend (who told Joe as they parted that he had AIDS).

[thuganomics85]

Ah, so after a few episodes of her being surprisingly mature, this was more of the impulsive and ill-tempered Cameron that I remembered!  On one hand, Doug does seem like a dick, but she seemed to be going out of her way to be brash and challenging them for no reason, and even if it's true that they bought their company and are the bosses, it wouldn't hurt to try and be more welcoming.  And, of course, she decides that they actually should get fired instead, even though it does seem like they can bring a lot to the table.  She really can be her own worst enemy at times.

I get why Donna wants to keep them and even fibbing about Diane forcing them to keep them, but I so see this somehow coming out and causing major friction.  She should really tell Diane about it, so Diane can cover for her.  But she won't, so it will probably get bad.

I do Craig keeps sticking around, because I just realized that he is played by the same actor who played Daniel, Patterson's boyfriend on Blindspot.

Joe deliberately burns a bridge after the guy reveals himself to be a massive homophobe, but now seems to be setting his sights on what will end up being the Internet itself.  They're really going to make everyone on this show responsible for every big computer-related breakthrough!

Gordon still seems all kinds of messed up, but at least he's slowly getting the team to bond together.  The laser tag stuff was fun.  I remember doing that once or twice.

Bos is the life of the party, only for Joe to show up and basically say he's only a mascot that people enjoy watching dance and make jokes, and doesn't take him seriously.  This seems to have knocked him back for a second.  Poor Bos.

[renatae]

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I do like that Donna fibbed a bit to Cameron, for the good of the company. Normally I would be calling Donna out on lying to her business partner, but Cameron is being so damn childish, I almost feel like Donna has to treat her like a child. 

I don't know what my problem is, but I was wondering why on earth Cameron wanted to fire both those guys, and why Donna fibbed to her. I guess I just keep expecting Cam to act like an adult, so I'm looking around for some sort of backstory/rational reason, instead of just remembering her prime motivations are basically childish. Then I come here to be reminded of the reality of the situation. I am shamed by how much time I spent trying to figure out her actions.

[dubbel zout]

7 hours ago, renatae said:

I was wondering why on earth Cameron wanted to fire both those guys

Basically, they had the nerve to disagree with Cam.