Halt And Catch Fire - General Discussion

[Guest]

This topic replaces the old Halt And Catch Fire forum which has been vaulted at the location below:  http://forums.previously.tv/forum/409-halt-and-catch-fire-v/

[ganesh]

Scoot McNairy is back in the 80s in the new season of True Detective. 

[kieyra]

MacKenzie Davis will actually be bringing me back to a Terminator movie:

https://ew.com/comic-con/2019/07/23/terminator-dark-fate-linda-hamilton-mackenzie-davis-natalia-reyes/

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jCyEX6u-Yhs

[Miles]

Let me first say that putting boards on read only is stupid. I get moving them to a more obscure corner once the show is done, so they take up space, but what is accomplished by not letting people comment on episodes, in the age of streaming?

I would have had something to say to quite a few episodes. Now I can only say a few words in summary.

I really liked the show through it's ups and downs. The ending was pretty much perfect. I don't quite get how Joe got a job as a humanities professor, but I'll forgive that. They didn't make it clear what exactly he was a professor of. Does marketing fall under the humnities? Anyway. I really liked that him and Cameron didn't work out and the writers didn't force it. It never seemed like it would work, but lesser writers might have fallen pray of the shippers. I hope Joe can find a nice man and adopt some kids.

Donna and Cam working together again is also a perfect fit. I hope it works out how they dreamed, maybe even with a slightly better ending.

I also hope somebody tells Haley that her uncle Joe is also part of the LGBTQ community (even if the show barely remembered after season one). It can be awfully lonely being queer as a teenager, even today, let alone in the mid 90s. Would be nice if she had somebody to talk to.

[kieyra]

So Mackenzie Davis walked right past me in the airport today. No idea what she was doing in my hometown. I was absolutely starstruck but didn’t approach her or anything, because she’d just gotten off a five hour flight and also I’m a dork. (I haven’t had very many encounters with celebrities, except for Alison Mack a long time ago, and obviously that’s a bit weird these days.)

[KimberStormer]

I've just watched this show start to finish over the past couple of weeks.  As people might have noticed with me handing out likes on the old episode threads -- it's really nice I get to do that even when they're read-only.  Very out of character for me to watch a "prestige TV" drama.  But I loved it, in the end.  The first few episodes were so terrible I nearly gave up -- all that kept me watching was Donna -- but it got its groove in the COMDEX sequence, and while it was somewhat of a bumpy ride for the first three seasons, they figured out between seasons 1 and 2 that the main characters were Donna and Cameron and that was the key to the show being as good as it was.  Yet they didn't fail Joe and Gordon; who could not love those two boys by the end?

Over and over I kept thinking how astonishing I would have found my own reactions, if I went back in time to talk to myself after watching, like, episode three.  If I told that younger self that at the end of the season 2 premiere I'd be clapping and cheering to see John Bosworth again, she'd be befuddled.  If I told her that by season 3 I would completely adore Gordon she'd be astounded.  If I told her that little Haley Clark would end up as one of my favorite characters she'd think I was trolling!  Could she possibly have guessed that Cam/Gordon Friendship Scenes would be the most precious and wonderful moments?  That I'd be crying because Joe McMillan finally gets the kids he wanted, all the love he has to give?  That maybe her deepest television OTP would be the platonic friendship between Donna and Cameron and it would turn out to actually be endgame? 

Nothing's perfect, and I wish we coulda seen Uncle Joe get an e-mail (or AOL instant message?) from Haley in his office at the end there because I know how much he loves that kid, I wish Donna's speech and Bos's farewell to Cameron were a little less on the nose, etc, but! my God!  These tiny complaints fade to nothingness in the actual fact.  I'm glad I wasn't on here during the show, because I would have been fighting everyone about Cameron all the time -- I always got her, even at her worst, and was maybe more forgiving than I objectively should have been because I identify with her in some ways.  In any case, though, I think the reactions for the last season were more consonant with mine, and some of the analysis was really nice to read, so thanks guys for that.

Now to get my sister to watch -- this show about sisters -- scuse me while I go cry some more

[kieyra]

On 10/13/2019 at 3:43 AM, KimberStormer said:

Over and over I kept thinking how astonishing I would have found my own reactions, if I went back in time to talk to myself after watching, like, episode three. 

What's interesting is that if you go back and rewatch the whole show (and maybe you have by now), the earlier episodes that seemed so terrible suddenly snap into focus, and you realize the showrunners had a better handle on the whole thing from the beginning than you realized.

Or at least, that was my experience. I also went from trashing the show on forums in S1, to crying over it by S3. When I went back and did a full rewatch, I realized these characters, in their three-dimensional forms and arcs, existed from the very beginning. It's almost like I was somehow watching it incorrectly at first. Just as an example, I know there was a lot of coverage/chatter about the shift in focus to Donna and Cam, but they were fully fleshed-out human beings from the pilot onwards. And they were both portrayed as being technically talented AND multilayered. Yeah, they gave the boys more screentime at first, but the girls were never just the wives/girlfriends. 

Same for Bos---on your first run-through, he seems like a stereotypical good-ol-boy middle-manager. On rewatch you realize they were laying the groundwork for his character arc from the beginning. 

[30 Helens]

I just finished watching this amazing show...streamed all 4 seasons over the course of about 2 weeks. I can’t begin to describe how much I loved the experience. The characters were fully realized from the start yet evolved in a way that always felt true, the story never lagged, and everyone ended up in the exact right place. (Even poor Gordon, who I knew was destined for a tragic end as soon as he became ill.) Sorry to come on here and just gush, but damn this was a rare and brilliant show. I’m just sorry it’s over.

[scrb]

I didn't recognize in the new Terminator movie that MacKenzie Davis is in one of the featured roles, playing a young rambo-ette since the Arnold and Sarah Conner characters are so old -- how does an android age anyways?

Good luck to her, but won't be watching this movie.

[kieyra]

Yearly rewatch. Still mad at myself for how hard I dragged the show during its first season. 

[MrsR]

The one thing I love about this show is that it is eventually about failure. No matter what these characters do, what ever their endeavors they ultimately fail.  Yeah they make money and get another opportunity but they are always doomed to be Betamax.

 

Can't stand Joe and/or Cameron. They set Joe up to be a sociopath and then reverse themselves.  And don't get me wrong I adore Lee Pace, I watched the show just to get a glimpse of Lee Pace. I just hate that his character is reverse engineered. And Cameron, God Damn yuck. What a horrible character. Petulant brat, overrated coder and nothing else.

 

Weird show. 

Edited April 15, 2021 by MrsR

[KimberStormer]

My sister brought this idea to me, that she saw on the internet: Joe is a Loki variant

It's pretty amazing how well it fits IMO.  Perpetually scheming, bisexual, self-sabotaging trickster, desperately looking for a Glorious Purpose, always failing but always surviving, whose real role is to to inspire others to realize their potential for greatness!

[Black Knight]

That's a cool take. I always liked when Joe was his scheming self - I was so bored in S2 when he was trying to be good (boring), before he ditched the girlfriend.

[Kel Varnsen]

So it's weird. A couple days ago I heard Sweet Jane by Cowboy Junkies on the radio and it reminded me that it was used on this show. Then I went back and read a bunch of my comments from when it was first on. And that made me decide to try and rewatch the series. So far I'm 2 episodes in. It's better than I remember the first season, and it's fun to see how they set up where things go. But I do kind of wish I could just get to the seasons set in the 90s which I remember being a lot better and because it was a time period I remember better.

On 4/14/2021 at 9:11 PM, MrsR said:

The one thing I love about this show is that it is eventually about failure. No matter what these characters do, what ever their endeavors they ultimately fail.  Yeah they make money and get another opportunity but they are always doomed to be Betamax.

That is one of the great things I remember about this show, because that is how technology and innovation almost always works. It's almost never some genius inventor coming up with a new idea out of thin air. It's usually small steps to get to something new with lots of other forgotten ideas and failed companies along the way. Even in this show most of the companies that were the main characters competitors, are now kind of gone. Like Sega, Atari, AOL, Netscape and Yahoo were big players in the snow but are kind of gone now. Even the IBM PC isn't really a thing the same way it was in the 1980's.

[Kel Varnsen]

So I just finished season 1 and it seems a lot better a second time around. Or at least a lot better than I felt based on some of my original episode comments. It helps that I know a lot more about the characters backgrounds and where they end up. So when Gordon is acting really crazy, knowing he has a medical condition that affects his brain makes it a lot easier to watch.

The only thing that really bugged me still was the Cameron and Joe romance. If they had just left it out I think it would have gone so much better. As for her operating system it seems like a neat idea and a good way to generate conflict. But for a real thing it seems like people would get annoyed it it pretty fast when it couldn't answer most questions. I remember when I was in probably grade 4 we had a Commodore 64 and on the command screen I would ask it stuff like where my friends lived. Because I thought computers knew everything. People would totally be doing that with Cameron's system.

Also a couple of other small things. The plaque that Joe had from his dad with the baseball bat on it said "swing for the fences" which is kind of hilarious since falling on a fence almost killed him.

Also season 1 final episode unemployed Donna is super fun and hilarious.

 

 

[Kel Varnsen]

Burned through season 2 and most of season 3 over the last few weeks. Watched th episode where Ryan kills himself, and the IPO tanks tonight. And looking at it, while I thought it was done well I wonder if it would have been better if they linked the two stories. Like if Ryan had killed himself a few days earlier and posted his suicide note on community. The story of a promising young coder and former Muting employee killing himself and writing about it would be all anyone would want to talk about when Donna was doing those interviews. And it probably would have hurt the stock price even more. Plus having Ryan kill Mutiny and Macmillan utility would have been kind of interesting.

[Black Knight]

It would have diluted the Donna vs. Cameron story and made the fallout for Mutiny much murkier, removing much of the heft of the fateful meeting in which Cameron was voted out.

By not involving Ryan in Mutiny's downfall, it's made clear that Cameron was correct when she said that the company needed to innovate, and that her ouster hastened Mutiny's demise because investors were doubtful that the company could or would make the necessary innovations without her and were not reassured by Donna's interviews.

Ryan was outside Mutiny after Joe poached him, and I don't think it would have been the best storytelling choice to make him important to its downfall. If Mutiny had been going along just fine, then yes, that would have been interesting to suddenly have it decimated thanks to a former employee's actions, but when so much of the season focused on the internal conflicts tearing Mutiny apart it would have felt off to suddenly have Ryan impact things.

[Kel Varnsen]

10 hours ago, Black Knight said:

It would have diluted the Donna vs. Cameron story and made the fallout for Mutiny much murkier, removing much of the heft of the fateful meeting in which Cameron was voted out.

By not involving Ryan in Mutiny's downfall, it's made clear that Cameron was correct when she said that the company needed to innovate, and that her ouster hastened Mutiny's demise because investors were doubtful that the company could or would make the necessary innovations without her and were not reassured by Donna's interviews.

Ryan was outside Mutiny after Joe poached him, and I don't think it would have been the best storytelling choice to make him important to its downfall. If Mutiny had been going along just fine, then yes, that would have been interesting to suddenly have it decimated thanks to a former employee's actions, but when so much of the season focused on the internal conflicts tearing Mutiny apart it would have felt off to suddenly have Ryan impact things.

Was Cameron right though? It seemed like Mutiny was destined to fail no matter what (and not just because the story required it). Like if they had waited 2 years and made the improvements someone else probably would have come along and made something better. If CompuServe was offering them $20 million, they probably could have made their own Mutiny for way less than that. And the only reason Westnet wasn't a competitor was because of Gordon's virus. But the IPO was obviously a bad play too since the episode where they launch it takes place over 3 months and there is comments about how user growth has stalled. I am not sure if connecting Ryan to Mutiny at the end would have worked, I did think it was interesting though that he posted his suicide note on community. I feel like that would freak a lot of people out (investors and parents of kid subscribers). But they didn't really mention that.

Overall though season 2 &3 were way better than 1 though, other than Cameron being super annoying. In 2 she is super focused on games even though in season 1 she talked about how a computer should be more than just a beige box on your desk. Using a computer just to play games seems like it is just that.

Then in 3 she acts like Mutiny is entirely her baby, even though they don't seem to make games anymore and what allowed them to grow (community) wasn't even her idea or something she supported.

[crashdown]

8 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

Was Cameron right though? It seemed like Mutiny was destined to fail no matter what (and not just because the story required it).

Donna and Cameron were both right and both wrong. In my opinion, they needed to listen to each other and compromise, and they couldn't do that. The real thing that killed Mutiny was the reliance on the Commodore 64 as a sole platform (and one that would soon be obsolete). That was Cameron's insight, and they never should have gone public without diversifying to other platforms. On the other hand, Cam wanted to tinker and make everything absolutely perfect before talking about the IPO, and that wouldn't have worked either--as you say, competition would have killed it if they did that. The fact that they couldn't really hear each other killed the company.

[Kel Varnsen]

10 minutes ago, crashdown said:

Donna and Cameron were both right and both wrong. In my opinion, they needed to listen to each other and compromise, and they couldn't do that. The real thing that killed Mutiny was the reliance on the Commodore 64 as a sole platform (and one that would soon be obsolete). That was Cameron's insight, and they never should have gone public without diversifying to other platforms. On the other hand, Cam wanted to tinker and make everything absolutely perfect before talking about the IPO, and that wouldn't have worked either--as you say, competition would have killed it if they did that. The fact that they couldn't really hear each other killed the company

Compromise needed to happen but I am not sure that was possible with Cam and her "it's my company" attitude. I feel like her list of ideas to improve Mutiny were just a stall tactic to make it sound like she agreed with the IPO knowing they couldn't do all those things and then have one 2 years later.

As for adapting Mutiny to other platforms, it seems like that was something that should have been on Cameron and Donna's radar since before they moved to California. In season 2 when Joe was trying to make the Westgroup buyout happened even he noted that it was something that they needed to do. The fact that they hadn't made any progress on it a year later (but instead coders are adding antennas to avatars) seems like a huge mistake.

[crashdown]

10 minutes ago, Kel Varnsen said:

The fact that they hadn't made any progress on it a year later (but instead coders are adding antennas to avatars) seems like a huge mistake.

I agree, and I'm sure that THEY would both agree, in hindsight. "Mistakes were made."

[Black Knight]

I agree that Mutiny may well not have been able to be saved whether Cameron stayed or not. Most likely, aside from everything else, it was simply too early an entrant into that space.

That doesn't change that Cameron was correct that the company was going downhill, nor the negative effect her departure had on the IPO. Investors don't like to see founders leaving a company right before an IPO, and Donna's interviews didn't work to reassure them that this wasn't a sign of a doomed company.

My feeling is the smart play would have been to keep Cameron over Donna, let Cam mess around with the code for a couple more months, and then do the IPO with a pitch of an exciting new iteration of Mutiny without any messiness of the founder of the company being gone. That would likely have allowed the IPO to hit a share price where they'd all get rich. If Mutiny still ended up tanking afterwards, oh well. The point for people like Diane in particular was to make their money and get out, not to sustain a company for the long haul. That was the story with many tech IPOs, the IPOs making the original founders, employees, and investors rich while those who rushed to purchase the stock eventually took a loss as the company tanked afterwards. Played right, that could have been Mutiny's story.

It could be argued that Cameron was just never going to be satisfied enough with the code, but she'd shown herself to be practical before: First with accepting that Mutiny was now about Community rather than games, and then that other thing I don't remember the details of now, something finance-related (credit card payments?) where she didn't want to do it and then she went away for a couple of days and came back with an elegant solution. Cameron was never completely inflexible and incapable of adjusting. I think Bos and Gordon would have been able to bring her around to the necessity of launching the IPO with an updated version of Mutiny even if it wasn't perfect, since it would have been a scenario in which they didn't vote against her - something they would have been able to use in conversation with her later.

[Kel Varnsen]

I still feel like Cam if she had over 50% control would have never agreed to an IPO. There would have always been something to fix or some new idea. Because she obviously did not want anyone outside of her to have control of the company. That's the whole reason they moved to California, so they could have their own mainframe instead of using someone else's (which on a side note does that mean people were paying 80's long distance rates to dial into Mutiny?).

And even if she had stayed in charge (whether or not they went public) I don't think Mutiny could have lasted very long. Partly because it would be easy to copy but mainly because Cam was a terrible boss. She was terrible at any kind of collaboration, she blew off Ryan when he told her about a security flaw (that she was abusing) and she refused to work with the swap meet guys to make their code work with hers. She is also terrible at delegation. She was the boss of a company worth $20 million+ at one point but still doing major coding herself? Plus I would imagine that as more and more tech companies in the Bay area took off, it would be harder to keep those coders from jumping ship.

And like I said her big idea about expanding to other computers was something Joe thought of, and in the year+ since they moved to California she never really did anything about that. Even though she was a major player in developing what seemed to be a successful IBM clone. 

Edited February 23, 2023 by Kel Varnsen

[Kel Varnsen]

Half way through season 4 and it is easily my favourite season, and not just because it is an era I remember well. The characters are so much better, and I really like how much more chill and not crazy Gordon and Joe are (and how great their friendship is, Joe even asked Gordon if he was ok when he sold the ISP). Cam is still annoying, but at least she isn't in a position where she is able to boss people around. I don't even mind hardass business woman Donna. Although I wish she had better social skills, every time she has any kind of work party they all seem so lame and awkward, when she used to be able to do that. The only one I don't like is angry, broke Bos. 

One thing that made me laugh though was Cam complaining about Doom considering how much time she spent developing a first person shooter in season 2. Her new game looks painful though, it makes burning every tree in Legend of Zelda to find the secret one look fun.

Also I am not really sure how Gordon turned his network business into an ISP or why he needed to work with MCI if he owned his own network. Then again I don't really get how the NSF deal was a business. Of course in season 4 I find it funny that no one has even talked about how Comet or Rover can make money.

[Kel Varnsen]

Finished the series tonight and it holds up surprisingly well on a rewatch. I am not sure I can think of any 4 season show (or even any show) where the last season is my favourite, but the character development is so good. 

On Friday I watched the episode where Gordon died and the one right after, and they were brutal. Affected me way more than I remember them doing when I originally watched. It was just amazing acting all around. The scene with Donna and her daughters lying in bed crying was hard to watch. Maybe it's because I am now closer to Gordon's age when he died. I also liked how they played with the life flashing before your eyes when you die thing.

Some smaller things I thought were interesting, the revamped version of Comet was basically Westnet with news, weather, stock quotes along with their main product (this time the web directory instead of community). Not sure why it took Joe and Gordon so long to think of that.

One thing I did thing was great though was Donna/Cam bonding in episode 8. I liked how one of the first thing that brought them back together was talking about how Cam didn't want kids and Donna just talking and understanding. A nice call back to Cam going with her to get the abortion, and I think being the only one she ever told.

Loved the music in the final season although looking at my original comments it looks like AMC+ removed Harvest Moon by Neil Young from that last episode. Thanks a lot Neil Young. Although it would have been funny in episode 8 if after So Far Away, the album kept playing Money for Nothing. Also I just realized that Brothers in Arms (the album that song is from), came out in 1985 which is when season 2 is set. So it is probably something they were listening to at the Mutiny house.

I also liked Joe's ending. As the series went along his big speeches about technology became less like sales pitches and more like university lectures. When I was studying engineering (a few years after the last episode was set) we had to take an engineering ethics class called Technology and Society. So I could easily see Joe teaching something like that.

Edited March 6, 2023 by Kel Varnsen