Halt and Catch Fire 2.10

Heaven Is a Place

Joe and Sarah are over and done. He signs the divorce papers. Sarah's father is out at West Group. The virus that disrupted the demonstration in episode 9 spread throughout the  network. Gordon feels bad, feels guilty so he gives Joe the antidote to the virus he created back in episode 3 which Cameron used in the last episode on West Group's network of computers.

Everything is not good for Gordon. Donna finds out about some of the shenanigans that happened when he took their daughters to see his brother's family in California back in episode 6. She also catches him not taking his therapy sessions seriously. Then their oldest daughter runs away. They find her hiding in the backyard but Gordon was unable to manage that task himself. By this time Donna has already formulated a plan to try and make things better for their marriage and for Mutiny.

Cameron wants to buy a big mainframe setup. The most reasonably priced one she can find is in California. At first she suggests they could buy it and get it shipped to Dallas but then Donna suggests that they move the company to California. She talks Gordon into paying for it, with what is left from the money he got from the dissolution of Cardiff, and coming to work for Mutiny. He doesn't like it but he probably doesn't feel like he has a choice.

Boz left Mutiny last episode. In this episode he quits his new job to return to Mutiny, near the end of the episode. Boz is one of the lead characters on this show. They really need to do a better job of integrating his character moments into stories that involve other lead characters. Of all the lead characters he is the one that has felt the most detached from the rest of the gang.

Joe takes the antidote provided by Gordon and comes up with the idea of selling protection against attacks on computers and networks to a venture capital firm. He tries to get Gordon to join him but by then Gordon has agreed to Donna's plan and the wheels are in motion to move Mutiny to the west coast.

The episode ends with Donna, Gordon, Cameron, Boz and the rest of the gang from Mutiny boarding an airplane to San Francisco. Cameron asked Tom to come with them, even bought him a ticket but when the door to the plane is shut Tom is not on board. Gordon is reading a magazine as the plane is getting ready to take off and spots an article about Joe selling the antivirus idea for $10 million. Donna is in the airplane's bathroom crying after Gordon suggested that maybe they could have another kid once they get settled in California. He doesn't know about her abortion. She never told him even though she gave him a hard time for withholding information about his health and what happened on the trip to California in episode 6.

Probably not my favorite episode. There's a fair amount of setup for the next season. I will probably stick with this show whenever the third season drops on Netflix.

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.

Halt and Catch Fire 2.08

Limbo

Just as everything is starting to look up for everyone (Joe, Cameron, Donna, Gordon) things come apart.

Mutiny throws a party for their customers/users. Cameron is reticent to come out and mingle but when she finally does she starts to see that it was the community and not the games that mean the most.

Joe and Sarah got married between the end of the last episode and the beginning of this one. They go on a honeymoon, which transpires off camera. Joe's father-in-law hires someone to take Joe's place. Joe tries to be helpful, he seems reluctant to leave. He and Sarah have plans to move to California. After a night of partying which ends with them having sex in the server room at Westgroup, Joe discovers what his replacement is up to, stealing Mutiny.

Gordon has problems of his own that for the most part don't involve the others. The guys working for him quit. Gordon starts to suspect that an former colleague from their days at Cardiff has stolen his idea about building his own computer. He breaks into the guy's garage. It turns out the guy didn't steal his idea, Joe is just a bit paranoid and gets arrested for breaking and entering.

Donna, Cameron, and the rest of the crew at Mutiny are devastated by the theft of their network by Westgroup. Joe tries to apologize and explain that it isn't his fault, but they don't want to hear it and kick him out of the house.

This was a riveting episode. I can't wait to see where the show goes from here

Halt and Catch Fire 2.07

Working for the Clampdown

Joe makes Mutiny an offer on behalf of his employer, his future father-in-law, who wants to buy Mutiny. Cameron isn't receptive to the offer even though Boz and Donna both want to hear Joe out. The past isn't just the past for Cameron, it shaped her and she still lives with it. She still bears a fair amount of acrimony towards Joe for the way things ended between them.

It is more complicated than that. Cameron built Mutiny from the ground up. It is her's. She isn't ready to and may never be ready to give it up. Joe tries to apply pressure by meeting with first Boz and then Tom separately. He gets to them. They are loyal to Cameron but when asked by her they can't repress their feelings completely. Even though they ultimately side with Cameron, it is clear from their words and facial expressions that they might have taken up Joe on his office if they were in charge.

Gordon starts a new project on a new product. He gets some former coworkers to pitch in  and they build a machine much faster than they ever did before. This is after he finally levels with Donna and tells her about his health problem. She does not reciprocate, she does not tell him about her abortion. She begins to worry about Gordon and there is evidence that there is good reason to worry.

Joe's relationship with Sarah looks like it is ready to crash on the rocks. She wants him to leave her father's company and start his own. He is reluctant at first but after seeing how serious she is and how Mr. Wheeler plans to go back on some of the promises to Mutiny once they have signed he changes his mind. He levels with Cameron who at this point is wondering if she made the wrong call when she initially rejected the offer to buy Mutiny. It was a very emotional decision for her at that point. Joe gives her some very rational reasons why selling Mutiny to Wheeler is not a good idea.

Malcolm has a romantic interest in a guy who with whom he is chatting online. Malcolm believes the other guy is similarly interested in him. Things turn out badly when he goes to meet the guy. It was a trap. The guy on the other end was baiting him and when he shows up he gets beat up pretty badly by a bunch of guys and winds up in the hospital. The meetup and the beating happen off camera. This incident is part of what sways Cameron to consider selling Mutiny before Joe pushes her back to her original position.

Joe tries to patch up things with Sarah. He tells her that he wants them to get married. She insists that it be right away. She wants him to run away with her and start his own company. He agrees to it but I've got a feeling that this relationship isn't going to last, primarily based on the fact that the actress who plays Sarah isn't part of the regular cast anymore following this season.

The juxtaposition of Joe and Sarah's relationship with that of Donna and Gordon was an interesting one. Both relationships are going through some turmoil but for different reasons.

A very good episode which shows things bursting at the seams for most of the main characters. Somethings have gotta give and I'm pretty sure that they will in more than one case before the end of the season.

Halt and Catch Fire 2.06

10Broad36

- Mr. Wheeler, Joe's father-in-law to be, backs him into a corner and forces him to increase the rate that Mutiny is getting; although he seems opposed to it at first he applies the thumbscrews and gets Donna to agree to a reduced rate only if Mutiny can meet certain benchmarks; Donna, Cameron, and the mutiny crew balk at one of the benchmarks and attempt to fake it; Joe proves to be smarter than they gave him credit for and finds their deception; instead of being disappointed he is impressed but he doesn't tell them that
- Gordon takes his kids and goes to California to visit his brother's family; things are not good for his brother; Gordon is still agonizing over his diagnosis which he had yet to tell Donna about; it is eating away at him so much that he cheats on Donna with his brother's high school girlfriend
- Donna has yet to tell Gordon about being pregnant but she does tell her mother about it although she lies and tells her that she had a miscarriage; Donna also shares her news with Cameron just before going to a Planned Parenthood office, presumably for an abortion
- loved the tension in this one, especially in the negotiations between Joe and Donna; the production team did a good job of bait and switch, making it look like it was going to go one way and then having it go another way
- I am still very eager to see where this season winds up and how they get there

Halt and Catch Fire 2.05

Extract and Defend

- Donna and Gordon have secrets that they haven't revealed to one another; he learns from his doctor that he has brain damage which will likely get worse; she is pregnant; he has yet to tell anyone; she ends up telling Boz after he finds a home pregnancy test kit and confides in her that he thinks Cameron is pregnant; this situation is a time bomb; it is just a matter of when it will explode; it is kind of sad watching Gordon go through his day after he learns what is wrong with him as he tries to connect with others (Donna, their daughters, his mother-in-law) but can't seem to find the wherewithal to tell anyone
- Gordon reveals to Donna who then shares with Cameron that Joe is the one helping them with bandwidth; this does not go over well with Cameron, who then has to meet with Joe and his future father-in-law; the meeting goes reasonably well but it does not heal the schism between Joe and Cameron
- Boz seems a bit like a fish out of water; his credit card is declined while he is on a date and he has to turn to Cameron for help; he tries to get Mutiny running more efficiently but ends up pissing off Cameron
- it is starting to look like I was way off base when I wondered if Tom was gay as he and Cameron are shown in bed together in this episode; I do wonder about the longevity of their relationship, especially after seeing on imdb how many total episodes his character is around for; one of the other employees of Mutiny is accidentally outed as being gay which leads to a very awkward moment where nobody knows what to say; it definitely could have gone worse than it did
- things are not good between Joe and his fiancee; Sara is concerned about Joe becoming too close to her father; her father wants him to sign a pre-nuptial agreement
- I'm still very engaged by this show; I really enjoy seeing how the different relationships are playing out

Halt and Catch Fire 2.04

Play with Friends

- Joe tries to lure Gordon into working with him on a project at his future father-in-law's company; Gordon goes along with Joe's idea but only after some negotiations about how the work will proceed; Gordon is hoping that his efforts will help raise mutiny after he almost destroyed their network in the previous episode.
- Donna and Cameron continue to squabble over the Community application after the network crashed; the usage of the Community application continues to outpace the growth or recovery of users on the game platform which Donna heralds as a reason to keep it but Cameron fails to see the value of Community until she finally gives it a try and then inadvertently posts something snarky about Donna for everyone to see
- Boz starts working for Mutiny; his first job is (in the wake of the network's meltdown) reaching out to some of their most active users but soon thereafter Cameron enlists him to try and get the company into better shape since they are so cash poor that they can't afford to pay their employees
- Gordon collapses while working on the mainframe for Joe; he shrugs it off but I'm starting to wonder if it isn't connected to the nose bleed from the first episode of the season
- Tom and Cameron kiss; I was starting to wonder if he was gay; at first I thought I saw a spark between the two of them but then there was nothing and I started to read him as possibly being gay; now I'm a bit disappointed that he isn't but maybe he is and this is just a phase; I hate it when people assume that somebody is gay just because they don't date or show interest in members of the opposite sex frequently; there was more to my assumption of his sexual preference than the fact that he didn't seem to be interested in Cameron after they first met; it had a lot to do with the way he acted, dressed, and didn't seem to want to be one of the guys at Mutiny, until towards the end of this episode
- at the very end of the episode Donna is locked in the bathroom with what I'm guessing is a 1980s style home pregnancy test; this of course comes after Cameron's snarky message board comment about her getting saddled with two kids; if she is pregnant, whether she chooses to keep the baby or not, whether she is able to keep it or has a miscarriage, there is lots of fodder for future episodes in this development
- another great episode; I keep getting sucked in; I don't love everything about it; there is a scene where the gang at mutiny are playing a game in the house that is similar to the game that she wants to create for the network; the way that it is shot just didn't speak to me, although it was pretty clear what they were doing
- you couldn't pay me enough to stop watching this show

Halt and Catch Fire 2.03

The Way In

- there's a whole going on in this episode
- Joe goes to his fiancee's father to complain about the inefficiencies in the department he works in; Mr. Wheeler gives him the department and permission to restructure it as he sees fit; that is such a simplistic explanation of what happens, it is really how this comes to pass and how it is portrayed that make it so good to watch
- Joe and Sara invite Gordon and Donna over for dinner; things go well enough but while they are having fun a computer virus hits Mutiny; Cameron is forced to shut everything down; she tried calling Donna but when she heard Joe's voice on the line she froze
- Boz sees his ex-wife, who doesn't want him to show up at their son's wedding or the rehearsal dinner; Boz manages to get his son's attention and get a moment alone with him but it is a bit bittersweet; I love the way this part of the episode unfolds; it isn't clear what is happening until it happens
- Cameron's new hire, Tom, isn't playing ball; he seems to have nothing but negative things to say about Cameron's new chapter to Mutiny's big game, Parallax; but he is there for Cameron when she has a meltdown moment near the end of the episode
- Gordon is bored; his boredom leads him to do something destructive in the name of innovation; his act is not well received by others once they learn what he did; honest mistake? no it seems more like carelessness on Gordon's part

- this feels like an inbetweener but it has so many great moments in it, lots of which occur without dialogue or at least with moments that unfold in part or in whole visually; I don't feel short changed at all; things are definitely in flux; I definitely want to stay on this ride

Halt and Catch Fire 2.02

New Coke

- Joe takes a job working for Sara's father; Joe's expectation is that he will be starting at the top but Mr. Wheeler (James Cromwell) has other plans for him; he winds up in the basement working on a project to digitize the company's records; his new coworkers have no idea who his girlfriend is and he does nothing to illuminate them
- Gordon grows bored at home; goes to see the doctor and learns that the nose bleed may be due his cocaine habit that he developed when he was still working at Cardiff; he claims that he doesn't have a habit; he also starts playing some of Mutiny's games, discovers some bugs, and starts proposing solutions
- Boz winds up being the butt of a number of practical jokes; he doesn't feel at home at Mutiny and lets Cameron know that he is going to need some time
- Cameron and Donna try to secure some VC capital and track down a hacker who has broken into their mainframe and found ways to do things that they didn't even know were possible; they don't make any  progress on the VC funding front but after a couple confrontations with the hacker they wind up hiring the him; Donna and Cameron's working relationship seems to backslide a little bit as they don't do a very good job of communicating with one another but in the end they still seem to be on speaking terms

- still loving it, this show that is; I was never into computers the way that the people on this show are but the fact that I was using some of these machines and learning about them at the same time that the show takes places gives it some special meaning to me
- it doesn't hurt that I am impressed with all the main characters and enjoy seeing their stories unfold

Halt and Catch Fire 2.01

SETI

- a couple years have passed in the show since season 1 ended
- Cameron and Donna are still in business but it looks like something is getting ready to give; Mutiny, their company, is skating on thin ice; Cameron doesn't want to take charge; Donna is getting tired of cleaning up after other employees; things get a little contentious between the two of them until they bond over getting back at someone who scams them
- Gordon gets a big payout after Cardiff shuts down for good; later he gets a nosebleed which he shrugs off; I've got a feeling it is going to turn out to be something more serious than just a nosebleed
- Joe has moved on and moved to Austin; he isn't with Cameron anymore; he has met another woman, a reporter named Sara; he is expecting to get a similar payout to Gordon but doesn't because he pissed off the owner of Cardiff Electric one too many times; he was counting on that money to start a new company; I've got a feeling he's going to go back to Gordon and try and get him to invest in his idea for his new company
- John who went to jail at the end of season 1 gets out at the end of this episode; as I recall he took the fall for something that Cameron did; she's the one who meets him when he gets released

- it started a little slow but by the end of the episode I was eager to see more; it has been about 10-11 months since I watched season 1; I didn't remember all the details or all the names; there was no recap at the beginning of the episode but it didn't take me long to pick up the pieces