S04.E09: Search / S04.E10: Ten of Swords

[AmandaPanda]

Quote

Donna celebrates a milestone with her closest allies; Cameron contemplates saying goodbye; Joe confronts an uncertain future.

SERIES FINALE!

[Armchair Critic]

Yahoo! Poor Comet.

Carol Kane was the palm reader.

Donna and Cameron working together....

[Shriekingeel]

The fuck was that? 

[stealinghome]

The first half-hour of 4x10 sagged, but 4x09 and the second half of 4x10 were awesome. The Cameron/Donna stuff was perfection.

[Armchair Critic]

Seemed like a good fit for Joe at the end since he enjoyed mentoring Haley.

[ketose]

Joe as a humanities professor makes perfect sense. All he ever really cared about was knowing what people wanted. Also, he gets to lecture people, which is where he really shines.

Cameron and Donna can go fail at another company. Those two ended up totally useless.

Poor Gordon. You were better than all of them.

[UrbanShocker]

I'm not quite sure what to make of the ending, though I guess it was inevitable for Donna and Cam to work together again.  I'm guessing the "Phoenix" logo which lit up during their talk was imagined, but it was kind of distracting and made me think it was going to be a time jump, until it wasn't.   Anyway, I feel like this show truly ended when Gordon died.  The last three episodes are like an epilogue - not bad but they were just...there.

 

One other nitpick - when the Cardiff radio is fixed, the first thing it plays is a baseball game.  But in September 1994 when this episode was taking place, Major League Baseball was on strike and not playing.  

[ketose]

3 minutes ago, UrbanShocker said:

I'm not quite sure what to make of the ending, though I guess it was inevitable for Donna and Cam to work together again.  I'm guessing the "Phoenix" logo which lit up during their talk was imagined, but it was kind of distracting and made me think it was going to be a time jump, until it wasn't.   Anyway, I feel like this show truly ended when Gordon died.  The last three episodes are like an epilogue - not bad but they were just...there.

 

One other nitpick - when the Cardiff radio is fixed, the first thing it plays is a baseball game.  But in September 1994 when this episode was taking place, Major League Baseball was on strike and not playing.  

I imagine it had to be 1995 by that point. There were a lot of months jumped in the last couple of episodes.

[Dowel Jones]

I felt like I spent two hours watching the arrow spin around and a caption below that says "Loading, Please wait."  I did like Gordon's tape message to Hailey.

[ketose]

I'm kind of disappointed HACF didn't do anything with the domain cometlist.com.

[chick binewski]

Gordon's daughters connecting with their dad gave me the feels. Loved Donna's last line to Cameron but the show wasted too much time getting them there. Solsbury Hill was a perfect choice. 

Wish the show put Toby Huss to better use and am wondering whether the pictures on Joe's desk were to partly imply he'll end up back in Cam & Haley's life.  

[Mrs Shibbles]

Joe started the series  out in front of a group of college students and then ended up in front of a group of college students.  

Other unrelated thoughts:

-Due to the casting of Carol Kane, I was wondering if the palm reader would turn out to be Joe's mother. (Is she still alive?).  The way it was left, I would say it's a no. 

-I let out an audible groan when " Yahoo! " popped up on Cam's screen.

-I was cracking up at Donna and Cam trying to figure out the hacky sack.  Mr. Shibbles used to have one.  

 

I'm going to miss this show.  It's one of a kind.

Edited October 15, 2017 by Mrs Shibbles
It's Yahoo!

[cinles]

29 minutes ago, chick binewski said:

Gordon's daughters connecting with their dad gave me the feels. Loved Donna's last line to Cameron but the show wasted too much time getting them there. Solsbury Hill was a perfect choice. 

Wish the show put Toby Huss to better use and am wondering whether the pictures on Joe's desk were to partly imply he'll end up back in Cam & Haley's life.  

Joe had everyone's photo on his desk. Did anyone notice how they slipped an even more woman-centric theme over and beyond what they've been doing since season 2? Gordon is dead. Joe runs away to be an unhappy teacher pining for his old life and Bos is relegated as Diane's husband. Donna gave a rousing speech in front of a bunch of women. Plus I assume Donna and Cameron are going to create a music streaming service? 

Edited October 15, 2017 by cinles

[ketose]

29 minutes ago, Mrs Shibbles said:

Joe started the series  out in front of a group of college students and then ended up in front of a group of college students.  

Other unrelated thoughts:

-Due to the casting of Carol Kane, I was wondering if the palm reader would turn out to be Joe's mother. (Is she still alive?).  The way it was left, I would say it's a no. 

-I let out an audible groan when " Yahoo! " popped up on Cam's screen.

-I was cracking up at Donna and Cam trying to figure out the hacky sack.  Mr. Shibbles used to have one.  

 

I'm going to miss this show.  It's one of a kind.

Yahoo! supposedly has 3 billion accounts now, which might be more impressive if I didn't have 3 of my own. I created one in college for chats. I used one for web hosting (back in the geocities days) and one when I started trying to blog. My last one is attached to my Google stuff.

I wonder if Joe realized that the guy who has the idea is rarely the one who sees it to fruition. Look at Edison and Tesla.

 

26 minutes ago, cinles said:

Joe had everyone's photo on his desk. Did anyone notice how they slipped an even more woman-centric theme over and beyond what they've been doing since season 2? Gordon is dead. Joe runs away to be an unhappy teacher pining for his old life and Bos is relegated as Diane's husband. Donna gave a rousing speech in front of a bunch of women. Plus I assume Donna and Cameron are going to create a music streaming service? 

I only noticed the girl power theme for the last half hour of the finale. The major theme of the show was computers / technology as the thing to get to the thing, which was supposed to change the way humans related to the world. The reality is that the internet is maybe 5% world changing and 95% time-wasting toy. But it's better than nothing.

[stealinghome]

2 hours ago, chick binewski said:

Gordon's daughters connecting with their dad gave me the feels. Loved Donna's last line to Cameron but the show wasted too much time getting them there. Solsbury Hill was a perfect choice. 

Wish the show put Toby Huss to better use and am wondering whether the pictures on Joe's desk were to partly imply he'll end up back in Cam & Haley's life.  

I agree with just about all of this comment, but especially the bolded. If there was something off for me in the finale, it was the pacing--it felt both meandering and rushed somehow. I understand why the creators didn't want Cam and Donna to reconnect until Gordon's death and I understand why they didn't want to kill Gordon until the end, but they really needed to spread the Cam/Donna rapprochement out more.

I definitely took the pictures in Joe's desk as a sign that he'll continue to be in the lives of his found family in the future.

Quote

-I was cracking up at Donna and Cam trying to figure out the hacky sack.  Mr. Shibbles used to have one.  

Donna playing with the hacky-sack in the red dress killed me. In fact pretty much everything from when Haley screamed to when Cam floated her and Donna working together again was comedy GOLD. "Did you hit it with your sack?!" had me cackling.

Edited October 15, 2017 by stealinghome

[madam magpie]

22 minutes ago, stealinghome said:

Donna playing with the hacky-sack in the red dress killed me. In fact pretty much everything from when Haley screamed to when Cam floated her and Donna working together again was comedy GOLD. "Did you hit it with your sack?!" had me cackling.

Yes! I loved Cameron falling in the pool too.

In some ways, this did feel like a very long epilogue, but I liked it a lot. Donna/Cameron are just the best. I think the way they came back together was great. I’m really going to miss this show.

[stealinghome]

22 minutes ago, madam magpie said:

Yes! I loved Cameron falling in the pool too.

Oh man, how could I forget that??? That was HILARIOUS (and Donna's reaction in the background makes it even funnier). I did actually laugh out loud when that happened.  But aw, Cameron just loved Donna so much in that moment, she was in a daze. :)

The pool is so a metaphor for life: Donna's all determinedly swimming her very precise strokes all the time and Cam just falls right in after not watching where she's going. But at the end of the day, they both wind up soaking their feet and just hanging out and talking.

[Moxie Cat]

14 hours ago, UrbanShocker said:

One other nitpick - when the Cardiff radio is fixed, the first thing it plays is a baseball game.  But in September 1994 when this episode was taking place, Major League Baseball was on strike and not playing.  

Probably just a time glitch. They have had a few of them. But the episode with Donna's party definitely took place in late November 1994, which was mentioned as taking place 2 months after the first hour. Haley's boyfriend mentioned money he earned over Thanksgiving, and that was the same weekend that Star Trek: Generations came out. I saw it the day after Thanksgiving - it was my first semester of college and thus ingrained in my memory!

The Joe scene was likely a time jump, but otherwise the episode never made it into 1995.

I think the Phoenix scene was to emphasize that Cam and Donna needed an idea (which they both weren't focusing on in considering working together), and if they didn't have one, the business would probably fail. When Donna got the idea at the end (yeah, thinking Napster, or definitely something combining music and community), that made the difference. 

Personally, I loved how a show that was ostensibly about a male antihero and his normal buddy actually turned into a show about two complicated, intelligent women who didn't even know each other for most of the first season.

[ketose]

That's pretty bad if they try music sharing (Community with songs!) and fail again. At least Joe got off the treadmill after the Netscape thing.

It's funny, in 10 years from the end of the series, the Joes and Camerons and Clarks out there can make their contributions through apps. I imagine Cameron could come up with something less pretentious and more fun for a gaming app. Donna would do something with social media.

[stealinghome]

Quote

I think the Phoenix scene was to emphasize that Cam and Donna needed an idea (which they both weren't focusing on in considering working together), and if they didn't have one, the business would probably fail. When Donna got the idea at the end (yeah, thinking Napster, or definitely something combining music and community), that made the difference. 

I also think that before Cam and Donna could really seriously think about going into business together again--before they could even allow themselves to get to the "idea" part of the equation, if that makes sense--they needed to put the ghost of Mutiny to rest. I mean, part of the point was definitely that the idea itself didn't matter; it's "the thing that gets you to the thing," only the really important thing is the people, as Donna laid out so well in her speech. (Though it's also very touching and noteworthy that both Cam and Donna are out of ideas for most of the episode, and it's only once they reconnect that they can dream again.) But imo Cam and Donna also had to go to Mutiny together, and own their shit together, and get closure together, before they could allow themselves to get to the headspace where they could have an idea that could make working together again a real possibility. They needed to be sure of each other before they could take that leap.

But I really love that it was Donna--Donna, who has always struggled with perceiving herself as the facilitator or perfecter of others' ideas instead of the Big Ideas person, even when that role was validated by an older and wiser Cam at dinner--who got to have the last Big Idea.

[Dowel Jones]

20 minutes ago, ketose said:

That's pretty bad if they try music sharing (Community with songs!) and fail again

They forgot to mention in their reverie of how they would do it all again that they would get their pants sued off by record labels and musicians and lose everything.

[crashdown]

4 hours ago, stealinghome said:

I agree with just about all of this comment, but especially the bolded. If there was something off for me in the finale, it was the pacing--it felt both meandering and rushed somehow. I understand why the creators didn't want Cam and Donna to reconnect until Gordon's death and I understand why they didn't want to kill Gordon until the end, but they really needed to spread the Cam/Donna rapprochement out more.

I agree, but the problem was that they only had a 10-episode season to play with. The pacing for Donna/Cam up to 4.08 seemed to me to be just about perfect. We had a few episodes of outright hostility, culminating in the hospital scene in which Donna thinks the very worst of Cam and then learns through Gordon that she was wrong.  She starts overtly missing Cam at that point while she's playing Cam's game.  She spends three episodes playing Pilgrim, finishing the game the day Gordon dies, and then the next episode culminates in the "I miss you, too."  But after that, I think we needed more episodes of the two of them rebuilding their personal relationship.  Ideally, I'd have liked to see a whole season five of their doing that, leading up at the end to the idea of their working together again.  But if we couldn't have a whole season, I'd have liked a few more episodes.  A 13-episode season would have been the bare minimum to cover it. But I realize that, given where Donna and Cameron were at the end of season three, the showrunners did they could with the 10-episode season they were given.

3 hours ago, stealinghome said:

The pool is so a metaphor for life: Donna's all determinedly swimming her very precise strokes all the time and Cam just falls right in after not watching where she's going. But at the end of the day, they both wind up soaking their feet and just hanging out and talking.

That's a great observation--very true to the characters of the two of them.

 

1 hour ago, stealinghome said:

I also think that before Cam and Donna could really seriously think about going into business together again--before they could even allow themselves to get to the "idea" part of the equation, if that makes sense--they needed to put the ghost of Mutiny to rest. I mean, part of the point was definitely that the idea itself didn't matter; it's "the thing that gets you to the thing," only the really important thing is the people, as Donna laid out so well in her speech. (Though it's also very touching and noteworthy that both Cam and Donna are out of ideas for most of the episode, and it's only once they reconnect that they can dream again.) But imo Cam and Donna also had to go to Mutiny together, and own their shit together, and get closure together, before they could allow themselves to get to the headspace where they could have an idea that could make working together again a real possibility. They needed to be sure of each other before they could take that leap.

I love that, because it's so cyclical: their relationship is grounded in their mutual creative ideas, but they can't *have* those creative ideas without their relationship. The showrunners said outright in one of their exit interviews that this season has been a love story between Cam and Donna.  They left it at that, not defining exactly what "love story" means here. Alan Sepinwall saw the two of them as an OTP but really only in an intellectual sense--he didn't think they were even really friends apart from the way their minds hooked together.  I don't agree with that; I think there's plenty of evidence throughout the series that they're besotted with each other, both because they think better together than either does apart, and because they just plain have a mutual deep affection that neither probably fully understands or even totally trusts.  I think Cam's "What do we have exactly?" at the end of this episode was a pretty fascinating comment. Donna says that they're friends, but that clearly isn't exactly the right label.  You don't usually stare at your friend with such slack-jawed adoration that you fall into a pool!

Edited October 15, 2017 by crashdown

[Armchair Critic]

Forgot to mention last night.... I liked when Donna and Cameron said they thought Haley might be gay at the same time and then Donna said her daughters were so amazing.

[dubbel zout]

I loved how Donna shook her head like she was amazed her amazing daughters were hers, like she couldn’t believe her luck.(Even if they drove her crazy.)

[tennisgurl]

It really felt like this was an epilogue more than an ending (I would say the real ending was the death of Gordon), but I really liked how everything tied up, and where everyone ended up. Cameron and Donna go into business together again, Joe is a humanities professor, and Bos contemplates living a longer life than he expected. I wish Gordon had survived, but I get why he died. It seems almost inevitable to me since he first got sick. It all tied up really well. 

I think this could have honestly been one episode, a lot was just padding, but I was happy to spend some more time with these characters before the show closed out. I have enjoyed seeing how everyone has grown and changed, and where they all ended up. Whether or not it ends well or not (especially with Donna and Cameron) is up to the viewer, but thats a big theme of the show. Sometimes when you have a good feeling about something, you just have to go for it. 

Thats why I loved the last scene/line between Cameron and Donna. Donna has an idea, now what? Thats the whole in a nutshell. A idea creates a whole new way of life. 

Also, the hack stuff was hilarious, as was Haileys annoyance with the new Star Trek movie. Right there with you girl.  

I am really gong to miss this show. It had it sups and downs, but I loved its p;passion for ideas and creativity, and the great rush you get when your a creator, as well as the crushing lows when things fall apart. The main characters could all be assholes, but I still liked and sympathized with them in the end, which is always impressive. Its really a one of a kind series. 

[Ms Lark]

8 hours ago, cinles said:

Plus I assume Donna and Cameron are going to create a music streaming service?

Interesting. I was thinking virtual wallets. Timing was right for a smart card failure, trust me on this one! Napster-esque failure is also a good one.

5 hours ago, ketose said:

It's funny, in 10 years from the end of the series, the Joes and Camerons and Clarks out there can make their contributions through apps. I imagine Cameron could come up with something less pretentious and more fun for a gaming app. Donna would do something with social media.

I was hoping for a quick jump ahead to current times to see where they (at least the main cast) ended up. Apps is definitely where they would go, except by now they're (we're) all dinosaurs!

[kieyra]

Someone please tell me what TV show I saw recently that textually made fun of someone for having Solsbury Hill on their Spotify playlist. 

(Er, if this seems totally OT, it was the final song. Unfortunately I became distracted while trying to remember the above.)

ETA: It was OITNB.

Edited October 16, 2017 by kieyra

[stealinghome]

27 minutes ago, Ms Lark said:

Interesting. I was thinking virtual wallets. Timing was right for a smart card failure, trust me on this one! Napster-esque failure is also a good one.

fwiw, the creators were asked in an interview what Donna's idea was, and they said they deliberately had Donna see multiple things that we have digital equivalents of today in order to leave the audience guessing. I counted the jukebox (some form of streaming music), the waitress taking an order (online take-out orders/dinner reservations/etc--maybe Yelp--or this could also be social media to some degree if you think what she sees is two friends catching up), paying (PayPal/FourSquare/virtual wallets), maybe even Cam wrestling with the map at the car (GPS).

The more poetic answer is either what the creators told the director or the director told Kerry Bishe--can't remember which one it was--but anyway, the idea is "Donna sees the future. The whole future. Everything about the future." She sees where we'll be in 2017 with the internet. And I love that, too!

[ketose]

1 hour ago, stealinghome said:

fwiw, the creators were asked in an interview what Donna's idea was, and they said they deliberately had Donna see multiple things that we have digital equivalents of today in order to leave the audience guessing. I counted the jukebox (some form of streaming music), the waitress taking an order (online take-out orders/dinner reservations/etc--maybe Yelp--or this could also be social media to some degree if you think what she sees is two friends catching up), paying (PayPal/FourSquare/virtual wallets), maybe even Cam wrestling with the map at the car (GPS).

The more poetic answer is either what the creators told the director or the director told Kerry Bishe--can't remember which one it was--but anyway, the idea is "Donna sees the future. The whole future. Everything about the future." She sees where we'll be in 2017 with the internet. And I love that, too!

Maybe they should have shown a person juggling a PDA and a huge brick cellular phone.

[Moxie Cat]

5 hours ago, crashdown said:

The showrunners said outright in one of their exit interviews that this season has been a love story between Cam and Donna

I would say that the same is true of the relationship between Joe and Gordon. They had a deep relationship beyond being merely friends. They understood each other on a deeper level. They just came to their detente before Donna and Cam did. I think that their relationship can also be seen in how Joe seemed to be profoundly more affected by Joe's death than anyone else. Lovely that a show had such a wonderful theme of deep friendship.

I also saw a parallel in the waitress shooting down Haley and Donna shooting down Cam's initial overture about working together. Both were devastated but for different reasons.

Totally thought that Joe would be starting a new class at his college and Haley would be in it, maybe as a freshman. The actress looked young but I think she could have pulled that off.

I love that idea about Donna seeing multiple ideas about the future. All the principals, including Joe, are well positioned to see the potential in gaming apps and social media.

[tennisgurl]

1 hour ago, Moxie Cat said:

I think that their relationship can also be seen in how Joe seemed to be profoundly more affected by Joe's death than anyone else. Lovely that a show had such a wonderful theme of deep friendship.

Yeah I liked that a lot too. I think, especially with Joe and Gordon, these were two guys who had a lot of trouble connecting with people, then they found each other, and while they had LOTS of problems, they really did have an extremely profound connection. I think thats why Joe seems to take his death harder than anyone (besides the girls), because he didn't just lose a friend or a romantic or business partner, he lost his intellectual and spiritual soul mate. 

I really like that the show ended up being about those connection (of being platonic soulmates with Cameron and Donna and Joe and Gordon) instead of more traditional romantic ones. And it fits really well into the greater ideas of technology and the internet connecting people together who might never in normal circumstances have found each other. 

[Joimiaroxeu]

I liked it and thought it was a decent send-off. The only part I rolled my eyes at was Bos doing a slow-moton walk to Fanfare for the Common Man. What, they couldn't get the rights to Stayin' Alive?

The romantic in me was sad Joe and Cameron broke up but I guess it would've been too trite otherwise.

[Moxie Cat]

38 minutes ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

he romantic in me was sad Joe and Cameron broke up but I guess it would've been too trite otherwise

When Cam said that she really wanted it to work out this time, she was speaking for me too. :) but the fact that they had fundamental problems despite how they felt was telegraphed throughout the season. I knew it was over when Cam told Donna that Joe had a particular way of washing dishes!

[stealinghome]

Okay, so I'm rewatching the finale and one thing I absolutely love--the visual composition of the last three shots of Donna and Cam. As some reviews have pointed out (and the Chrises talked about in the Inside HACF clip on the AMC website), 4x08 did a BEAUTIFUL job of shooting Donna and Cam in a way that visually tracked the degree to which they were reconnecting emotionally. At the beginning of the episode, when they're talking, Donna and Cam are not only never in the frame together, they're always shot at a distance and framed through a doorway (different doorways, natch). The camera is in another room (and it's a different room for each of them). Visually speaking, even though Cam and Donna are physically in the same room, it's like they're talking to someone across a distance, in a different part of the house--which is a perfect metaphor for where they begin 4x08 (and where Cam and Joe end in 4x09, come to think of it). Throughout the episode that changes--I think in their next conversation you still never see Cam and Donna in the same shot, but the cameras are all in the same room, so while they're still not together, the gap is being bridged and they're at least speaking to someone "in the same room"--and then it culminates in the garden scene, where we see them from a distance but finally in the same shot, and Donna circles the doorway a few times but doesn't leave, she stays "in" the room, and offers support, and they connect and Cam opens up. And suddenly all the distance shots and Donna's face in darkness are replaced by close-ups and Donna being properly lit. And THEN, once Cam has opened up and Donna has validated her feelings, they finally get to be in the same shot when Cam scoots over in wordless invitation and Donna sits and we get them side-by-side, and Donna cracks too, and that's the moment where they click and the emotional intimacy is back on. They can share the frame visually and emotionally now. (Side note, 4x08 truly was beautifully thought-out and visually composed.)

And then the last three shots of them in 4x10? Fantastic callbacks to 4x08's visual language. The first one is Donna saying she has an idea. We see Cam, sitting in the doorway (!) of her truck with the door open (and the camera is actually zooming out ever so slightly, but that's okay, because it helps bring Donna's shoulder into the frame at the end of the shot--note it's only her shoulder though). Then we see Donna head-on, and we follow Donna to where she walks up to Cam, and when she stops, the two of them together are framed through the window of Cam's pickup! Now they're not only in the same shot, they're in the same (tiny) space--and they're looking directly at each other, which we didn't get in 4x08. But it's such a great use of the same visual language. We're seeing them through the same type of visual frame as the doorways in 4x08, only it's like a photo negative, it's so intimate this time, because they're together in this small space staring at each other. Not only are they in the same room together looking at each other, they're in the same damn doorway even! And THEN in the last shot of them, once Donna says "I have an idea," we see the back of Donna's head/jaw (note it's more of Donna than in the first shot) and Cameron from the front, and the camera zooms IN on Cam, beginning to smile and still framed in the door of her truck, and we never lose the side of Donna's face. So visually, Cam and Donna are getting closer and going through the door together, and we're going with them.

Just, like, damn. What fantastic visual metaphors this show uses. The use of doorways in particular in the last few episodes has really been brilliant (Gordon's death was all about doors and rooms too, and they're clearly used to symbolize emotional connection and intimacy--he goes through a series of doors and in each room is a Donna he was more and more emotionally intimate with).

Edited October 16, 2017 by stealinghome

[Drew Pierce]

Past couple seasons have been weak and this finale was like the Mad Men finale, glad it's over because it needed to be put down.

What a great moral for this show:  Donna screws over everyone and wins.  

She cheats on Gordon multiple times, she lies to Diane and screws her in the Mutiny IPO situation and even though it tanks she still ends up with an executive job w/the new company.  Then she steals Gordon and Joe's idea for a search engine and somehow acquires Cameron's algorithm for Rover so they win and she gets a slap on the wrist, she almost kills Boz, and then Diane rewards her with all of this by offering the entire company to her.  Then since Gordon dies Cameron and Joe feel bad and end up befriending her again, so she wins no consequences.  And then despite her treating Gordon like crap all the way to his death and ignoring her kids they end up coming back to her anyway (for no real reason).  And then it finally happens.  Cameron begs her for a job and to work together again and Donna's like eah?  no thanks. 

So this is a loose timeline and i might've gotten things not exactly correct, but this is the overall moral arc.  Donna screwed over everyone and makes a speech to women about how she screwed everyone, but it's ok because she's successful and that's what you have to do as a woman.  So in the end she wins on every level.  She has all the power, all the money, and the freedom to create new companies with Cameron while Joe is teaching the Sweathogs.  This ending completely sucks.  Donna should've lost at the end of this show, but instead she wins in the worst way possible. 

They filmed this last year, was this supposed to be like a metaphor for Hillary since they were probably expecting her to win at that time?  I'm generally confused that a show starts out as a partnership between Gordon and Joe on big ideas and it ends up with Gordon dead, Joe teaching marketing to 7th graders, while Donna and Cameron get to make all the ideas.  Sucked!  Halt & Catch Fire, good riddance!

Joe McMillan.  Goes home to be a teacher?  lame.  very lame.  Another thing, why would he pack it in because Yahoo made the deal with Netscape first?  At that time and up until present day we all know there is room for more than one search engine, why would he quit so easily?

Joe should've positioned to run something major in Silicon Valley or founding Google or Amazon or somebody.  but no matter what, Joe McMillan should've retired the richest and most successful man in the world.  His vision is ahead of everyone, so what good would it do to teach a bunch of young kids, all for them to ignore him and do something else.  complete waste.

this show was built around Joe and his supreme vision and motivation and it turned into how Donna can screw everyone over and win with zero vision and no motivation but opportunities just come to her kitchen.  Very lame final season.  this was a series that should've ended after Season One.

[ketose]

1 hour ago, Drew Pierce said:

Past couple seasons have been weak and this finale was like the Mad Men finale, glad it's over because it needed to be put down.

What a great moral for this show:  Donna screws over everyone and wins.  

She cheats on Gordon multiple times, she lies to Diane and screws her in the Mutiny IPO situation and even though it tanks she still ends up with an executive job w/the new company.  Then she steals Gordon and Joe's idea for a search engine and somehow acquires Cameron's algorithm for Rover so they win and she gets a slap on the wrist, she almost kills Boz, and then Diane rewards her with all of this by offering the entire company to her.  Then since Gordon dies Cameron and Joe feel bad and end up befriending her again, so she wins no consequences.  And then despite her treating Gordon like crap all the way to his death and ignoring her kids they end up coming back to her anyway (for no real reason).  And then it finally happens.  Cameron begs her for a job and to work together again and Donna's like eah?  no thanks. 

So this is a loose timeline and i might've gotten things not exactly correct, but this is the overall moral arc.  Donna screwed over everyone and makes a speech to women about how she screwed everyone, but it's ok because she's successful and that's what you have to do as a woman.  So in the end she wins on every level.  She has all the power, all the money, and the freedom to create new companies with Cameron while Joe is teaching the Sweathogs.  This ending completely sucks.  Donna should've lost at the end of this show, but instead she wins in the worst way possible. 

They filmed this last year, was this supposed to be like a metaphor for Hillary since they were probably expecting her to win at that time?  I'm generally confused that a show starts out as a partnership between Gordon and Joe on big ideas and it ends up with Gordon dead, Joe teaching marketing to 7th graders, while Donna and Cameron get to make all the ideas.  Sucked!  Halt & Catch Fire, good riddance!

Joe McMillan.  Goes home to be a teacher?  lame.  very lame.  Another thing, why would he pack it in because Yahoo made the deal with Netscape first?  At that time and up until present day we all know there is room for more than one search engine, why would he quit so easily?

Joe should've positioned to run something major in Silicon Valley or founding Google or Amazon or somebody.  but no matter what, Joe McMillan should've retired the richest and most successful man in the world.  His vision is ahead of everyone, so what good would it do to teach a bunch of young kids, all for them to ignore him and do something else.  complete waste.

this show was built around Joe and his supreme vision and motivation and it turned into how Donna can screw everyone over and win with zero vision and no motivation but opportunities just come to her kitchen.  Very lame final season.  this was a series that should've ended after Season One.

The problem is that this isn't the Bill Gates / Steve Jobs / Mark Zuckerberg story. This is about people who worked in the computer world, were often instrumental, but never became the big names in that world. The fact is that Joe always put his vision ahead of money. When the Giant was turned into a faster, but ordinary computer because circumstances required it, Joe burned down the first shipment and walked away. When Joe started working at a company that stole Mutiny's idea, he destroyed it with Gordon's "virus." In turn, when Joe lost control of his own company, he destroyed the company by admitting Gordon owned the first anti-virus software. Joe even made money betting on what the future of tech would be and investing. It was just never what he wanted.

You won't get an argument from me over Donna post Mutiny. However, everyone but Cameron wanted to sell Mutiny because bigger companies with more resources would eventually replace it rather than buy it. Cameron was going to Pilgrim the company to death, by making it perfect, but worthless. Supposedly, Donna was good at VC because she understood what was worthwhile and what was not. She also tried to work with Cameron and Joe and Gordon, but the rest weren't interested for various reasons. I would definitely call the browser war Donna's low point.

[cinles]

This show became one big feminist party after season one. Chris Cantwell has publically said how much his wife influenced his writing and thus the other's writing. This show became about Cameron and particularly Donna after season one. It was no longer about "Joe and his supreme vision". Season one will always be my favorite season.

[dubbel zout]

HaCF is a story about failure. There’s a good article about it in the NYT today. I’m glad our quartet kept trying and failing, because that’s much more realistic than watching them invent the Internet.

 I don’t think Cam and Joe would have ever worked given their opposite sides of the kid issue.

[Darian]

I am going to miss this odd, sometimes uneven little show. Not going to lie, I teared up during Donna's speech. Grinned like a fool when they revealed Joe became a humanities professor. 

As Donna's eyes darted around the diner,  I waited to find out what the idea was and kept waiting and then loved that we never found out. We watched these people for a good chunk of their careers, so I know they're going to keep being inspired and having ideas, and whatever it was, it wasn't her last, and it was such a good place to leave them all (except poor Gordon, sniff). This is one show I wait awhile and then binge, to watch it all happen again. 

[Hanahope]

I thought it was a decent 'history' in that at the dawn of computing, there were a bunch of start ups all over the place, but eventually, the vast majority of them were bought out.  I remember when the goal of so many start-ups was to do well-enough so Microsoft would buy them out for millions.  Even with games, there were many independents, but they'd eventually get sold to Sony or EA.

Since obviously our characters were not the final players in the end, they had to be part of the story, of so many others that were involved, but eventually sold out or were pushed out.

Personnaly, I love the fact that the show placed a lot of emphasis of the contributions by women, who are mostly degraded in the tech industry, especially over the last 10 years.

The only thing I didn't really get was the plot with Alexa.  I just thought it was a made up bit to keep Cameron in the story when she wasn't interacting with Boz, Donna, Joe or Gordon.

For Joe's sake, I hope he's teaching at a university, as I'm sure he'll have to fight off romantic overtures of his students.

[ahpny]

Quote

This show became one big feminist party after season one. Chris Cantwell has publically said how much his wife influenced his writing and thus the other's writing. This show became about Cameron and particularly Donna after season one

But, but it worked because the show never preached. Even Donna’s speech never seemed like the writers lecturing the audience. It reflected realistic and understandable thoughts a character like Donna would have. And there are plenty of women just like Can and Donna. I graduated from an EE class of about 60, with exactly two women, one of whom a particular professor always seemed to call upon simply because she was a women. These two women were more capable and worked harder than most of the guys. EE is hard for everyone, but I imagine it was at least a bit harder for them. I think of Donna and Cam as those two in a way. (Yes, Donna said her degree was in Computer Science rather than Electrical Engineering, but why quibble.)

The scene with Donna and Cam attacking Hailey’s computer problems (and Donna additionally reviving the transistor radio) couldn’t sell the idea better that no one should ever presume that women can’t be extremely qualified in high tech/hard science areas. Showing this as simply the normal way these women roll does more to break down stereotypes than you’d think. See Will and Grace Effect. Part of the reason why these scenes worked well is that they arose naturally from the complex backgrounds of the characters, who were always portrayed as realistically flawed, but mostly trying to do the right thing in the end.

I’m going to miss the show.

[crashdown]

13 hours ago, Moxie Cat said:

I would say that the same is true of the relationship between Joe and Gordon. They had a deep relationship beyond being merely friends. They understood each other on a deeper level. They just came to their detente before Donna and Cam did. I think that their relationship can also be seen in how Joe seemed to be profoundly more affected by Joe's death than anyone else. Lovely that a show had such a wonderful theme of deep friendship.

I also saw a parallel in the waitress shooting down Haley and Donna shooting down Cam's initial overture about working together. Both were devastated but for different reasons.

I totally agree about Joe and Gordon--I've enjoyed their bromance throughout the series. One of the things that the show has done well is to show that work partnerships, particular when the work is demanding and creative, can be as profound as the relationships between romantic couples.

I also thought about that parallel--it is very interesting, and it's one of many ways that the show has set up Cam/Donna as a romantic relationship, even if not necessarily a sexual one.

[Dowel Jones]

50 minutes ago, Hanahope said:

For Joe's sake, I hope he's teaching at a university, as I'm sure he'll have to fight off romantic overtures of his students.

At first, I thought that he might be in a lower level class at a university because he had his own office, but then the bell rang for beginning the next class.  Did anyone here go to a college with time bells?  I sure didn't.  So maybe he is in high school.

[kieyra]

2 hours ago, cinles said:

This show became one big feminist party after season one. 

And as a female who's been in IT for 25 years, I couldn't be more pleased. 

[dubbel zout]

I’m not in IT, but I loved seeing women get a bit of what’s due. We’re too often ignored in history.

Edited October 16, 2017 by dubbel zout

[crashdown]

5 hours ago, Hanahope said:

The only thing I didn't really get was the plot with Alexa.  I just thought it was a made up bit to keep Cameron in the story when she wasn't interacting with Boz, Donna, Joe or Gordon.

Yes, Alexa was a puzzle to me--I couldn't decide if she was supposed to be a truth teller to point out problems in Cam's tendencies or a subtle antagonist to clarify what Cam actually wanted to do with her life.  Maybe she was supposed to be both.  But she did serve to ask Cam pointed questions to let us inside her head a bit, and she also helped hammer the idea home even more that Pilgrim was an impossible game, to make it look all the more significant when Donna appeared to understand Pilgrim immediately and intuitively.

[stealinghome]

1 hour ago, crashdown said:

Yes, Alexa was a puzzle to me--I couldn't decide if she was supposed to be a truth teller to point out problems in Cam's tendencies or a subtle antagonist to clarify what Cam actually wanted to do with her life.  Maybe she was supposed to be both.  But she did serve to ask Cam pointed questions to let us inside her head a bit, and she also helped hammer the idea home even more that Pilgrim was an impossible game, to make it look all the more significant when Donna appeared to understand Pilgrim immediately and intuitively.

I think Alexa is one of the places where the show really could have used 12-13 episodes instead of 10 for this season, but I took her to be a quietly key part of Cam wanting to go back into business with Donna. Earlier this season Cam accused Donna of being a "parasite" (which clearly really wounded Donna, rightfully so), but Cam was mistaking symbiosis for parasitism. As it turns out, it was ALEXA who was the real parasite by Cam's definition. And I think Cam had to experience what a deeply unfulfilling creative "partnership" looked like--someone throwing money at you and telling you what you should be working on, but not actually contributing anything creatively or helping or even caring about what you actually want to do and are interested in--to appreciate how well she and Donna worked together. How compatible they were work-wise. (Her admiration for Donna wanting to DO something at the dinner stands out against her tepid "Alexa doesn't like to get her hands dirty.") Donna and Alexa both tried to push Cam out of her comfort zone--4x06 made that clear--but Donna's way is infinitely better because she contributed (also because she actually gives a shit about Cameron and what Cam wants). Donna and Cam were/are partners, whereas Cam was, in her own words, Alexa's monkey.

Which, not so incidentally, Haley's computer beautifully illustrated. You could see why Cam and Donna are work soulmates. Unlike Alexa, Donna can DO things, and she enjoys the doing and the creative work. But the scene was also framed as a strong contrast to Joe badgering Cam in the scene where they're optimizing Comet--he's micromanaging and pushy and obnoxious and demanding without contributing much. Donna and Cam worked equally on Haley's computer and when Donna's part was over, while she made suggestions, she let Cam do her own thing on her own timeline. She didn't hover. She trusted Cam to do her part of the process. There was a real symbiosis in that scene, and Cam definitely felt it. After working with Alexa, it was like water in the desert, hence why she found the idea of them working together again coming out her mouth before she really realized she was saying it.

So I think Alexa was there mostly to serve as a contrast to Donna, and show Cam what she needed from a partner--which only Donna could give her. I wouldn't quite term her an antagonist; if anything, I might just call her a foil for Donna.

[dubbel zout]

I don’t think we needed more of Alexa. I think she served her purpose as a counterpoint to how Donna worked with Cam. I think Alexa also showed Cam she (Cam) needed someone to give her an idea. Cam was kind of lost without an end goal of any sort. Donna gave Cam just enough structure.

[Moxie Cat]

18 hours ago, Drew Pierce said:

Past couple seasons have been weak and this finale was like the Mad Men finale, glad it's over because it needed to be put down

Wow, couldn't agree less about both shows but to each their own. I agree that Mad Men had a natural ending point in 1970, but I think HACF could have gone at least one more season and jumped to smartphones, apps, iPods, etc. But I'm glad they got to decide their finale because every year felt like a possible finale.

[JZL]

On 10/14/2017 at 10:31 PM, UrbanShocker said:

I'm not quite sure what to make of the ending, though I guess it was inevitable for Donna and Cam to work together again.  I'm guessing the "Phoenix" logo which lit up during their talk was imagined, but it was kind of distracting and made me think it was going to be a time jump, until it wasn't.   Anyway, I feel like this show truly ended when Gordon died.  The last three episodes are like an epilogue - not bad but they were just...there.

 

One other nitpick - when the Cardiff radio is fixed, the first thing it plays is a baseball game.  But in September 1994 when this episode was taking place, Major League Baseball was on strike and not playing.  

True, but there's college and semi-pro ball (but those probably wouldn't be going in September would they?)

On 10/15/2017 at 2:03 AM, Dowel Jones said:

I felt like I spent two hours watching the arrow spin around and a caption below that says "Loading, Please wait."  I did like Gordon's tape message to Hailey.

IIRC that was a taped message to himself that he played to calm himself in times of stress. 

On 10/15/2017 at 7:35 PM, Ms Lark said:

Interesting. I was thinking virtual wallets.

 

Me too, since she gave that cash register a good gawk.

23 hours ago, kieyra said:

Someone please tell me what TV show I saw recently that textually made fun of someone for having Solsbury Hill on their Spotify playlist. 

(Er, if this seems totally OT, it was the final song. Unfortunately I became distracted while trying to remember the above.)

ETA: It was OITNB.

That reminded me they played another Gabriel tune, Mercy Street, in an earlier episode.  I don't think either of these were 90's hits, though they both hold up even today.

I'm not sure what to think of this one.  These series finales are always so bittersweet.  I'm old enough that planned, thought-out series finales are a relatively new thing to me.  It's great that they do them now, but sometimes they feel hollow.  Case-in-point, to me, Joe is too big a dreamer and bs artist to end up in a college humanities classroom, but like someone said, maybe he needed to step off the treadmill.