Halt and Catch Fire 3.10

NeXT

Donna, Cameron, Gordon, Joe, and Tom get together to talk about Joe's big idea, which is of course the World Wide Web. Things don't start off well, although the productions values wouldn't lead you to believe that. Things get better, in the sense that they stop talking at one another and start talking to one another, over the course of a couple days. Cameron visits briefly with Boz. Joe hints at what happened between he and Cameron to Tom. Tom reads Cameron's e-mails. Joe and Tom get into a fist fight. Donna and Gordon share a moment and it looks like they are about to get back together but then don't.

The weirdest moment was Cameron doing a 180 and telling Donna at the the end that she didn't want to work with her anymore. This is of course after doing a 180 in the last episode where she initially told her that she didn't want to have anything to do with her. Donna responds in the most rational way possible and plans a trip to Switzerland.

My favorite moment was Joe talking about building the door. There is something about the imagery of a door that seems like magic to me.

Didn't love it, didn't hate it. It felt like a big tease for what comes next. Since watching the last episode I learned that there is just one more 10-episode season. It has yet to drop on Netflix. I might just watch it when it does even though I previously said this was going to be it.

Halt and Catch Fire 3.09

NIM

Four years have passed since the last episode. It is 1990. Gordon and Donna are divorced. She is now a partner in the same firm as Diane. Gordon is dating one of his employees but he still works for Donna. Cameron comes back to the States (from Japan where she and Tom live) for an appearance at COMDEX.

Donna encourages Joe to go to the show to see Cameron. She wants him to take her a message. He goes to the show but he doesn't read the message or take it with him. Cameron and Joe hang. Everything is cool between them until Donna shows up. Cameron doesn't want to see or talk to her and walks out. She ends up spending the night with Joe.

Gordon tries to entertain Michelle, the woman he's dating, but Joanie, one of his daughters, gets in the way. She wants to go to a party but Gordon says no when he finds out that there won't be any adults present. The situation gets very awkward when Joanie starts doing what she can to disrupt Gordon and Michelle's dinner.

I want to like this show. It has moments I like. I like some of the moments that Joe and Cameron share. I wish that this show was about the characters and not the computer industry. That's my read of course but in my opinion if it the characters were the focus of the show then the show would be more slowly paced and there wouldn't be as much fast forwarding as there is.

I think it is time for me to move on, after I watch the season finale.

Halt and Catch Fire 3.08

You Are Not Safe

Cameron has left Mutiny. Ryan is on the run from the FBI. Gordon and Joe are working together again but their business plans are put on hold because of the investigation into Ryan. Donna is getting ready for the initial public offering (IPO) of stock of Mutiny.

Nothing really goes as planned. I enjoy seeing where this show goes but unfortunately I grow a little weary of the surplus of dramatic moments. The show does have the occasional quiet moment but there just aren't enough of them for me. The one that did do it for me this time around was the scene at the supermarket.

Halt and Catch Fire 3.07

The Threshold

Everyone finds out that Cameron and Tom got married. Different people react differently. Donna and Cameron make an attempt to reconcile but Donna still wants to push forward with an Initial Public Offering (IPO). Cameron seems to have softened on the idea of taking the public but before the company does so she wants to make some improvements. She anticipates that it will take about 2 years to make the improvements. Donna wants the IPO to happen in about 3 months.

Joe is still out at his company. His confession that he stole the company from Gordon turns things around. Gordon gets control of the company. He visits Joe and sees his board. There are no labels to explain what it is but it doesn't take Gordon long to figure it out. At first he lords it over Joe that he will be taking over the company. He changes his tune in the end and offers Joe 49% of the acquired company.

Things come to a head at Mutiny. Donna wants to go ahead with the IPO despite Cameron's opposition to doing withing 3 months. She tries to gather votes from the other shareholders in Mutiny, behind Cameron's back, but Gordon feels some shred of loyalty to Cameron and tells her. The board (Cameron, Donna, Gordon, Boz, Dianne) meets to air things out but things get contentious between Donna and Cameron. Boz tries to get them to take some time but Cameron insists on taking a vote immediately. Everyone votes for going public, except Cameron.

The episode ends with Ray revealing to Joe that he has taken the code for the security software and put it out there for free. I guess this would have been on a BBS or some such service. He also aired plenty of secrets that the company was harboring. Ray didn't know that Joe was talking to Gordon or that he cut a deal with Gordon. It's a little unclear on where Ray's story goes from here. I'm pretty sure that he just on the show for this season.

Not bad. This episode kept my attention. Not every moment was praise-worthy but there were enough good character moments to keep me excited. I'm still uncertain I will watch beyond the end of this season despite my general happiness with this one episode.

Halt and Catch Fire 3.06

And She Does

Things seem to come to a head between Cameron and Donna. Cameron uses what she learned from her phone conversation with Diane in the last episode and fires Doug and Ian. Diane senses trouble between Donna and Cameron and encourages them to leave for a weekend and go stay at her home up in the California wine country. They have a buyout offer on the table from CompuServe, an IPO to consider, and they need to be on better than just speaking terms in order to make a rational decision about how to proceed. Donna takes Diane's advice and goes to Diane's home.

Cam does not go. Instead she spends most of the weekend playing Super Mario Bros. with Gordon. They beat the game but Gordon collapses at one point, knocking over the TV and breaking it. He tells Cameron about his medical problems. They go out and buy a new TV in order to continue playing. They get a much bigger set, a projection television. They talk about Joe. Gordon is the one who brings up his name. He still can't get over the fact that Joe stole the code that he developed.

Donna spends the weekend at Diane's place. The only people she sees are Diane's daughter, who is a senior at Berkley, and a couple of her friends who stop by to hang out. Cameron never shows up except in a hallucination that Donna has after she smokes some weed.

Cameron has a secret. She got married to Tom while she was back in Texas. She communicates with him through Mutiny in this episode. She tells Gordon about it near the end of the episode. Joe, in the one scene he has with Cameron, sees the ring at is able to put two and two together fairly quickly. It isn't until after that scene that Cameron tells Gordon about it. The episode ends with Gordon and Donna discovering that Cameron has secretly moved out of their house.

Joe and Ray are making big plans. Everything is flying high. They are looking to the future of what will one day be the internet. Ken doesn't trust Joe. He tells him to slow down. Joe doesn't listen and agrees to a deal with another company. When Ken finds out about it he goes to the board and gets Joe stripped of his decision making powers. The night before, Joe got a visit from Cameron who asked him to own up to the fact that he stole the code from Gordon. At the next deposition for the case between himself and Gordon, fresh off of learning that he was just a figure head and couldn't make anymore decisions, Joe owns up to the fact that he stole the code.

For the most part Joe and Ray's part of the story is leaving me a bit cold. It doesn't feel like there is much at stake for them. They seem a bit too robotic and inhuman for me to care about them. Another thing that bothers me about this show is the attention that is put into making some scenes look good. I would rather they invest more in the development of the characters. On the whole I liked this episode better than the last one but I'm still thinking about letting go of this show at the end of this season.

Halt and Catch Fire 3.05

Yerba Buena

It is the 4th of July. Joe and Ray continue to look for the next thing. Ray gets frustrated with Joe. In looks like, but isn't clearly stated, that Joe gets some bad news from a friend. The friend is someone who doesn't look familiar and probably hasn't been seen before. It's a guy. Based on the call Joe gets later in the episode my read of the situation is that Joe's friend recently found out he has contracted HIV. Joe gets tested but his test turns up negative. Prior to receiving the test results he was pretty broken up. He tried to hide it from Ray but he wasn't entirely successful.

Boz and Cameron go back to Texas for a spell. He is there to see his son, daughter-in-law, and recently born grandson. Everything does not go according to plan. His attempts to help out end up angering his son who seems to feel that his father is just trying to make up for the lousy job he did parenting a couple decades ago.

Cameron is there to follow up on a call she got from her stepfather. Her mother is getting ready to move and sell Cameron's biological father's belongings, including his motorcycle. She can't bear the thought of confronting her mother and watches as someone rides away on her father's motorcycle. Cameron and Boz get into a fight and he ends up leaving her behind when he returns to California. She spends a little bit of time visiting with Tom prior to the fight and goes to see him after Boz abandons her.

Donna and Gordon enjoy a vacation at home. They have the house to themselves. It is fairly blissful for about 24 hours. After that Gordon wants to get back to work on his HAM radio. Donna has to deal with Cameron's vanishing act and decides to make some solo command decisions. Cameron is not pleased when she finally returns to the office, 5 days late. Donna and Cameron have it out. This part was a little too melodramatic for me. I had a hard time taking it seriously. Cameron is obviously a genius but she lacks in empathy.

The episode ends with Cameron calling Diane to apologize. Diane inadvertently lets drop that she didn't have a problem firing Doug and Ian. Last episode Donna told Cameron that Diane said no to that move. The chickens are coming home to roost. The immediate fallout seems to be a breakdown in the trust between Cameron and Donna but I'm pretty sure there will be more damage.

So far so-so. I'm not crazy about this season. I think I will stick with it for the remaining 5 episodes but it has yet to impress me consistently.

Halt and Catch Fire 3.04

Rules of Honorable Play

Cameron can't seem to get along with Doug and Craig, the former owners of SwapMeet. The problem is the code. Cameron doesn't want to change the code that Mutiny currently uses but the code that SwapMeet is written in is not compatible with Mutiny's code. Cameron wants Doug and Craig to rewrite the SwapMeet code, even though it doesn't seem to make sense to do that. Cameron wrote the base code the Mutiny is based on. She doesn't want to lose that.

Donna doesn't completely understand the problem. She arranges a dinner meeting with Doug, Craig, and Diane. Cameron, by this point, wants to fire Doug and Craig. It would be a costly move because Mutiny would have to buy out their contracts. Donna doesn't bring it up at the dinner meeting until after Craig and Doug have left. Diane isn't happy about it but says okay. Donna changes the message and tells Cameron that Diane said no, told her that they have to keep them. Cameron goes along with it. I've got a feeling that eventually she will find out what Dianne actually said and that it will sour her relationship with Donna.

Gordon is also experiencing some of the growing pains associated with the acquisition of SwapMeet. The coders from the two companies are butting heads just like Cameron and Doug. Gordon takes an off the cuff suggestion from Cameron and turns it into an after hours, team-building exercise: laser tag. It seems to work in more ways that one. In addition to building group cohesion, Gordon also experiences an improvement in his physical well being.

Diane takes Boz to a party. She seems to be interested in him for personal reasons. They run into Joe at the party. Diane gets to meet him for the first time. Joe has some problems of his own but he doesn't turn to either of them for help. He loses one client that accounts for a sizable portion of his company's business but somehow picks up a contract for ARPANET, the predecessor to the internet.

The episode ends with a weird encounter between Donna and Cameron, which leaves Cameron wondering if Donna wants to get rid of her. That's my read of the situation. The only outward or explicit sign that she feels like something is wrong is the question she asks Gordon just before the credits start to roll, "when did you know you had lost Cardiff Electronics?"

This was a much better episode than the last one. It was considerably less melodramatic. I like the plot developments and the way the relationships seem to be evolving. Things are in a state of flux but at the same time it is clear that decisions are being made that will have repercussions.

Halt and Catch Fire 3.03

Flipping the Switch

Donna and Cameron put Boz in charge of delivering the offer letter to SwapMeet. Diane decides to join John for the trip to SwapMeet. She more or less concurs with his approach, which is to lower the offer price once he sees the slipshod sort of operation SwapMeet is running. I thought Donna and Cameron would flip out when they heard what happened but there's no evidence that they did. Maybe that's because they were a little too busy dealing with problems of their own.

Donna and Gordon are still having problems finding work life balance. Their relationship on the job seems to be overflowing into their marriage. It doesn't help that Cameron is living with them. Gordon spends part of the episode playing with his old Ham radio. He tries and eventually finds one of his old friends using the radio. My read of it is that he really needs another outlet for his frustrations. The radio seems to help.

Cameron is put in charge of finding a replacement for Ryan. She gives a talk to a class at San Francisco City College. She doesn't have much luck in the recruiting department but she does run into Joe. He is there taking a class in BASIC. It is not a friendly encounter but it also doesn't get vicious. It is just very uncomfortable.

Ryan goes to work for Joe. It is very different work environment for Ryan from the one he left behind at Mutiny. Joe is a very unconventional sort of person. Ryan doesn't know how to deal with or interact with him. By the end of the episode it seems that Joe has decided to pull Ryan into his inner circle. What does that mean down the road? Will he be any nicer or less nebulous? I have my doubts. My guess is that there will be times he will be nice and times that he will not but it is hard to say either way what is the most likely course of action.

On the whole I found this to be an unsatisfying episode. It felt like there was a lot of overacting, a lot of payoff moments without any buildup to them. It felt a bit like the director might be trying to communicate information through the way the episode was shot rather than have the actors communicate it themselves. The only scene that really felt right to me was Boz and Diane's visit to SwapMeet. I don't know what to make of Joe or the way Lee Pace is playing the role. He is so mysterious that I can't tell what if anything is going through his head most of the time.

Halt and Catch Fire 3.02

One Way or Another

Cameron and Donna shop around trying to find more venture capital funding. They are looking to make a move, add what would later be called e-commerce to Mutiny. They don't have any luck. The one bite they get turns out to be sexist BS. Nothing seems to be going their way until they meet with Diane. She is the mother of the girl that Joanie, Donna's daughter, beat up last episode. At first Diane's firm isn't interested, because they've already invested in another firm that is doing something similar and has a head start on Mutiny. After Donna and Cameron change their approach, and ask for money to buy the other company, they get the answer they are looking for.

Ryan continues to try and impress Joe. He is also courted by Gordon, who wants to work with him. Ultimately Joe offers Ryan a job, that he decides to take. Where this is all going I don't know. It feels like the tug of war for Ryan's loyalty and attention might not be over just yet. At one point I wondered if Joe was going to ask Ryan to stay at Mutiny and keep him informed on what's happening there. In a way that doesn't make sense because Ryan is a techie and wants to build something, a product, but it didn't seem outside the realm of possibilities until the end of the episode that he might betray Mutiny.

Gordon is still suing Joe for stealing his idea. He has to give a deposition. Joe isn't at the deposition but then he shows up unexpectedly. He offers Gordon a controlling interest in his company if he will drop the suit and come work with him. Gordon doesn't bite. He doesn't trust Joe. Considering his past history that seems like a wise choice.

Joe has changed his look. He seems to emanate a vibe that seems similar to that of Steve Jobs. I'm sure that is an intentional choice by the producers of the show. He's not a clone of Jobs but both in the way he dresses and acts he seems like the co-founder of Apple.

This episode was a lot more interesting and fun to watch than the last one. I'm not sure why. It might be because it felt like more happened this time around.

Halt and Catch Fire 3.01

Valley of the Heart's Delight

It is 1986 and Mutiny has moved to San Francisco. They are getting ready to launch a new product. They just barely get it up and running in time for a reporter, who joins them for the launch party, to see it.

Donna and Cameron are still thick as thieves and running Mutiny. Cameron is living with Donna, Gordon, Joanie, and Hayley. Gordon feels underappreciated by his wife. He doesn't say that but that's the impression I get. I might be wrong. It might be that he just wants to do more than he currently does for Mutiny, which is maintain the mainframe.

The coders still work in one big room and spend a lot of time goofing off. I don't think I could work in an environment like that. It seems that some of the guys, and they are all guys, don't do anything other than goof off. On one level it seems like fun but it also feels kind of pointless and very chaotic. Ryan, a new addition to the team has some ideas about tightening up security on the network. He tries to explain them to Donna and Cameron. They brush him off and tell Boz to give him a raise, but that's not what he wants. He doesn't goof off with the others. He seems a little more serious minded.

It isn't until later in the episode that Cameron starts to rethink the security issue. By then it is a little too late. By then Ryan seems to have fallen under the thrall of Joe McMillen whose line of business is security. He took an idea that Gordon developed and told it for millions at the end of the previous season. Gordon hasn't forgotten that.

There is some family drama for Gordon and Donna. They have to go meet with the principal after Joanie gets into a fight with another girl. This leads to an interesting meeting with the other girl's mother. She is in the midst of divorce proceedings and seems very no nonsense. Based on what I'm seeing on IMBD it looks like she will be a recurring character throughout the season. It is unclear what role she will play.

There is also a minor earthquake. No serious damage occurs. I looked and there were no serious earthquakes in the San Francisco Bay area in 1986 but that doesn't mean there can't be one on the show.

Things are developing slowly. This isn't an episode that I love. If this was my first exposure to the show then I might not come back for more. I'm not sure if I will stick with this season to the bitter end, which is 9 more episodes, but I'm in for now for at least a couple more.