Monday, December 19, 2016

Halt and Catch Fire 2.09

Kali

Donna and Cameron try to pick up the pieces after West Group stole their idea. Donna tries playing hardball with Jessie, Joe's replacement at West Group, but doesn't get very far with that tactic. About the only thing she walks away with is the notion that maybe Joe didn't have anything to do with the theft.

Gordon spends most of the episode, after getting out of jail, looking for his car in a parking garage. He wanders the floors several times without any success. Things turn from bad to worse when he falls down a flight of stairs and breaks his foot. He yells for help but no one is around. Eventually he finds someone and is taken to the hospital. As he is being driven out of the garage he spots his vehicle.

Joe is pissed at Jacob, his father-in-law and the owner of West Group, for stealing Mutiny's idea and messaging platform. He lets Jacob know how he feels, but Jacob doesn't seem to care. He even encourages Joe to come to the upcoming shareholders meeting where they will be demonstrating the new software.

Cameron, Donna, and Boz do what they can to try and sell their only real asset, Extract and Defend, Mutiny's latest game. Things aren't going well until Boz picks up on something and manages to work some magic. He a company, which might be a subsidiary of Nintendo, into buying their game for $50,000. The sale gives Mutiny some breathing room and new hope.

The whole process, not just the sale but also the experience with West Group, has a real impact on Cameron. She really seems to have changed. She isn't just happy to program. She also seems to be looking at things from the mind of a business person. Things are start to deteriorate between Cameron and Tom. It turns out he was the one that convinced the Nintendo subsidiary to meet with them but he can't deal with the changes in Cameron. He loved who she was but not who she is becoming.

Joe decides to go to the shareholders meeting. Before the meeting he gets a visit from Cameron. She is there for something but what she says she is there for and what she is actually there for are not one and the same. She distracts Joe enough by bringing up their past that he doesn't catch on to what she is really up to until it is too late. Joe does his presentation for the shareholders and press but something snaps within him and goes off script and credits Cameron for West Group's new platform before walking off stage. Minutes later, the computer demonstration crashes, apparently due Cameron's action when she saw Joe before the big meeting.

Joe's marriage falls apart, or at least looks like it does. Sarah is convinced that Joe still loves Cameron more than he loves her and storms out.

It is a bit ironic that Joe credits Cameron and she alone for West Group's new platform considering that Donna is the one who developed and championed the message board long before Cameron saw any utility in it.

The parallel of Cameron losing Tom at the same time that Joe was losing Sarah was interesting. Joe and Sarah's breakup was much more fiery and spontaneous than Cameron's and Tom's was. Similar to Sarah, Tom questions whether Cameron is truly over Joe.

Overall a great episode. Lots going on. Fascinating to watch all the interactions. It wasn't hard to foresee how somethings would wind up but the exact path to those points wasn't always apparent.

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