Halt and Catch Fire: The Final Season

Creators: Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers
Starring: Lee Pace, Scoot McNairy, Mackenzie Davis, Kerry Bishé, Toby Huss, Annabeth Gish, Anna Chlumsky, Molly Ephraim, Kathryn Newton, Susanna Skaggs
Original Airdate: 2017

★★★★ (out of ★★★★)

            ** Spoiler Warning: The Following Review Contains Plot Spoilers for Season 4 of 'Halt and Catch Fire' **

Everyone thinks about the possibility, but few shows actually have the guts to go through with it. In the third to last episode of one of TV's most improved dramas, Halt and Catch Fire, creators and showrunners Christopher Cantwell and Christopher Rogers do the unthinkable. It's what every fan of a major series fears could happen in the home stretch, but rarely does, since the story being told so infrequently calls for it. This one did. You could call it a shock, but that wouldn't exactly be accurate since viewers have known for a couple of seasons now that the show's backbone, everyman Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy) was quietly fighting a degenerative brain disease.

So, did we just simply forget about it? Or know, but find ourselves so distracted by all the other compelling goings on that we neglected to consider Gordon was on borrowed time. It's a true credit to the writing and performances that we took for granted that the character would make it to the end because he had too much left to accomplish. This may as well be the story of the series, which started in the Silicon Prairie of Dallas at the forefront of an 80's computer revolution spearheaded by four wildly different, but initially underdeveloped characters who were always a little too far ahead of the curve. 

Joe and Gordon argue in Comet's offices

It began as being all about the technological connections, but with each passing episode the series morphed into something else, until arriving at its final destination of California's Silicon Valley in 1994, at the forefront of another revolution, the internet. Whether it be personal computing, chat rooms, anti-virus software, first-person gaming, and finally, the world wide web, hot shot visionary Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace), geeky engineer Gordon (McNairy), shrewd, buttoned-up corporate brains Donna Clark-Emerson (Kerry Bishé), and rebellious coder Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis) were often there first. It's just that someone else was always better.

Right up until the end this was a show about failure, with perhaps no character better epitomizing that than perpetual runner-up Gordon, played with equal parts desperation and inspiration by McNairy. With these three, the next big idea would always be right around the corner. Eventually, the series evolved into being about human connections, as the characters grew and expanded with the world around them, particularly in the past two seasons.

Gordon brainstorms ideas

When audiences do eventually realize what they've missed, and as others discover and re-discover this overlooked series, they'll have its finale, "Ten of Swords" waiting for them. And while this will never usurp Breaking Bad or Mad Men critically or otherwise, it became its own thing, delivering an universally beloved final episode neither could lay claim to having.

Yes, the bar was set higher for those because of the greatness preceding it and most were just relieved that the perpetually ratings-challenged HACF even made it to the end amidst constant threats of cancellation.  But it gets the last word, culminating in an hour and fifteen minutes that's everything a TV send-off can and should be.

After the surprise time jump at the end of last season that took the characters from the 80's into the 90's, Joe and Gordon have joined forces again to launch a new internet service provider, CalNect, spawned by their World Wide Web brainstorming session with Donna and Cameron three years earlier. But despite occupying Mutiny's old office space and employing Cameron, she's too distracted  to finish their browser, and competition from the marketplace is forcing them to change course.

When Joe comes up with the idea to index every website on the Internet, Gordon enlists his youngest daughter Haley (Susanna Skaggs) to help. She creates her own webite, "Haley's Comet" that could prove to be the solution to all their problems, if they Gordon can work out the issue of his 13-year-old working for him and Joe while competing with her own mom, and his ex-wife, Donna, who's venture capital firm is funding a very similar startup company called Rover.

Bos and Cameron have a talk

With Cameron's marriage having fallen apart in Japan and her new video game, the frustratingly impossible "Pilgrim," receiving awful reviews,  she's torn between these two competing companies, as her personal ties to Joe and Comet conflict with her loyalty to old friend Bos (Toby Huss), who's wife Diane (Annabeth Gish) oversees Donna's Rover project. With Cameron offered a new business opportunity from a mysterious source that could give her the independence she wishes, Joe, Gordon and Donna are separately still searching for what they want and figuring out how they'll get it, unaware their paths are converging for the final time.

This season, more than any before it, feels like a completely different show, while still managing to draw upon the rich history mapped out in previous episodes. Part of that undoubtedly has to do with the time jump, which takes a series that was for so much of its run steeped in 1980's culture and pushes it into the early to mid 90's, even managing to forge ahead three years further to 1994 in the season premiere. AOL is king, the internet is in its infancy and now the gang finds themselves in a far different place than they were a decade earlier when they spearheaded the PC craze. But not much has changed either as they constantly find themselves being thwarted by those with similar, sometimes identical ideas executed better or with more capital behind it.

Initially, there almost seems to be a lack of tension and conflict compared to prior seasons as everyone actually appears to be in a pretty good place, both personally and professionally. But appearances are deceiving, even as Gordon celebrates his 40th birthday with a party (complete with the Blue Man Group) and shares a business partnership with Joe that, for the first time, seems to also be a legitimate friendship built on respect and trust. Unfortunately, even as they've grown, they still can't seem to agree on a direction for the company, and the addition of Gordon's daughter Haley into the fold as founder creates all sorts of complications neither were quite ready for.

Donna toasts Rover's success

On the other side is their corporate opponent Donna, now a formidable executive willing to win at any cost, fully completing a transformation that occurred back when she booted Cameron out of Mutiny. Watching her rule over Rover underlings (including Bos) with an iron fist, develop a drinking problem and take colleagues into her bed is jarring, but knowing what we do about Donna up to this point, I believed it. She always had ambitions that stretched beyond what Gordon had imagined for both when they were married, and she's now in her mind making the necessary sacrifices to execute on them.

This is probably Kerry Bishé's  best season, taking extremely unlikable behavior and giving it motivation, while sliding in signs of the old Donna through her positive interactions with Gordon and the relationship with her kids, most notably rebellious teen Joanie. Formerly the show's most beloved character, we start to see cracks in Donna develop with each passing episode that remind us why, making what's earned between her and Cameron in the series' final minutes that much more rewarding. And while the latter has made significant strides in her maturation as a rational functioning adult, the tension between the two stemming from what went down at Mutiny runs through much of the season whenever they're forced to interact.

As far as Cameron's come, we're also reminded at so many points just how little she's changed, even as she and Joe have another go at a formerly toxic relationship that for a while feels like it could really work. Of course it inevitably doesn't, due in part to Cameron doing what she's always done: run away. With her future as a game designer in limbo, she purchases a piece of land, isolating herself from the world while living out of an airstream trailer.

Haley at the negotiating table

While the thrill of creating and coding has always been her life force, she can't help but get sucked into the battle between Donna and Bos' Rover and Joe and Gordon's Comet, with Gordon's daughter Haley stuck in the middle. The biggest benefit of the show's jump into the 90's is the development of what might be the series' strongest plotline, as Gordon connects with his now teenage daughter, who ends up being a lot more like him than both are willing to concede.

More than fulfilling the daunting task of stepping into a character late in the game that's already played by someone else, an endearingly goofy and likable Susanna Skaggs basically owns this season, as her story becomes that of Gordon's and Joe's. While she's undoubtedly going through some things, both related to her social awkwardness and sexual identity, the bigger concern is Joe, who's never met an idea he couldn't shape to fit his vision or a person he couldn't take advantage of to do it. We saw it at Cardiff, again at Westgroup and most famously, with the anti-virus software idea he lifted from Gordon to build his own company

When he gets his claws into Haley's idea and starts working with her, there's legitimate concern he'll see dollar signs and be more than willing to throw a little kid under the bus and destroy his friendship with Gordon to see it through. That this would have happened with Season One or Two Joe, but doesn't occur now, is perhaps the first sign that put cold, calculating Joe MacMillan is being put to bed.

Gordon's life flashes before him in "Who Needs a Guy"

 With that metaphorical death also comes an actual one for Gordon, who quite literally sees his life flash before his eyes moments before his hallucinatory death in the landmark episode, "Who Needs a Guy." The cruel twist was that he finally seemed to arrive at a place of happiness. Running a successful company, on relatively good terms with Donna, having loyal friends, in a healthy relationship with new girlfriend, Katie (Anna Chlumsky) and sharing a personal and professional bond with his daughter that defies description in its overall impact, it was an awful time to go. But it was also the right time, handled so beautifully and with such grace, no one could dare label it emotionally manipulative, as shocking TV deaths so often tend to be.

You wonder how the series could continue after the passing of one of its most important characters until the realization sets in that it doesn't need to. Or at least it only has to do it for a few more episodes. And does it ever. As the shocking news ingeniously moves from character to character in what feels like the cruelest, most painful game of telephone tag in dramatic TV, we must adjust to new reality for the series that's forcing its characters to hit the reset button on their lives with only three episodes remaining.

The grieving process and the possibility of each finding their own way to remember Gordon and begin to somehow try to survive without him is vividly explored in the powerful episode "Goodwill," as Joe and Cameron help Donna and the girls sort out Gordon's belongings.  As the rift between Donna and eldest daughter Joanie grows greater, there's some signs of healing in her seemingly irreparable former friendship with Cameron. Ironically, just as that glimmer of hope presents itself, a sullen, withdrawn Joe's vision of a post-Gordon Comet disintegrates with the arrival of Yahoo! so too does his relationship with Cam.

Whenever the conversation of any series finale occurs, that inescapably dirty word, "expectations,"  always seems to be accompanying it. HACF is in the unique, enviable position of hardly having any since few anticipated the series would make it past its inaugural season, much less be able to map out an exit strategy for a fourth. But for fans of the show who were religiously watching it and knew how good it became, there were expectations that these characters who have developed so much since the pilot would earn a send-off that not only makes narrative sense, but provides suitable closure and a necessary amount of room open for interpretation.

Donna contemplates her future in "Search"

The penultimate episode, "Search," and its succeeding finale, the Karyn Kusama-directed "Ten of Swords," finds a way to honor the past while also looking forward to an fuzzy, uncertain future that comes more clearly into focus in its closing minutes. While Gordon's gone, his creations and failures still feel as integral to the series as when he was alive, driving these characters onward whether they're ready or not.

For Cameron, it appears as if her investor Alex Vonn (Molly Ephraim) will finally provide the outlet necessary to let her ideas roam free without interference. Instead, she again becomes an unwilling puppet to a strangers' vision, reminding her just how creatively fruitful that Mutiny partnership with Donna truly was. In one of the season's most wonderful scenes, both return to the abandoned Mutiny and Comet offices, envisioning a future where they give it another go, naming their fictitious company "Phoenix" as its imaginary neon logo blinks on the wall behind them. They each own their biggest mistakes with Mutiny, determining they would inevitably screw it all up the same way if they tried it again, but with one key difference. This time, they'd have the self-awareness to make sure they walk away friends.

Now at the top of the corporate hierarchy having successfully taken over AGGE and taken it to new heights in the wake of Diane's retirement, Donna's soul-searching has not only made her a better boss and more motivating leader, but allowed her to connect with backpacking daughter Joanie on a level not previously thought possible. All roads lead to her Sheryl Sandberg-like speech Donna delivers at her self-hosted female coders party, conveying a message about work and sacrifice that's as timely and relevant now as it would have been in 1994. Given the character's history, it doesn't feel sappy or sentimental. It just seems right, like a declaration of facts from someone who's earned her place at the head of the table.

Cameron listening intently to Donna's speech

Try as she might, Cameron can't run away this time. Whether she's falling into Donna's pool while clumsily trying to make an exit or working with her to take apart Haley's computer (in a brilliant call-back to Donna fixing the girls' "Speak and Spell" in the pilot), the forces are conspiring to prevent Cam from visiting her mom in Florida. This is where she belongs, as a roadside breakfast with Donna at a diner ends up being the scene that encompasses so much of the series.

A cash register opens. Money is exchanged. People talk. Then Donna runs out to deliver the immortal line to a waiting Cameron at the car: "I Have An Idea." And with that, a series known for its meticulous musical cues saves one of its biggest for last, as Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill" starts to take us out. It's a fairly traditional but thematically appropriate choice given how much of the show's identity is inseparable from its soundtrack, specifically when it comes to Cameron, who Mackenzie Davis made the show's beating beating heart while subsequently emerging as its future star, garnering attention for her more widely seen turns in the Emmy-winning Black Mirror: "San Junipero" and Blade Runner 2049. But there's no mistaking that she earned both opportunities due directly to her work on this.

Upon realizing the show was jumping to 1994, there was palpable excitement in discovering what music supervisor Thomas Golubić would do when pushed past the series' early cyberpunk 80's aesthetic and into a new decade. We got a taste of at the end of last season with his unforgettable incorporation of the Pixies' "Velouria" and he doesn't disappoint here, as Hole, James, The Cowboy Junkies and The Breeders help provide a voice for the decade. He also ventures out the period box when necessary, like with the memorable use of Dire Straits' "So Far Away" following Gordon's death, and this final selection, channeling Gabriel's 1977 hit to reflect both the pain and excitement of moving on.                     

Cam and Donna on the cusp of a new idea

I love that we never hear what Donna's idea is in that diner, creating a contemplative sequence that carries echoes of The Sopranos' contoversial finale. Sure, we can speculate. Ebay? Napster? Social Media? Paypal? Smartphones?  There's enough evidence in the scene pointing to each, all or none of those innovations, but it's better we never find out and are instead left endlessly speculating what she had in mind. Anything revealed couldn't meet our expectations anyway, and if we knew what it was, chances are we'd be too busy thinking of ways it could fail to truly stop and appreciate the moment. And it probably will fail, which we've learned by now won't mean the end of the world for any of these characters whose lives and careers were defined by creating "the thing that gets you to the thing."

The series' big remaining piece of unfinished business is Joe MacMillan, the one character we weren't sure could ever come to terms with Gordon's death or himself.  If Cameron was always the one to retreat and run, this time it's Joe's turn, packing his bags and heading home to New York to put this all behind him. The expectation is a return to IBM and the reappearance of the slick, suit-wearing Don Draper/Patrick Bateman hybrid from the first season scares us (however briefly) into thinking Joe has once again regressed, having not experienced an inkling of personal growth from his time with these people over the past decade. The finale is full of clever misdirections involving Cam leaving, Bos' health and Donna's uncertain future. In each of these cases, the rug is pulled out to reveal a better outcome, but never more so than when Joe drives up to what we believe will be IBM headquarters in his Lotus sports car, arriving instead at his office at a local university where he's teaching humanities.

With the Cardiff Giant PC resting atop his desk and pictures of Gordon and Haley in front of him, Joe's finally found a way to move forward while fully embracing instead of resenting the successes and failures that got him here. As in the pilot, he's again in a classroom, only this time it's not to poach talent, but share knowledge.

Professor Joe MacMillan in "Ten of Swords"

As in the pilot episode, Joe opens with the line: "Let me begin... by asking a question" Only this time his delivery carries none of the slimy, know-it-all arrogance it did then, stated with a genuine curiosity that could have only come from someone humbled by experience. It's the perfect final line for a character whose perceived lack of dimension became the easy target of so many of the show's early criticisms, since retroactively corrected by the writers and Lee Pace's multi-layered performance, helping position the series as one of the medium's most overlooked.

Halt and Catch Fire proves again in its final season that it was still even better than it's recently gotten credit for, having not only earned the hardest of victories with an ideal send-off, but told a story that now justifies many of the early decisions the show makers faced derision for. It all makes sense now, and while we know that couldn't have been the plan all along, they deserve credit for making us believe that it was by having all the pieces perfectly fit. The rare achievement that ups its game with each successive season until peaking when it most mattered, the challenge was always convincing more people to watch, which still could come.  For a show many accused of reverse engineering the most successfully familiar aspects of AMC's greatest dramas, HACF succeeded where few did, changing course midway through to carve out a path of its own.           

Halt and Catch Fire (Seasons 1 and 2)

Creators: Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers
Starring: Lee Pace, Scoot McNairy, Mackenzie Davis, Kerry Bishé, Toby Huss, Aleksa Palladino, James Cromwell, Mark O' Brien, Scott Michael Foster, Graham Beckel, John Getz, Annette O'Toole
Original Airdate: 2014-2015 

Season 1: ★★★ (out of ★★★★)
Season 2 ★★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

                                                                **Contains Minor Spoilers and Plot Details**

“Computers aren’t the thing. They are the thing that gets us to the thing.”

When AMC premiered Halt and Catch Fire, on June 1, 2014, there was this unspoken expectation that Christopher Cantwell And Christopher C. Rogers' period drama about the 80's personal computer boom would be the new centerpiece for the network. With Breaking Bad finished, Better Call Saul's potential for critical and commercial success still up in the air, and Mad Men on its way out, they needed a new hit. And while they never came out and said it, the plan was for HACF to inherit the throne of prestige television, with the advertising relentlessly touting it as being "from the producers of Breaking Bad." Then people saw it. Or more accurately, a few people did, and were only mildly impressed. Critics like Alan Sepinwall justifiably took it task for trying too much too soon, citing that a story about techies trying to reverse engineer a PC was really about a series trying to reverse engineer the acclaimed dramas that preceded it, with mixed results.

AMC's Halt and Catch Fire

Incorporating easily identifiable elements from both Breaking Bad and Mad Men, HACF was already being written like a show that belonged in their company without earning that right. But the most frustrating thing was how much potential it had and how many promising signs there were that it could reach that level if the writers just got out of their own way. After a satisfying pilot (Ep.1.1, "I/O") that appropriately debuted online before the premiere, the rest of the season was wildly uneven, while still showing glimmers of hope that they're on to something.

While the acting, directing, cinematography, music and production design can on any day compete with AMC's finest, it's at the service of a story desperately trying to find itself in its first season. All the ingredients can be there, but unlike film, TV is first and foremost a writing medium. And we also know too well that it's a numbers game in which the prestige factor can only go so far. When the rating aren't there, they'll pull the plug. So give the network credit for having the patience to grant it a second season and the creative forces credit for listening to all the criticisms and feedback and making those necessary changes. You'd have to go back to the sophomore season of NBC's Parks and Recreation to find a show that course corrected itself to such an extreme. Gifted with another chance, they listened, addressing nearly every problem until the rebooted series became what it was meant to be all along.

Set in the Silicon Prairie of Dallas, Texas in 1983, the series initially centers around the arrival of charismatic former IBM employee Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace), who mysteriously exited the company in a cloud of controversy. Now determined to one-up his ex-employer at their own game and make a name for himself, he formulates a plan to reverse engineer an IBM PC. To do it, he manipulates his way into getting hired by John Bosworth (Toby Huss), the VP of sales for Cardiff Electric, a fledgling software company loosely based on the real life, Texas-based Compaq. But what he really needs from Cardiff is Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy) a brilliant engineer and former systems builder who previously tried and failed at launching a new computer  with his wife Donna (Kerry Bishé) at the '81 COMDEX convention.

Mackenzie Davis as rebellious coder Cameron Howe

With Cardiff facing certain legal action from IBM, they're forced to enter the PC business as Joe brings in college student and rebellious coding superstar Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis) as their programmer. Possessing the punkish, rebellious spirit of Angelina Jolie in Hackers while recalling the look of Mary Stuart Masterson in Some Kind of Wonderful, she's as temperamental as she is brilliant, and as much a visionary as Joe. But under his manipulative leadership, the question becomes how these three difficult personalities can co-exist to create a machine that can not only compete with IBM, but take computer technology into the future. But what will be the cost to each of them personally?

The show's unusual title actually refers to a now defunct machine code instruction that shuts down the computer's central processing unit. And the biggest obstacle facing the creators is how to make a piece of entertainment about people sitting around computers engaging. Taking its cue from The Social Network, the writers eventually realize that the key is having us care about the characters by raising the personal stakes as high as possible. The personal and professional aspects must be intrinsically merged, traveling on the same road to a clear destination the viewer wants to be on a journey toward. The first season's inconsistency mainly results from them instead going in a couple of different directions at once, causing a lack of focus and confusion as to the series' mission.

Lee Pace as the enigmatic Joe MacMillan

Perhaps overcompensating for what the network feared would be an abundance of technical jargon clobbering audiences, the writing seemed more focused on cloning Mad Men's Don Draper instead of the journey of these characters. While it probably wasn't intentional to turn Joe MacMillan into a less interesting hybrid of Draper and American Psycho's Patrick Bateman, but that's how it played out when the material hit the screen. Each minute spent on his "mysterious" past (which includes a strained relationship with his father, commitment issues, and bi-sexuality) feels derivative and especially irksome in the season's draggy middle episodes, which are weighed down heavily by the writers' early insistence on depicting him as an irredeemable sociopath.

The show is better than its creators initially seem to know and so is Lee Pace, who's just handed too much of a cliched anti-hero right out of the gate to make it entirely successful. With better writing in the next season, we get the nuanced portrayal we suspected him capable of all along, as the show hits the ground running with a more concrete vision, raising everything and everyone around it. I'm making it sound like the first season is terrible when in fact it's only the presentation of Joe holding it down. Making it all the more frustrating is how much greatness hovers around the edges and the potential it has moving forward, specifically in regard to the other supporting characters and their relationships.

As the Steve Wozniak to Joe's Steve Jobs, Gordon is the nuts and bolts engineer, self-proclaimed visionary salesman Joe needs to execute his plan, but also a walking disaster run down by life. If Joe's Don Draper at the start of the series then Gordon's Walter White, even if Scoot McNairy's tortured super nerd performance far transcends such a simplistic description. An alcoholic consumed by failure and basically a doormat to everyone in his life, including his wife and daughters.

Donna (Kerry Bishé) and Gordon (Scoot McNairy)

Much of the early episodes are spent wondering what a smart, capable woman like Donna is doing with this guy, until realizing she has her hang-ups too. Having previously played onscreen spouses in the Best Picture winning Argo, Bishé and McNairy and able to expand that sketch to a greater scale as an entirely different kind of couple, presenting one of the more realistic, period accurate TV marriages we've seen depicted on screen in years.

Far from a passive spectator to her husband's lost dreams and ambitions, Donna's the breadwinner in this household with her job at Texas Instruments and is every bit the intellectual and technological powerhouse Gordon is, if not more so. A scene in the pilot when she fixes her daughter's "Speak and Spell" in alarmingly short order lets us know right off the bat that she isn't Betty Crocker, or even Betty Draper.

Having been business partners with Gordon before, Donna knows the drill, and is justifiably weary of Joe or any new venture. Of course, she gets pulled in along with him, and marital strife, usually the weakest aspect of any drama series, becomes this one's strongest. Joe talks a big game but he's a poor man's Jobs, cribbing his inspirational speeches to use people to get what he wants since he lacks the technical expertise to do it himself. And Gordon is the perfect mark to be manipulated into helping him make and market the ridiculously named, only 15 pound (!) Cardiff Giant PC (Ep 1.7, "Giant").

Gordon's elusive Cabbage Patch Kids

Desperate to prove to his wife he isn't a loser of a father, Gordon's lowest point of the first season comes when he braves a hurricane to steal Cabbage Patch Kids for his daughters (Ep 1.6, "Landfall"). McNairy makes this Gordon's seemingly noble effort come across as hopelessly pathetic, while somehow making the character even more relatable and endearing. It also represents one of many small, but spot-on period details the series skillfully slides in for effect (like Joe intruding on a Clark family outing to see Return of the Jedi).

The costuming and production design may not be as pleasing for viewers to swoon over as the 60's and 70's of Mad Men since the 80's were aesthetically uglier, but that doesn't make its accuracy any less of an accomplishment. Similarly, the soundtrack isn't littered with wall-to-wall 80's hits so much as it's just hitting that occasional, perfectly timed sweet spot with the just the right obscure track from the period, whether it be classic rock, country, punk or new wave depending on the character or moment. And for all those Mad Men comparisons, an area it doesn't fall short is its mind-blowing, Emmy-nominated opening title sequence (accompanied by Trentemøller's synthy electronic theme), easily the best on television right now.

The only person capable of calling Joe out on his B.S. is Cameron, with whom he becomes romantically involved almost from the get-go, even if the fallout from that relationship doesn't fully pay off until the following season. Like Joe, Cam's a forward thinker, only more rebellious and immature and not without her own ideas about where the future is headed. For the most part, they're aligned with his, but they often clash over exactly how to get there.

The Apple Macintosh unveiled

It's ultimately the Joe/Cameron dynamic that torpedoes the entire project and proves that Joe isn't above sabotaging anything he can't completely control or tearing down his own creation if it doesn't meet his standards of excellence. Only when he lays his eyes on Steve Jobs' ultimate creation and IBM's true competition, the Apple Macintosh, does he realize just how inferior their product is, and how right Cam was all along in her desire to make these machines more user-friendly (Ep. 1.9, "Up Helly Aa"). And in seeing a future Joe may no longer be a part of, the series is finally given its beating heart: Failure.

By making this a story about four people with ideas and innovations two or three decades ahead of their time but lacking the capital, technology, or support to bring any to fruition, it now suddenly carries more thematic weight and relevance. Only winners get to write history and since these are completely fictional people, the sky's the limit as far as what can be done with them in the reality we know.

Season 2 starts exploring these exciting possibilities by very wisely shifting the focus off Joe and onto Donna and Cameron, who are struggling to go into business together in the wake of Cardiff's demise. Having caught wind of the fact that these are our two most intriguing characters and the axis around whom the show should rotate, the writers ratchet up the drama, making smart decisions that are brought to life by ambitious direction and terrific performances.

Joe and Gordon start Season 2 at a crossroads

Flash-forwarding to early 1985, Cardiff Electric has been liquidated, resulting in a big payout for company president Gordon and nothing for Joe, causing a reversal of sorts from their positions in the previous season (Ep 2.1, "SETI"). Though, not really. In some ways, Gordon will always be chasing the superficially more successful Joe and itching to impress him, as if that validation, rather than his own work or the love of his wife and daughters, will finally establish him as "something." But in what ends of being a shrewd creative move, they'll spend most of this season apart, with Joe having left Dallas to embark on a spiritual quest to reconnect with his college sweetheart, freelance journalist Sara Wheeler (Aleksa Palladino).

As little as Gordon will deal with Joe, he'll deal even less with his own wife, as Donna becomes immersed in Cameron's ragtag startup business, Mutiny, which they both run out of the latter's house, employing a staff of geeky, misfit coders from Cardiff. Except the immature Cam doesn't really want to run anything, insisting on no titles or bosses, yet whining when things don't go her way and skirting responsibility at every turn. With a specialization in gaming, they hardly have enough capital to keep afloat, and the atmosphere more closely resembles Animal House than an efficiently run company looking to expand.

With Gordon quickly becoming a mentally unstable island unto himself, he can't resist meddling in Donna's new career, further escalating their marital problems until it reaches a boiling point. Problems are just piled onto Gordon this season, and while viewers could make a case it's over-the-top or turns the series into a soap opera, but every great drama is. The question is how well it can be hid. The storyline is just too entertaining, well written and performed to legitimately consider criticizing it.

A disoriented Gordon hits rock bottom

McNairy's physical and emotional transformation in the role over the course of these past ten episodes comes to a head in a parking garage incident that's basically your worst everyday nightmare come to life. The whole season goes a long way in explaining much of the characters' behavior since the pilot, making you consider that Cantwell and Rogers may have had more of a master plan in place than originally suspected. 

Previously playing Donna as the perfect picture of composure and stability, this season is when Bishé gets to play her unraveling under the pressure, foregoing the supermom persona for a more challenging one in the series' most controversial sub-plot. Without giving too much away, it's something most dramas wouldn't dare touch, much less be capable of handling with the intelligence and brutal honesty it is here. Donna's always been the fan favorite because she's the most real and relatable, and now at the show's center where she belongs, Bishé stands out as the most Emmy-worthy of the cast.
                       
With Cam seemingly severing all ties with Joe, the question remains whether it's possible for anyone to really be done with Joe MacMillan. She thinks she is, having moved on in every way with hacker-turned-Mutiny programmer, Tom Rendon (Mark O' Brien), who seems to be her intellectual equal in every way, despite lacking anything resembling a discernable personality.

After putting to bed the smooth, calculating villain from the previous season, this Joe is actually attempting to do the right thing, even if his methods call into question whether he's even changed at all. That the woman he thinks will redeem him just so happens to have a wealthy father, Jacob Wheeler (James Cromwell), who's the CEO of oil company, Westgroup Energy, immediately causing red flags to go up. But the writing's far more nuanced than that, as the full extent of his plans involving Mutiny, and to a lesser extent, Gordon, start taking shape.

The rise of Mutiny

Watching how everything ties together is almost as fascinating as contemplating the goldmine Cameron and Donna could be sitting on if only the world knew they were ready for it. Unfortunately, they're a good twenty years before that technology and even the ideas behind it, start catching up. With the gaming industry being taken over by a little thing called Nintendo, Mutiny must shift its priorities toward chat rooms and what ends up being the initial stirrings of a legitimate online community. In 1985.

It's in one of the series' finest episodes, the Kimberly Peirce-directed "Play with Friends," (Ep. 2.4)  that we realize just how far the writers are willing to go with this forward-looking concept, as Cameron comes up with the idea for a multi-player first person shooter game, clashing with Donna over whether the company's future lies in gaming, Community, or both. It also includes the first known instance of what you could call an "accidental tweet." Again, this is 1985.

While it's fun and even a little surreal charting the evolution of today's social media from that long ago, it's just as wild appreciating Cameron's journey from the hotshot cyberpunk in the premiere episode to a young business owner being forced to grow up, kicking and screaming the entire way. As frustrating as the character's stubbornness is at times, Mackenzie Davis shines, subtly conveying Cam's agonizing lurch into responsible adulthood and the discovery that the world doesn't revolve around her every whim.

Cameron contemplates the future

There comes a point toward the end of the season when it's apparent Cam is as good an actress as the actual actress who plays her, essentially using Joe's own tricks against him (Ep. 2.9, "Kali"). And we're finally forced to admit, that with her huge, expressive eyes and jittery mannerisms, Davis becomes more than just the nerd fantasy she was introduced as when the show premiered. She's also a very natural performer with all the necessary tools to break out as a major mainstream star, whether there's another season or not.    

Cam's bond with former Cardiff executive John "Bos" Bosworth, whose transformation from first season's stuffed corporate suit into father figure is one of the most rewarding and surprisingly organic story arcs. After his release from prison, Mutiny's newest employee provides valuable guidance for some of her toughest decisions, work or otherwise. Laying on that good ol' boy charm and charming salesmanship, Toby Huss makes Bos the show's most consistently funny and likable presence, stealing nearly every scene he's in.

Whether it's winning over a boy's mother on the fence about his presence in Community, or being rejected by his ex-wife, Bos goes beyond providing comic relief to become the show's heart and soul. That such a previously inconsequential character from the first season is now so thoroughly developed and fleshed out is a testament to both Huss' performance and the strides made by the writers to really shake things up.

The world is Joe's for the taking in the Season 2 finale

Season 2 fittingly ends with Joe MacMillan looking out at the San Francisco skyline from his new office, prepared to start yet another venture jump-started by his pilfering of someone else's idea (2.10, "Heaven is a Place"). As a broken man trying to change and do the right thing for much of the season, and even occasionally succeeding at it, his disappointment becomes that much greater upon discovering that sometimes others refuse to play by the rules. And with that, he takes the journey that evolves him into the complex character the writers were desperately trying to make him in the first season. But this time there are no shortcuts. It's earned.

Again standing at the precipice of a revolution, the characters and series head where it seemed destined for all along: Silicon Valley, California. Now that most of the creative issues have been ironed out, there's good reason to believe that if that next season happens, all the cards are in place for it to be the one that achieves complete greatness. With the gang mostly back together, the series come full circle, having grown exponentially since the premiere and with a lot of creative territory still left to mine. 

It still isn't perfect, as it could be even tighter and more focused, with the minor characters sometimes feeling like mere place settings to fill plot until arriving at main course with the core four we care about. But there's just too much potential moving forward to contemplate the possibility that this season may have been its last. And given we're only in '85, there's still a ridiculous amount of time much time left to explore what happens with the these characters and how they'll adapt to the changing times.

The cast of Halt and Catch Fire

The first season works as a primer for its succeeding one, laying the groundwork for the complex plotting and characterization that eventually hook us. HACF had the best of sophomore seasons not only because of the leap in quality, but because it makes the first play better in retrospect. By intrinsically tying the world these people lived and created in to our lives today, the writers crack the code. If it were cancelled now, finally firing on all cylinders, it would be a disservice to anyone who appreciates smart, compelling television.