S04.E06: A Connection is Made

[CanadaPhil]

1 hour ago, dubbel zout said:

I assumed the woman Cameron was talking to arranged and paid for all that tech gear. (Side note: Was she one of the Rover people?) I

She was introduced at that conference where Cameron was one of the panel speakers.

Her name escapes me, but I believe she is a writer or editor of a tech. journal or major industry magazine.

I think it's implied that she has telecomm. connections that would have helped facilitate Cameron getting that internet setup from MCI... cuz that would just be waaaaay beyond Joe Q. Public getting access to. I mean, a rural wireless connection with what I believe is microwave uplink and downlink!!??? It's 1994... That is Enterprise level Fortune 500 territory. Regular peeps are still dreaming about 14.4K telephone modems, let alone whatever the heck Cam now has.

What I didn't grasp was her pitch to Cameron? She was not talking about any sort of team or VC types. She was just talking about backing up Cameron herself?.. Maybe she comes from money?? I don't quite understand where the deep pockets come from?

Edited September 24, 2017 by CanadaPhil

[dubbel zout]

Thanks, CanadaPhil. I don't recall if she said where the money was coming from either. I also thought it was weird she was going to basically back Cameron no matter what. Is she paying Cam to just play around? What sort of world will Cam be building if there's no end goal, no matter how vague?

[Rowsdower]

21 hours ago, Dowel Jones said:

I think they're writing Haley as a younger version of Cameron, that is to say, a hotshot coder and computer whiz, but someone who will be, if she follows her current path, seriously lacking in any skills outside of the computer world.

Both characters are intelligent and artistic, but I have to disagree on the similarities cited above.

Firstly, Haley isn't a hotshot anything. Cameron probably thinks more highly of her own toenail clippings (and struggles to understand why the world refuses to stare in awe of their perfection and take in the profound secrets they hold) than Haley does of herself.

Secondly, HTML is a simple markup language, as Haley herself noted. (She certainly has the potential to learn advanced coding, of course.) Her role at Comet has been rooted primarily in research, categorization and curation, not in coding.

Thirdly, season-4 Haley has been the most likable character of the series from my perspective, which proves that she's nothing like Cameron.  (I'm kidding, but not about my opinions of the characters.)

 

21 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

As for her being queer, it might be a bit of a "wait, what?!" moment for Donna and Gordon, but I think they'll be ok with it. 

This is what many people fail to consider. A liberal/progressive attitude toward LGBT people ≠ preparedness to learn that one's child is among them.

It isn't a simple matter of acceptance or rejection. It's a sudden realization that years of assumptions were incorrect, followed by a chaotic flood of mental reframing, second-guessing, and anxiety about the suffering one's child has endured and struggles he or she might face in the future.

 

20 hours ago, ganesh said:

I forgot that Donna was going to pick up the wallet. However, was she even that drunk?

Between sips of wine, she interrupted Joanie with a non sequitur consisting solely of a very specific comment that she failed to recall making previously. She was hammered, as Joanie immediately realized. It might even have been a life-altering moment, in a "Christ, is that what I sound like when I'm drunk?" sort of way.

And that was before she went to the bar. She was pulled over on her way back.

 

20 hours ago, ganesh said:

I'm having a problem seeing how she was pulled over. They didn't show her swerving or anything.

They showed closeups and extreme-closeups of Donna's face, shot with a narrow depth of field to blur everything in the background, thereby conveying the character's poor focus on her surroundings. Taken with the police lights and sirens that followed, the audience was given more than enough information to infer that she committed some sort of traffic infraction.

They could have forgone the mood-establishing style in favor of a dull, sterile shot of Donna swerving or running a red light, but why was such a detail necessary?

 

20 hours ago, ganesh said:

Further, if she had to take the drunk test, two glasses of wine doesn't necessarily mean she'd fail it. 

"I only had two drinks, I swear!" has been a go-to defense of drunk drivers since time immemorial. Donna was almost certainly lying to Gordon.

 

19 hours ago, cinles said:

 I don't remember that scene in the show. I was referring to an aerial view. 

They used a different angle in the episode (which looks more like a crane shot than an aerial shot). Here's a cropped screen capture:

If anything, the height differences are even more apparent from this angle (because it's easier to gauge their relative spatial positions).

Edited September 25, 2017 by Rowsdower

[dubbel zout]

5 minutes ago, Rowsdower said:

A liberal/progressive attitude toward LGBT people ≠ preparedness to learn that one's child is among them.

It isn't a simple matter of acceptance or rejection. It's a sudden realization that years of assumptions were incorrect, followed by a chaotic flood of mental reframing, second-guessing, and anxiety about the suffering one's child has endured and struggles he or she might face in the future.

Even Cher had trouble when Chaz came out as transgender. Donna and Gordon aren't Cher. By a long shot.

[cinles]

22 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

Even Cher had trouble when Chaz came out as transgender. Donna and Gordon aren't Cher. By a long shot.

I happen to be a huge Cher fan and she really didn't have a problem when Chaz came out - she was mad that he hid it from her. So she was semi-prepared when he announced he was transgender. I doubt there's any difference who you are when your child tells you life-changing things.

Quote

As for her being queer, it might be a bit of a "wait, what?!" moment for Donna and Gordon, but I think they'll be ok with it. 

I was going to comment on a few things, but I missed this from a prior poster and it sort of caught my attention. Is this an accepted term now because I find it offensive. Maybe it's my age - is it acceptable?

Edited September 24, 2017 by cinles

[Dowel Jones]

5 hours ago, Rowsdower said:

Firstly, Haley isn't a hotshot anything.

Actually, what I was thinking was that Hayley is more or less now where Cameron was at her age.  If they flash forwarded the program a few years, Hayley would develop her own skills over everything else and become something of what Cameron is now. 

I couldn't find any reference to the date of the establishment of the .08 DUI standard in California.  Was it in force in 1994, or was the choice of citation still up to the discretion of the officer?  By that I mean (if memory serves) you could still be cited for DUI or impaired driving even if you had a lower BAC.

[ketose]

1 minute ago, Dowel Jones said:

Actually, what I was thinking was that Hayley is more or less now where Cameron was at her age.  If they flash forwarded the program a few years, Hayley would develop her own skills over everything else and become something of what Cameron is now. 

I couldn't find any reference to the date of the establishment of the .08 DUI standard in California.  Was it in force in 1994, or was the choice of citation still up to the discretion of the officer?  By that I mean (if memory serves) you could still be cited for DUI or impaired driving even if you had a lower BAC.

My memory was that it was .10 was the de facto standard at that time and was a few more years until it went down to .08. 

[Rowsdower]

35 minutes ago, Dowel Jones said:

Actually, what I was thinking was that Hayley is more or less now where Cameron was at her age.  If they flash forwarded the program a few years, Hayley would develop her own skills over everything else and become something of what Cameron is now. 

The skills that Haley is developing aren't inextricably tied to computers or the Internet. She could be laying the foundation for a career as a journalist, critic, writer, editor, etc. I see no reason to believe that "if she follows her current path, [she will be] seriously lacking in any skills outside of the computer world."

[crashdown]

I've been thinking about all of the connections that were made in "Making a Connection" (Joe to Haley; Joe to Boz; Cameron to the fan site; Cameron to her new hands-off employer; Cameron's literal connection to the Internet) and the fact that Donna was the one who *failed* to make a connection both times an opportunity for one presented itself  The scene with Gordon in the car was lovely and touching, but she didn't take the hand that he offered to her.  Even though I think she badly wanted to tell Cameron that no, she *wasn't* ok, she walked away from Cam's opening.  I know that in terms of the story it makes sense--Donna can't go from being a dragon to being entirely vulnerable in a single episode.  Still, it was sad.  If there's not some big emotional payoff with all of this torture at the end of the series, I'll be very disappointed.

ETA: Donna initially made a connection with Joanie, but then she wrecked it by repeating the same speech almost verbatim as a drunken non-sequitur.  Poor Donna!

Edited September 25, 2017 by crashdown

[renatae]

23 hours ago, crashdown said:

Quite.  One of the things that this season is doing is making me feel incredibly nostalgic for those early years of the Internet.  I put up my first web page in 1993, when I was in graduate school.  Everything about the web then was so exciting and new: it was just people (and not very many of us) putting up pages and talking to each other on listservs and news groups about our passions.  Being hooked into the Internet then was something unusual and special, and we all felt it.  There were very few sites that were monetized at all--basically, the deal was that you put information about your obsessions out there, and when you needed to look something up, you could count on the fact that someone else had an obsession about *that* to share.  The original TWoP site (called MightyBigTV then) came out of those days.  It was unsustainable, of course, but I miss it.  The Facebook era just can't compete.

Ah, makes me almost nostalgic for the whining of the modem and definitely nostalgic for all the codes for individualizing font colors and special characters and late night chats invested with zeal. Sigh.

[Joimiaroxeu]

Quote

Comet (a la Yahoo)

This is probably a dumb question at this point but if Comet ~ Yahoo then what is Rover equivalent to? It's way too early for Google.

[qtpye]

Does it feel like in the previous seasons Donna was the rock that kept some amazing genius from going off the rails?  In the first season it was mainly Gordon and Joe.  In later seasons, it was Cam at Mutiny.  Donna resented this role (she called it being the mom), but she was really good at it.

It now feels like all the other characters have become emotionally stable, incuding Cam with her ego and childish stubborness, but now Donna is lost.

She is the one who called them altogether to work on a project, which ironically now has caused the three of them to become good friends, while she is kind of left out in the cold.

It feels like Donna has adopted this ruthless VC persona that has kind of left her empty and cold.  She needs someone like Cam in her life and it probably hurts, because she always felt like the one whose needs were pushed to the side to take care of someone else.  It does not even feel like her daughters need her that much anymore.  For some reason it seems like Gordon is the more hands on parent, but that could be wrong.

[dubbel zout]

12 hours ago, ketose said:

My memory was that it was .10 was the de facto standard at that time and was a few more years until it went down to .08. 

 Congress encouraged the states to lower it to .08 in 1998 by dangling federal grants and then made it law in 2002.

[attica]

45 minutes ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

what is Rover equivalent to?

I've mentally mapped it to  ye olde search engine Lycos, which used a black lab dog as its icon.

[Addlepated]

Does anyone else think that Cameron's going to come up with an MMO?  Ultima Online started development in 1995, so it's about the right time.

[scowl]

2 hours ago, Addlepated said:

Does anyone else think that Cameron's going to come up with an MMO?  Ultima Online started development in 1995, so it's about the right time.

I thought she already did two seasons ago.

[AmandaPanda]

Re: usage of the word queer - We use GLAAD's media reference guide to help determine words to avoid. You can find more information on terminology here.

However, all posts about the word queer have been hidden because they have nothing to do with the content of the episode. Please remember to stay on topic. 

[crashdown]

These two comments are related in my mind:

9 hours ago, qtpye said:

It feels like Donna has adopted this ruthless VC persona that has kind of left her empty and cold.  She needs someone like Cam in her life and it probably hurts, because she always felt like the one whose needs were pushed to the side to take care of someone else.

 

8 hours ago, Addlepated said:

Does anyone else think that Cameron's going to come up with an MMO?  Ultima Online started development in 1995, so it's about the right time.

To the second point--yes, I definitely do think that.  Mutiny was not an MMO per se: it was a small local company whose users played games, chatted, and traded products.  An MMO is sort of what Donna was getting at when she told her hookup that she *was* trying to recreate Community, but this time with the whole Internet as her base: same idea, massively different scale. I buy the idea of Cameron as a world-builder rather than a simple game designer, even if Cameron's new employer (or whatever she is) who told her that was off-putting and weird.  I can see Cameron creating an MMO with a rich tapestry that thousands across the Internet would play, and I think she'd love doing it.

But I see Donna as part of it too, and I think the fact that Donna is apparently the only one in the universe who can understand Pilgrim is a testament to just how connected the two of them are on a creative level.  There's nothing wrong with being a successful VC, but it's not right for Donna, and she'll never be really happy doing it.  More than anything else, Donna needs to be doing intellectually satisfying, creative work, and she needs people (Cameron most of all) to acknowledge how good she is at it.  It's not so much that Donna has always had to take care of other people, although that's part of it.  It's that *doing* that, picking Gordon up when he gets a DUI, taking care of her family, minding the finances at Mutiny, doing everything that goes along with adulting, pushed her into the slot that created the false dichotomy of Cameron the genius and Donna the mom.  Donna did amazing work throughout the series: she was the one who came up with the double-sided chip that saved the Giant, and she was the one who dreamed up Community, arguably the most important innovation to come out of Mutiny.  But Cameron could never tell her that.  I think Cam *knew* how good she was and respected her for it--that's why she yelled at Gordon that "your wife is doing things that you couldn't even imagine doing" after his program melted their computers.  That, after all, is why she asked Donna to join Mutiny in the first place. But Cameron was very young and very self-centered (as many brilliant and passionate people are in their twenties), and the most she could ever do is to say that Donna grounded her--that's nice, but it's not the same thing as being told how good her work was.  (It reminds me of those nineteenth-century literary geniuses who praise their wives for being helpmeets--it's better than nothing, but it's still patronizing.)  If Cam had managed to tell any of that to Donna, Donna wouldn't have been forced ultimately to choose between loyalty to Cam and her own sense of self, which was essentially her choice when she pushed the IPO even knowing that passing it would mean that Cam would walk away from the company.  There was no way for her to win, whichever way she went.  If she chose Cam, she lost herself; if she chose herself, she lost Cam.

But Cameron at 32 is not Cameron at 25--she's much less selfish now, and much  more attuned to how others in her life are feeling. (Look how quickly she caught on to the fact that Donna, with whom she hadn't really interacted in years, was having a meltdown.  Season Two Cameron needed Boz to tell her that Donna was going through something, even with weeks of evidence right in front of her.)  A Mutiny 2.0--same idea, but over the Internet--could be great for both of them, and this time around, it could actually work. It's my dream ending for their story.

[AllyB]

Great analysis Crashdown!

[Kel Varnsen]

On 9/24/2017 at 3:55 PM, dubbel zout said:

It cracks me up how no one on the show has to wait for their computers/screens to boot up. They hit a button and have instant accessibility! I know it's to save time, but just once I'd like to see someone turning on the computer and then going to make coffee or something while the computer does its thing.

I also noticed that when Cam was looking at her fansite the pictures loaded instantly which was kind of funny remembering that time period.

On 9/25/2017 at 11:46 AM, qtpye said:

It feels like Donna has adopted this ruthless VC persona that has kind of left her empty and cold.  She needs someone like Cam in her life and it probably hurts, because she always felt like the one whose needs were pushed to the side to take care of someone else.  It does not even feel like her daughters need her that much anymore.  For some reason it seems like Gordon is the more hands on parent, but that could be wrong.

Donna really does have no real friends at this point it seems, and she might be realizing that when things are going shitty having no one to talk to really sucks, and being a successful corporate badass doesn't make up for that.. That said Kerry Bishe totally sold Donna's issues which was very impressive. Who would have that Zach Braff's replacement on Scrubs would be this good.

Speaking of friendship I like and am kind of amazed how they have made Gordon and Joe into legitimate friends who hang out and go camping and shit. Their scene where Joe was trying to talk about Haley without actually outing her was good. And speaking of Gordon I can't believe how likable they made him. Looking back at some of my season 1 posts I hated Gordon.

[qtpye]

7 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

I also noticed that when Cam was looking at her fansite the pictures loaded instantly which was kind of funny remembering that time period.

Donna really does have no real friends at this point it seems, and she might be realizing that when things are going shitty having no one to talk to really sucks, and being a successful corporate badass doesn't make up for that.. That said Kerry Bishe totally sold Donna's issues which was very impressive. Who would have that Zach Braff's replacement on Scrubs would be this good.

Speaking of friendship I like and am kind of amazed how they have made Gordon and Joe into legitimate friends who hang out and go camping and shit. Their scene where Joe was trying to talk about Haley without actually outing her was good. And speaking of Gordon I can't believe how likable they made him. Looking back at some of my season 1 posts I hated Gordon.

On a shallow note, the early nineties styles really suit the guys.  Both Joe and Gordon look centered and healthy...something that seemed impossible in the first season.  Donna might be a jerk, but her hair and clothes are to die for (though I like the deeper red compared to the strawberry blonde).  I do miss Cam's short blonde hairstyle...the actress really rocked that look.

[Hanahope]

So I guess Cam is going to create Everquest?

Hopefully Gordon will realize why Haley is having problems at school, her own issues about herself and her sexuality. 

Is there water and electricity out in the middle of nowhere for Cams mobile home?

[paramitch]

On 9/23/2017 at 8:11 PM, crashdown said:

I'm surprised that there's any debate about the fact that Haley is gay--of course she is.  Joe clearly picked up on it immediately, with his softly understanding "she seems cool" to Haley, and Haley's quick changing of the subject.  I loved Joe's interaction with Gordon about it, and Gordon's dawning understanding of his daughter as a human being completely apart from him was wonderful.

In fact, I loved just about everything about this episode.  I really can't believe how much emotional nuance all of the characters have now, considering that the show started out as a less-good knockoff of Mad Men with stock characters who were little more than caricatures.  This sort of thing doesn't usually happen, and when it does, it's a gift.

Lee Pace's face in the moment when Joe realized Hayley was gay was one of my all-time favorite moments from him. Just a beautifully played, warm, subtle and tender understanding and kinship. I also agreed with your take on the women's friendship and how beautifully it is being portrayed. This episode got to me so many times. And I loved Gordon's understanding and kindness, and Donna's breakdown in the car. I'm so glad they are still close, and it's so refreshing to see that on TV. The marriage didn't work. But they still care about and love each other, and that's rare and wonderful to see on TV.

On 9/24/2017 at 7:44 AM, crashdown said:

Quite.  One of the things that this season is doing is making me feel incredibly nostalgic for those early years of the Internet.  I put up my first web page in 1993, when I was in graduate school.  Everything about the web then was so exciting and new: it was just people (and not very many of us) putting up pages and talking to each other on listservs and news groups about our passions.  Being hooked into the Internet then was something unusual and special, and we all felt it.  There were very few sites that were monetized at all--basically, the deal was that you put information about your obsessions out there, and when you needed to look something up, you could count on the fact that someone else had an obsession about *that* to share.  The original TWoP site (called MightyBigTV then) came out of those days.  It was unsustainable, of course, but I miss it.  The Facebook era just can't compete.

Oh, me too on all of this! I still get nostalgic at the sound of a modem handshaking. I love that noise. And it takes me right back to writer's groups I was part of, on Prodigy, and AOL, and GEnie! Sigh. Good times (And I loved MBTV and TWOP too.)

On 9/24/2017 at 0:55 PM, dubbel zout said:

Lots of audio flashbacks for me: the Cowboy Junkies' version of "Sweet Jane," Pat Benatar's "We Belong," the modem beep-boops. 

It's funny how much the music on this show affects me, and so powerfully. The use of "We Belong" here was terrific because it was one of those "I have to sing with this!" moments (we've all been there), and so joyful, but it was tense and upsetting underneath because Donna was drunk, and it was pretty obvious she was gonna get caught.

 

On 9/25/2017 at 7:10 AM, crashdown said:

I've been thinking about all of the connections that were made in "Making a Connection" (Joe to Haley; Joe to Boz; Cameron to the fan site; Cameron to her new hands-off employer; Cameron's literal connection to the Internet) and the fact that Donna was the one who *failed* to make a connection both times an opportunity for one presented itself  The scene with Gordon in the car was lovely and touching, but she didn't take the hand that he offered to her.  Even though I think she badly wanted to tell Cameron that no, she *wasn't* ok, she walked away from Cam's opening.  I know that in terms of the story it makes sense--Donna can't go from being a dragon to being entirely vulnerable in a single episode.  Still, it was sad.  If there's not some big emotional payoff with all of this torture at the end of the series, I'll be very disappointed.

ETA: Donna initially made a connection with Joanie, but then she wrecked it by repeating the same speech almost verbatim as a drunken non-sequitur.  Poor Donna!

Thanks for this wonderful and subtle observation -- I hadn't noticed the nuances of everyone's connections here, and your post made me go back and watch the episode again. What I think is interesting is that we see Donna visibly react and WANT to connect both times. And I think that's actually new -- she's in this different place now, she's moving on from where she was before (and I hope in the best way).

On 9/25/2017 at 10:03 AM, Addlepated said:

Does anyone else think that Cameron's going to come up with an MMO?  Ultima Online started development in 1995, so it's about the right time.

This was definitely where my mind went when Alexa called her "a worldbuilder."

On 9/25/2017 at 6:40 PM, crashdown said:

I think the fact that Donna is apparently the only one in the universe who can understand Pilgrim is a testament to just how connected the two of them are on a creative level.  There's nothing wrong with being a successful VC, but it's not right for Donna, and she'll never be really happy doing it.  More than anything else, Donna needs to be doing intellectually satisfying, creative work, and she needs people (Cameron most of all) to acknowledge how good she is at it.

(snip)

Donna did amazing work throughout the series: she was the one who came up with the double-sided chip that saved the Giant, and she was the one who dreamed up Community, arguably the most important innovation to come out of Mutiny.  But Cameron could never tell her that.  I think Cam *knew* how good she was and respected her for it--that's why she yelled at Gordon that "your wife is doing things that you couldn't even imagine doing" after his program melted their computers.  That, after all, is why she asked Donna to join Mutiny in the first place. But Cameron was very young and very self-centered (as many brilliant and passionate people are in their twenties), and the most she could ever do is to say that Donna grounded her--that's nice, but it's not the same thing as being told how good her work was.

(snip)

If Cam had managed to tell any of that to Donna, Donna wouldn't have been forced ultimately to choose between loyalty to Cam and her own sense of self, which was essentially her choice when she pushed the IPO even knowing that passing it would mean that Cam would walk away from the company.  There was no way for her to win, whichever way she went.  If she chose Cam, she lost herself; if she chose herself, she lost Cam.

But Cameron at 32 is not Cameron at 25--she's much less selfish now, and much  more attuned to how others in her life are feeling. (Look how quickly she caught on to the fact that Donna, with whom she hadn't really interacted in years, was having a meltdown.  Season Two Cameron needed Boz to tell her that Donna was going through something, even with weeks of evidence right in front of her.)  A Mutiny 2.0--same idea, but over the Internet--could be great for both of them, and this time around, it could actually work. It's my dream ending for their story.

I agree with this, and it's part of the beauty and tragedy of Donna and Cam's partnership and friendship. And you hit on something I think is so important for Donna's character -- as a person, we've consistently seen that she really lights up when she has to DO something, fix something, create something. She was so good at taking care of other people that she wasn't always credited with what an amazing and creative problem-solver she was on a technical level. She was just "the Mom." When of course ironically she was so much more than that.

On 9/26/2017 at 8:18 PM, Kel Varnsen said:

Speaking of friendship I like and am kind of amazed how they have made Gordon and Joe into legitimate friends who hang out and go camping and shit. Their scene where Joe was trying to talk about Haley without actually outing her was good. And speaking of Gordon I can't believe how likable they made him. Looking back at some of my season 1 posts I hated Gordon.

I'm shocked at my own turnaround on Gordon too. I disliked him in season 1 and then borderline hated him in Season 2... right up until the moment he said the words "49 percent," to Joe (and then I adored him again). Then along came Season 3 and he ended up becoming one of my favorite people on the show. It was just so wonderful to watch Gordon evolve and achieve a kind of inner peace and softness. He is easily one of the kindest characters on the show now -- someone who listens when people speak. But then again, so is Joe, and again, that's shocking when I look back at Seasons 1 and 2.