"Halt and Catch Fire"

[brainwane]

I made a ha-ha-only-serious kind of deal with a faraway friend that, by the next time we saw each other, I'd watch all of Halt and Catch Fire and he'd watch all of Steven Universe. Turns out I actually remembered this more than he did, but he is on his way to starting SU and I have now seen all of Halt and Catch Fire (there were a total of 40 episodes, 10 eps per season).

The East Germans who miss East German physical and pop culture call it Ostalgie. HaCF caters to octalgie -- nostalgia for the 1980s -- and then changes things up.

Spoilers for Seasons 1-2:
I spent some of Season 1 thinking "argh I want this to be a show about Donna and Cameron." And then that happened YAYYYY.


Spoilers for Season 3:
I was so excited when I saw Ryan Ray show up and thought "Yayyyyyy an Indian-American character!" And then in episode 7, "The Threshold", I began to suspect, and then got confirmed in the next ep, that oh no, this is an Aaron Swartz story. (This is a universe where the CFAA came into effect at least a few months before it came into effect in ours, incidentally.) So I had to sit quietly about that for a bit. This recap sums up a lot about it.

It's amazing to see Cameron's growth -- which she signals by developing her own fashion sense. That scene in the last episode of the season, where she controls herself well enough to tell Donna that she cannot work with her is so riveting.


Spoilers for Season 4:
The fourth season felt most familiar to me, not just because of the time period, but because the core original characters are middle-aged or older, and I'm middle-aged now, and the questions they're facing are like the hypothetical at the end of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Some other shows (like Arrested Development and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin are about how your karass is also your crab bucket. This show does not do that, in the end. Joe's growth! Donna's transformation! How Cameron can call Donna the nicest person in the world, and then, years later, call her untrustworthy and ruthless (and be both unfair and right), and then, years later, want to work with her again.

When Donna stands up and says that she doesn't want her daughters to have to do this sort of gathering to remember that they're still here -- oh it's just heartbreaking to watch that in 2018, knowing what I know now.

I deeply want Haley to grow up okay.

The bookending in this season -- Donna needing Gordon to pick her up from jail, Donna and Cameron working on undoing some data loss to recover some code -- has been so lovely.

So many office/work shows are basically about people who do the same jobs for a super long time. This show reflects the reality of how you run into the same people over and over in different companies and jobs and configurations, teammate, boss, investor, competitor, family, conference co-panellist, and you bring your past to it but you can also grow. It's so hopeful, really, about how time can leach the poison out of the betrayals, about the healing power of making stuff together, about learning from our mistakes.

This show makes me want to get back in touch with the people I've worked with at my past tech jobs.

Comments

[altamira16]

I was so annoyed by Halt and Catch Fire, and my sister loved it so much. All of the tech was so terrible. Being an elite hacker involves dancing around usually in front of a diagram of some sort. I really need to improve my dancing skills if I ever expect to become elite.

[brainwane]

I'm sympathetic -- there are some real "what?!" moments glossing over historical and technical accuracy. But I'm also heavily influenced by Ada Palmer's approach:

rather than by accuracy, I judge this type of show by how successfully the creators of an historical piece have chosen wisely from what history offered them in order to make a good story. The product needs to communicate to the audience, use the material in a lively way, change what has to be changed, and keep what’s awesome. If some events are changed or simplified to help the audience follow it, that’s the right choice.

I remember a few episodes during the first season, with Cameron working on the BIOS, where she was bopping around while trying to figure out a problem. Did you watch the whole show, or did you stop during Season 1? Season 1 definitely has some annoyances. I am glad I watched all the way through the end; the kind of thing you mention basically disappears by the beginning or middle of Season 2, in my recollection.

[altamira16]

I only watched part of the first season.

[brainwane]

I was skimming some comments elsewhere (on MetaFilter, I think) and saw some people had success watching the first episode and then skipping to the Season 1 episode #9, "Up Helly Aa" and going on from there, to avoid the worst of the annoying stuff in Season 1 while still keeping up on the important bits of the arc. Now that I've seen the whole thing, I would also add "Close to the Metal", episode #4, because that ends up being fairly core to a relationship that turns out to be key to the show in seasons 2-4.

Of course if you do not want to watch then please disregard entirely!