S01.E04: Close to the Metal

[annlaw78]

I'm not sure how prevalent or common the term "close to the metal" is/was, but I got a kick out of Cameron essentially parroting to Donna the same snide comment Gordon had thrown at her in one of the earlier eps.

[ganesh]

I don't have a problem with the show being male dominated because it actually was and is for the most part. But I think more scenes with Donna and Cameron would be better for the show. One of the reasons I want Donna to come and work at Cardiff. 

[Jamoche]

Can someone who knows more than I do say whether at this point the graphical user interface has come about? 

Not in any useful sense. It would be pretty unusual to find someone in Texas who'd ever seen one, and outside of a few researchers from Xerox Parc, nobody was thinking they'd be the wave of the future. (Certainly not Cameron; sorry writers, but that took the kind of radical leap in thinking that she just doesn't have). A year later when the Mac came out, my college passed up the opportunity to be part of Apple's college outreach program because "graphics are for toys, not serious work".

 

Smalltalk - the original source of all graphic UIs - dates back to 1972, but it was languishing in Xerox's land of disinterest (it didn't help them sell copiers) until the 1981 Byte magazine article. Adele Goldberg had stacks of letters from people who read that and were really interested; Xerox still didn't do anything. Somewhere in there was Steve Jobs' infamous trip to Xerox.

 

The Apple Lisa came out in early 1983 and it did have what we'd recognize as a GUI, but it cost $10K and wasn't what you'd call popular. 

[green]

If you were to read about young Steve Jobs. Joe would seem like an amateur sociopath and asshole. Young Jobs used and abused people, especially the very talanted, on a massive scale.

 

This times a million!!!  This show hasn't even dug into half the crap Steve Jobs pulled yet.  Much more material for them to purloin.

 

And I read that the writers did indeed base (were "inspired" by?) the character of "Joe" on Steve Jobs with Gordon as the "good Steve" (Wo),  his faithful sidekick and the real engineering brains of the two who was somewhat blinded by him and tended to rationalize away a lot of the shit as a result.  They just fictionally transplanted them to the PC side of the fence to probably avoid any possible lawsuits.

 

 Footnote:  Interesting that the poster right above mentioned the Apple Lisa.  And indeed Jobs did steal the crucial material from Xerox during his visit there.  He even mentioned filling a whole roll of toilet paper with hurriedly scribbled notes there in a Xerox bathroom writing down all he had seen and learned before he forgot it.  He turned the roll over to Wo and Wo turned it into the first GUI used commercially.

 

And Job named the machine -- Apple Lisa --  after his daughter after threatening his ex-wife or whoever she was (Lisa's mother anyway) with cutting off all child support to his daughter if mom refused to sign legal papers allowing him to exploit the name Lisa and the "endearing " little story he made up of naming his new line after his "beloved" daughter.  Given the Steve Jobs material they have to work with, Joe here hasn't even gotten warmed up yet.

Edited June 28, 2014 by green

[Yolapukka]

 

And I don't think Joe cares one whit about her, nor was trying to poach her- he was and remained extremely dismissive of her the entire time, and she sees right through him.

 

If Joe planned out this scenario this well, he had to have factored Donna into it. Maybe had Gordon not brought her in, he would have suggested her himself. As it was said, Joe knew about Symphonic, so he knows Donna has kung fu. I think it's only a matter of time before she's over there. Or that she's involved somehow in this project. They're already established that she is somewhat invested because she came up with the motherboard idea.

 

 

It's quite possible that Joe was clueless about the extent of Donna's technical talent and contribution to the symphonic computer. We've seen indications that perhaps he doesn't quite think things out as far ahead as as he gives others to believe. In which case what he has now learned about her is an unexpected gift that he will likely try to make further use of at some future point. However, I thought it was telling that she'd written a thesis that was relevant to what she was going to do. That is something Joe might have been able to find out about her if he's done much research into the people behind the Symphonic. We do know that Joe does his homework. He may, as several characters have pointed out, regurgitate what he's read without truly understanding it but he does consistently do research to support his plans. I don't really think his dismissive attitude towards her indicates anything other than she's breathing in his presence. He's dismissive of everybody he doesn't need to charm, abusive even, he continually puts others in the position of appeasing him and is likelier to reward them with undisguised irritation that good isn't good enough than he is to show appreciation. Unless the point of Donna's presence on HACF is to show Gordon's private life being left in tatters and his marriage damaged or destroyed thanks to his association with Joe, I do believe that we will see Donna eventually  join the Cardiff team and if she does Joe will probably manipulate Gordon into begging for her to be hired. It will be a powerful temptation for her over the pragmatic acceptance of the circumstances of her job at TI where she is underutilized, underpaid, has reached the limits of what opportunities will be available to her and is starting to have trouble juggling her work and private life. She wants what her parents have;  a true partnership where they built a life and a business together. The Symphonic didn't work out for herself and Gordon, but Cardiff might. From what we saw in this episode, she wants to work with her husband, they enjoy the hell out of it, it makes them both happy. 

 

I really can't even begin to guess how Joe thought he was going to save the day with the backups he had. For one thing I can't imagine that him or someone else finding or remembering a cache of floppy discs later in the day would make for a particularly interesting business story and I doubt anyone would buy Joe saving the day with technical prowess. He'd have to let someone in on what he'd pulled. I'm inclined to suspect that  the backups were exactly that, backups, in case his insane team-building exercise did not end with the recovery of the data. 

Edited June 29, 2014 by yuggapukka

[ganesh]

It's quite possible that Joe was clueless about the extent of Donna's technical talent and contribution to the symphonic computer. We've seen indications that perhaps he doesn't quite think things out as far ahead as as he gives others to believe. In which case what he has now learned about her is an unexpected gift that he will likely try to make further use of at some future point. However, I thought it was telling that she'd written a thesis that was relevant to what she was going to do. That is something Joe might have been able to find out about her if he's done much research into the people behind the Symphonic.

 

Joe clearly knew about Symphonic, and I thought the point of her saying she did a thesis was to tip off that Joe put her into the plan. Theses are all available at the university libraries. He could have gone to Berkeley or just called them up and paid for a copy. My dissertation is over there collecting dust and now it's even easier because you can pay to d/l the pdf. But the point is to get her to Cardiff for sure. I really hope so.

 

Unless the point of Donna's presence on HACF is to show Gordon's private life being left in tatters and his marriage damaged or destroyed thanks to his association with Joe, I do believe that we will see Donna eventually  join the Cardiff team and if she does Joe will probably manipulate Gordon into begging for her to be hired.

 

Even though they've been arguing, it hasn't been drawn out. Gordon's been an asshole, but by the end of the episodes he's apologized. He was totally peacocking her when she was explaining how to recover the BIOS. 

 

Which would be a refreshing change. Not every marriage on tv has to be DRAMA all the time. They have problems, they yell, they work it out reasonably. 

[renatae]

That is what I want to know...what made her stop vandalizing the house. Was it seeing the neighbor made her realize that instead of being kick ass and rebellious, that she was just  being pathetic and sad?  Did her heart grow 3 sized in that scene?  Did the neighbor see the car pull up and came in with the intention of killing Gordon or Donna?

 

The show live and dies on how intriguing we find the mystery of Joe and so far it is falling flat

 

I figured he shocked her out of her wits and she decided to cool it. What I'm not sure about is what made him decide not to shoot up the joint. I surely thought he was about to!

 

I thought as well that Donna rocked. The whole storyline about how she "rescued" the code and how she handled everyone was great, as was the fact that the code seemed in jeopardy in the first place. Joe is lower than pond scum and I dislike him more every episode. But they've finally got something going now that interests me.

Edited June 30, 2014 by renatae

[ganesh]

That was actually a funny but good scene. The actor did really well with "this guy is *bat*shit and wtf am I doing?" without actually saying anything.

 

I wonder if she's not getting the direction she needs for Cameron because TPTB haven't really fleshed her out much. Actors need to know shit like that. 

[renatae]

This just hits on one of my person TV-contrived-plotline/conflict-creator pet peeves: the intelligent, overworked, harried couple who doesn't have childcare figured out (Grey's Anatomy is the worst!).  I understand that the usual sitter was sick, and the back-up grandparents were gone.  But you'd think there would be a neighbor/teen/mom-of-a-friend who they could call as another back-up.  This was before the days of telecommuting and working from home, so there's not the same latitude as there may be now with leaving early and logging back in.  Either Donna or Gordon begging off work at 2:15 and spending the rest of the day at home was going to be a problem. 

 

That was my life back in the 70's and early 80's - babysitter nightmares. Every good one you got would move away or her husband would decide he didn't want her doing that, or whatever. Having just one regular person to call on was hard enough. A backup? If you were lucky. A second backup? My mom worked as well. My parents did a lot of babysitting for us, but they just couldn't be available all the time.

 

This was the most realistic moment of the show for me.

Edited June 30, 2014 by renatae

[renatae]

That was actually a funny but good scene. The actor did really well with "this guy is *bat*shit and wtf am I doing?" without actually saying anything.

 

I wonder if she's not getting the direction she needs for Cameron because TPTB haven't really fleshed her out much. Actors need to know shit like that. 

 

Elsewhere they are thinking he came over to defend the house after hearing Cameron enter. Well, I didn't get that vibe at all, what with him expressing his anger at his neighbors, but that scenario would explain why there was no damage done by either of them.

[hincandenza]

Yeah, I thought it clear to me that, despite their falling out, the neighbor was still doing what he saw as his civic duty and protecting his neighborhood from burglars... but once he saw it was (what he thought) another disgruntled employee like himself, he gleefully suggested she go on and trash the place. He's known Donna and Gordon for years, lived next to them, so it was a boundary he didn't want to cross himself... but could,through Cameron, take a sort of vicarious pleasure.

[Kel Varnsen]

A better episode, although I really had to laugh when Donna confronted Joe about the switched back up disks. His whole argument was sort of, don't tell anyone please, it will ruin what we have built so far. All I could really think was that pretty much everyone already knows that Joe is an asshole, so I doubt this will be any shock to them. 

 

Like others I liked the added scenes with Donna. It helps too that she is super hot. Plus she looks a lot like Ellie Kemper from The Office. I would love to see some flashback scenes or some more back story to explain how hottie Donna got together with poindexter Gordon. Not that it wouldn't happen, he just doesn't seem like the type that would be good around women.

 

 This was before the days of telecommuting and working from home, so there's not the same latitude as there may be now with leaving early and logging back in.  Either Donna or Gordon begging off work at 2:15 and spending the rest of the day at home was going to be a problem. 

It was the days before telecommuting, but it was also the days before schools had approved pick-up lists, and if pretty much anyone those kids recognized showed up and said that their mom Donna told him/her to pick them up, no one would have made any kind of big deal about it.

[Hanahope]

it was also the days before schools had approved pick-up lists, and if pretty much anyone those kids recognized showed up and said that their mom Donna told him/her to pick them up, no one would have made any kind of big deal about it.

 

Also, depending on where they went to school (i.e. public or private - I would bet public), and how far away they lived, frankly the kids could have just walked off the school grounds and headed for home.  I know back in the late 70s I walked home from my elementary school many times, even though it was about a mile or so away from my home. And my parents both worked too, so I was usually at home alone for at least and hour or two.  No one from the school ever said a word, I'd just walk away when school let out.