S04.E01: So It Goes / S04.E02: Signal to Noise

[Cramps]

If you watch that scene again, (as I did...welcome back show!), at the beginning, Boz is being his good ole' boy charming self meeting the staff from the tech company he's been brought in to manage. But when Donna's assistant (sorry, don't remember her name), with the impressive diplomas, comes in, things get more awkward, but it's obvious to everyone in the room, that she's the one who is really in charge of what is going on.  Boz looks uncomfortable, like he knows he's just being used as a figurehead/front. 

[Moxie Cat]

More date info: James' "Laid," which plays on the radio in the closing diner scene, was released in the UK in November 1993. So it could have played on a US pop station in late 1993, but I think it's more likely that the scene (and episode) took place in 1994.

And from personal experience, AOL started to become a huge deal in 1994, so that fits too. I had it from around that time straight through 2001, when my cable provider finally got cable modems. I do not miss the days of dialup one iota.

Also: was anyone else surprised that Gordon is only turning 40 but has a daughter almost ready for college? That would mean that he and Donna had kids right out of college. Is there history/dialogue on the show to support that they got married so quickly? (Maybe I just don't remember.) I would have guessed that Gordon and Donna were closer to Joe's age of 45.

Edited September 2, 2017 by Moxie Cat

[cinles]

5 hours ago, Moxie Cat said:

Also: was anyone else surprised that Gordon is only turning 40 but has a daughter almost ready for college? That would mean that he and Donna had kids right out of college. Is there history/dialogue on the show to support that they got married so quickly? (Maybe I just don't remember.) I would have guessed that Gordon and Donna were closer to Joe's age of 45.

 

I thought Joanie & Haley were 14 & 16 - Donna & Gordon were engaged in college, weren't they? Then Donna made the comment at dinner when she was being snarky that they were married for 15 years.  So it all adds up that they are around 40. Even though I know Joe is 45 because he was 35 when the show started, I keep thinking he's younger.

[scrb]

Kerry Bishe is 33.

Of course Donna is suppose to be older but she just doesn't look like the mother of two teens.

[cinles]

14 hours ago, scrb said:

Kerry Bishe is 33.

Of course Donna is suppose to be older but she just doesn't look like the mother of two teens.

There is nothing they can do to make Kerry look like their mother. She doesn't even look 33. lol

[ketose]

The girls should be 16 and 18, but I think their ages have been adjusted to 15 and 17.

Kerry Bishé was 30 when the show started, playing the mom of a 6 and an 8 year old. That makes sense. The problem is that in 3 years, they've time jumped a decade. Scoot McNairy is about 6 years older than Bishé. If he was playing 29-30 in 1983, he was actually older, which is why they may have went with the beard. In any case, he actually turns 40 this Fall.

[Kel Varnsen]

On 20/08/2017 at 0:36 AM, Razzberry said:

 

Still has the same forced drama, which now includes Haley's mysterious teen angst and Bos's mysteriously thicker accent.

It was the 90s  there was a lot of teen angst. Kurt Cobain said it himself around the same time this episode takes place "teenaged angst has paid off well". I also feel super old since i think im about the same age as Haley.

Overall i liked the episode, joe and cameron on the phone seemed to drag though. The stuff at Gordon's company was interesting though. I never really thought about what happened to all those local dial up isps when phone and cable companies started selling internet.

Also what was the deal with Donna's watch she kept flipping over?

[ganesh]

I think there's a link in this thread about the watch. It was a special kind back then.

[Kel Varnsen]

31 minutes ago, ganesh said:

I think there's a link in this thread about the watch. It was a special kind back then.

Found it, thanks. I'm gonna blame me missing it on the damn cold medicine. Also i thought the way they showed the passage of time for Gordon at the beginning was cool, even if it took me a second to figure out what was going on (also blame that on the cold meds).

[dubbel zout]

3 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

It was the 90s  there was a lot of teen angst.

There's always teen angst with teenagers. It's pretty much why they exist, heh.

[stillshimpy]

On 8/21/2017 at 6:54 PM, ganesh said:

Donna is being *really* smug in her scenes. It's grating. I know she's in charge, and she shouldn't suffer fools, but if you're going to cut someone's funding just say so. To be fair, I thought she and Gordon were nice to each other at the restaurant though. She seemed toned down in the second episode too. Plus I felt bad with the guy talking over her in the meeting. 

I've been so impressed by the development of both Donna and Cameron's characters.   The writers let them be flawed, sometimes impossible people, and I enjoy that the point of the characters is that they are complex vs. entirely likable.  

 

I have really loved Donna's trajectory from the constantly supportive wife, who darned near had an affair just because that coworker in the first season was actually listening to her ideas.    Then it turned out he was simply stealing her ideas.  

 

Donna's character has been punished throughout for being emotionally authentic.  When she was kind brightly earnest and sharing her ideas, she didn't get credit for much and guys actively stole her ideas.  When she first went to Mutiny, Cameron had her acting as Den Mother, in a really reductive fashion in terms of her talents.   

 

Hell, her marriage fell apart because she got stoned and admitted to one of her own truths:  she hated camping.  All of the things that she did to accommodate others have come back to bite her in the ass.   Even her (played as) great betrayal of Cameron was actually in response to Cameron forcing her into the adult manager role of Cameron's more impossible tendencies (an inability to work with anyone who isn't Cameron).  

So I loved that they turned Donna into a shark, whose personality is now just a brittle veneer and who knows what has become of the sweet, overly trusting, "let me tell you, in-depth about my brilliant ideas..." person who trusted that men were viewing her as an equal when they were not, into a person who terrifies the tech boys into compliance and sits in judgment of their ideas.  I wouldn't want to hang out with Donna but that is one of the more realistic characterizations I have ever seen.  She behaved in the way she was told she should (nice girl from Texas) and it was used against her, so she created a Shark-like persona to swim through the mostly male tech waters.  

 

One way to be taken seriously is to start from the place of everyone fearing you, after all.   

Similarly, I loved the developments with Cameron.  That Tom, who was always better than anyone at Mutiny gave him credit for being in terms of coding, eventually left Cameron and is at Sega, which is going to be a bigger winner overall, at leat for some time to come.  I liked that way of releasing the character while staying true to Cameron's rather impossible nature.    

I'm glad this season dropped on Netflix pretty promptly, we really enjoyed it but it is a show where I get to focus on the rather rich female characterizations while Joe flails in the background, being a poor man's Jobs.  

Edited December 28, 2017 by stillshimpy

[ganesh]

31 minutes ago, stillshimpy said:

One way to be taken seriously is to start from the place of everyone fearing you, after all.   

Fearing yes. But she was being smug, and that's how you make mistakes, when you think you can't fail. 

[stillshimpy]

1 hour ago, ganesh said:

Fearing yes. But she was being smug, and that's how you make mistakes, when you think you can't fail. 

I personally find Joe a lot smugger.  I think that as they are roping in all the real players here, it's kind of given that nobody from this particular cast ends up being the winner.  That they are all involved in a tech race and history tells us who won those periods already.   So this has always been a tale of how they will fail.  

I think that's a really interesting story because it had to be like that at the time, everyone in a mad dash to have the next big idea, etc.   I love the show but have assumed it's Tucker: A Man and His Dream tech division. 

 

But I've always assumed that this is a story of watching people blow their respective shots or miss by just a few inches and fade into history. 

Edited December 28, 2017 by stillshimpy