AMC - Halt and Catch Fire

I watched the pilot last night. This show is kinda fun. The people who revolutionized modern computing were very attractive and did not look at all like trolls, obviously.

Are there back issues of Byte Magazine in Google's magazine archive? I used to enjoy reading that when I was a lad.

Once I accepted that the show has to be packed with DRAMA and scene chewing since the setting involves lots of silent intent staring at machines, I am into it. Also, 'Complicated Game' and Bad Brains.

If anyone's curious this is essentially the story of the Compaq Portable, except that that was started fresh by people sick of TI. So no barging into another company and pushing everyone to the brink of destruction. Also much borrowing from The Soul of a New Machine, including the Colossal Cave Adventure references and the engineering pressure.

The three main characters I'm still in varying stages of appreciation and hatred for - I dig the Richard Dreyfussesque engineer who seems recognizably human and will most definitely have his gorgeous wife walk out on him, but Cameron and the prince of darkness I have a hard time suspending disbelief for. I'm liking where it's going but I don't want it to end up in True Blood-style telenovela insanity, if you know what I mean. (Hiring an entire team of engineers and firing them all next week?)

Part of the attraction I'm sure is that the show is a trip through memory lane for me, since I lived through the cybernetic utopia dream of the seventies and the craziness of the PC revolution of the eighties. I'm still not exactly sure when the show is set, somewhere between 1982 and 86?

Not exactly the Portable - Compaq is already mentioned as an industry player in the show, and the Portable didn't have an LCD

earlier, if i had to pinpoint it i'd guess 82. i'm enjoying it though i couldn't recommend it to anyone. kerry bishe is very very very pretty. i could imagine it becoming a good show though i don't know if it's gonna get enough time. it's an interesting story that hasn't been told, plus i'm a sucker for dramas about work, esp dramas about engineers at work, and i like period dramas. rmde at 80s draper though.

also after decades of trying to 'get' xtc this show sold me

the "look we know geek culture" signifiers are a bit much, but the overall arc is fun

What references were egregious to you? Just curious

I couldn't take it anymore somewhere in the middle of episode 4. I lived through this era too and can't help the natural bias and nick picking, but I severely disliked Lee Pace's character so much that I found myself fast-fowarding through most of the episodes. Spent a lot of time waiting for something to happen. Annoying because I could get into a 1982 corporate tech drama.

I loved Bujalski's Computer Chess - wish this could be as stylized.

What references were egregious to you? Just curious

― Brakhage, Saturday, July 5, 2014 9:26 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well it really jumped out at me with actually listing what all the different codes were in Adventure, and generally overexplaining it. But there was some earlier stuff too. Hitting us over the head with ada lovelace for one.

the management guy with the timecharts was pretty good tho.

I severely disliked Lee Pace's character so much that I found myself fast-fowarding through most of the episodes

I haven't seen the latest one, so who knows if he's gone full on American Psycho nail gun on us already, but I know what you mean. My guess is that he's a riff on the CEOs-if-successful-are-usually-sociopaths idea of today. More specifically he's modeled after people like Jobs or Ballmer - in public inspirational, in private a screaming holy terror. Even so yeah he's totally off-putting

actually listing what all the different codes were in Adventure

I hear you. I kinda accepted this since hey, at least that cheat-code stuff is somewhat relatable for the audience - what really cracks me up is when there's a comically compressed blurt of technoverbiage to overwhelm and intimidate. I know it's not a documentary and has no responsibility to explain anything, but I love how there's a conflict between needing to teach the audience about the tech work being done, and at same time reinforcing for them how impossible to understand it is

Buddy just pointed out this is Austin 81 so totally accurate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-m_xtblwI0

so there was stuff like 80s draper and his dad and even though i loved it i thought the turn w/ 'o no suitcases packed - but wait!' was maybe too cute but still i loved this episode. it wasn't 'shut the door, have a seat' but i'm now definitely hoping this show gets renewed and annoyed that it's getting ignored.

I think it's getting ignored because most people watched a couple of episodes and decided it was a pile of shit. It gets better?

This is much more interesting than it has any right to be, given the cast of two-dimensional characters (except maybe the wife).

yeah it wasn't amazing or anything but i've found myself looking forward to another season

good season so far but i bet nobody cares

is this actually markedly different/better than the first season like some critics are saying or wut? bc i would be down if it is. like I dig lee pace but he was not meant to play faux-enigmatic alpha or would-be-alpha males.

totally different so far -- pace is completely sidelined, nearly everything is rotated in terms of what characters are up to, and how they're dealing.

hmm. i will give it a try! i'm getting the impression i don't /really/ need to watch s1 to jump in - is that the case?

yeah you sort of won't know who everyone is but that's ok you'll pick up from context.

i wouldn't say it's taken some huge jump in quality that it makes any sense to watch s2 without s1.

yeah but its a different and potentially more interesting story, and either way its easy to pick up if you'd just prefer not to watch the whole first season for whatever reason.

started season 1, scene where the dude's shirt gets ripped in the parking lot fight showing his childhood scars and prompting him to immediately launch into his traumatic origins story and prepared nerd manifesto was pretty lol.

enjoying it overall though. it needs to throw in a little humour here and there, it can get pretty stuffy/self-serious.

this last episode was the closest it's been to genuinely compelling in a while

I'm a couple of episodes behind but I don't like the introduction of the coke addiction at all.

The two female leads are distractingly pretty.

when it happened i was like "well it's a period piece about the 80s, i'm amazed it took this long to have a plot about cocaine"

joe is gonna become john mcafee right?

idk if literally but when i realized what his turn meant i did smile. it would not be hard to imagine him setting up a jonestown though.

I can't believe this is in its third season

2 hour premiere tomorrow night

is this any good

I like it. It can be a bit silly though. First season was a bit too much "Mad Men in 80s silicon valley" at times but was still enjoyable especially if you like the setting/era. Second season was better.

it isn't perfect but it's very good, dan otm about s2 being better

Despite what some dude said up thread I skipped S1 completely and enjoyed S2 quite a bit.

tuesday night's episode, goddamn was it good.

That was one of the more intense things I've watched in the last while! Impressive for a show without a body count.

Seriously. Amazing that there's all this fascinating behind the scenes machinations involving Joe and Gordon and yet two women arguing about the direction of their company and their relationship makes for such intense tv.

this show is just enormously good and it's really too bad that abt a dozen people watch it

It started off pretty slow; I think a lot of people must have dropped out when things were still putting along midway through the first season. Now it is really cooking!

the first season was a bit of a drag until the last few episodes, not helped by the focus on joe's don draper-lite man-with-a-past stuff which was pretty cookie-cutter

second season was so much better - the characters really do get fleshed out nicely and the ebb and flow of the tensions between the four leads is great

i need to get around to getting up to speed with s3 asap, i totally missed it had even started up again...

i LOVE THIS SHOW!!!!

i love this show too but i did lol when they did the flash-forward in s3 and then slowly panned in on a computer screen to show the MICROSOFT OFFICE COPYRIGHT 1990 for a long time to say YES THIS IS A FLASH FORWARD IT'S 1990 NOW HEY HEY PAY ATTENTION

it's nice to watch a tv show about people who are all somewhat intelligent and competent and at least trying to be good people

yeah this show is a delight, and I like that there's no villain, really. (except maybe Shaggy from Scooby Doo but that's kinda silly).

Show has been wildly inconsistent with Joe McMillan, though. I get that they cut him down a peg but he goes from arrogant and scheming to permanently walking with his head hanging down, continuing to sulk years after the fact. That kind of massive personality shift just doesn't happen in real life. Every other character is fundamentally the same, even as situations change their goals and values, but they seem to rewrite the lead guy from scratch every season/half season.

god i love toby huss

he doesn't seem to do much dramatic work but he's so good and affecting in this

bump

watched 1.5 seasons so far and i am here to say that toby huss is the greatest

s2 def better with less focus on Admiral Eyebrows, character driven story def serves them better

Gordo is nuts, Donna is great but nuts, Cameron is nuts

MY PEOPLE

And I suppose it's still necessary to watch season 1 to know what's going on, as these things go?

imo yes, though I dimly recall someone upthread saying they started on S2. For me the trick with S1 was to just enjoy the time period/setting details (in which case it helps to have an interest in computing history) plus Toby Huss

Yeah. I think you can still enjoy the first season. Especially if you know that the Joe as Don Draper in Texas thing it seems to be setting up will be complimented by the more fleshed our female characters (and he gets more depth eventually too)

season one isn't bad, it's just kind of unoriginal - it's very "mad men" but set in the early days of home computing. it's still watchable.
xpost!

just started s2 after methodically working through s1, and the jump in quality is pretty evident by the first episode. first season felt like it was punching above its weight, with some leaden, obvious symbolism and a "subtext is for cowards" style of dialogue.

i did enjoy the comdex episodes, though, and i welcome any and all toby huss into my life.

joe was obviously modeled on draper, but the s1 version of joe also reminds me a bit of tyrell wellick (though i think mr robot started a year or two later).

There are so many iterations of Joe that Mad Men only hinted at with Don Draper. If Lee Pace weren't so good at it, they could've recast the role every season and it would've worked.

the shows are similar in that they both eventually abandoned forward-moving plot and instead are just the characters living their lives

pace did a pretty good job of grounding joe and his near-inexplicable actions in s1. again, e1 of s2 is already feeling like a sizable step up. i'll occasionally check in as i move along.

I loved season one! Admittedly not as much as I loved the other seasons, but I loved it while I was watching it. I think people are very down on it, but it's got a lot of fun early-days-of-computing frolics in it. Also, you know, Lee Pace.

I will say this about the s1/s2 switchover: it's one of the few shows I've seen where they figured out what actually worked, including the chemistry between certain characters, and figured out how to make a much deeper show without jettisoning the premise

all the John/Cameron stuff was great and I think Toby Huss brought way more than they were expecting

i love toby huss in this show. i don't know why he isn't in everything.

criminally underutilized in that recent Halloween, although they hinted

he's done much different accents in this and other shows like King of the Hill, but there's something that I recognize about him being from my part of the midwest

I also really enjoyed S1 for the same reasons as trishyb but Joe's actions are hard to believe. They strike a much better balance with him in later seasons

If you see him as an outsized sketch of what he’s trying to be, season one works better

Only made it through S4E8 tonight, will finish up tomorrow. I'd been expecting a "get the band back together" turn, because all ensemble shows do it, but I wasn't expecting the catalyst.

I can't be the only one who noticed the weird circular light thing that was happening throughout most of the season, whether it was the sun coming through a window or someone holding a flashlight, always from a head-on angle. Gonna have to read up on that.

Good ending.

Ok yeah, S1 E1 was a big no go. We're gonna jump to S2 and see how that goes.

S1 has its virtues, but you can probs get by with reading a synopsis somewhere. I worry you'll not benefit from a deeper understanding of the characters, though.

Definitely don’t skip the first season IMO. It’s worth it! Maybe the first four or five episodes are stinkers but the second half of the season is fun, the comdex episode is the first really good one, and it sets up the character dynamics for the later seasons.

but there’s a scene early in s1 where joe’s on a rooftop in the rain and tears his shirt off and starts screaming, and I was definitely like, oy, this show can *never* be good

Maybe zoom forward to the comdex one if you have to

I don't think that would fly with my wife, she was left cold by the set up and the convoluted reverse-engineering/copyright loophole thing (even if based on real events). And the initial market/tech landscape of IBM, hardware vs software, etc was not explained very clearly. It didn't bother me, but I can see how it would come off as "computers computers computers".

Comdex one is second to last in S1?

If her problem with the show is "computers computers computers," this may have to be a show you watch solo.

Ha fair enough, tbh I was hoping it didn't matter in the same way Mad Men wasn't made for people who care about the advertising industry.

i don't remember most of the show being computers computers computers. i think that's mostly s1.

the show becomes much more of a character drama as it goes on

Excellent

Yeah, the industry is still what it revolves around, but it gets more backgrounded over time. The details I had the most trouble following involved all the various buyouts, mergers and general vc stuff.

Yeah, to my mind it's mostly a show both about a specific set of characters and more broadly about the conflicts between creativity and commerce.

I think it may have come off as heavy-handed, but the way things circle back with Cameron and Donna at the end to make explicit how women in this male-heavy industry sometimes frustrate and sabotage each other

S1 got better as it went on but I’m about halfway through S2 and realizing it’s just a soap opera with some lipstick on. The various relationship temptations and transgressions and moral and ethical failings seem really familiar. Not sure what I expect from a tv show, probably too much.

Halfway through Season 3 and enjoying it very much, apart from Joe's 'selling' monologues (that got old very quickly) but the music is impossibly manicured and nerdy, it's kinda annoying, like some 40-year-old music supervisor's wet dream.

By all accounts at least 20 mins of each episode should be devoted to Cameron in her local record store shooting the shit with the employees about Big Drill Car seven inches.

the music supervision worked on me. I geeked out so hard at "pink turns to blue"

I was down from the beginning when they played Really Red. A few seasons later having Joe go to the Stark club to dance to Bronski Beat and Viscious Pink, a+ music supervision.

I also loved the soundtrack choices. In fact, discovered a few great songs through watching

Just finished watching this today. Some thoughts:

- This has maybe my favorite opening-credits sequence/music of any show. It just gets me so EXCITED and it's also really funny that the whole thing is a dramatic rendering of an LED switching on. It seems to fit the show's tone less as time goes on, though, especially in S4, where the characters are so much more grounded.

- Which reminds me: it really is kind of incredible what a *different* show it is by S4 compared to where it started. At points the last season maybe a bit too soap-y, but the characters are all so great I didn't mind it so much.

- I like the music choices too, but I agree they do get a bit "wanna hear some of my records?" And some of them are just way too on-the-nose, especially ending the finale with Solisbury Hill, which actually kinda worked, but still.

- This show could easily have sucked without such good performances. I can't pick a favorite character or actor, but the way Scoot McNairy portrays Gordon's arc from catatonia to mania to fear to eventual equanimity was really personally affecting.

- Watching this brought up a lot of my own anxieties about life and whether I am spending it wisely. I have this strong desire to *create something* the way the characters in this show do, but I still haven't really figured out what that means yet. And it can really gnaw on me sometimes. But I'm feeling motivated to pick back up some projects that I'd put aside for a while.

Yeah the opening sequence is great. It bugged me for a while because it sounded like a ripoff of a specific Trentemøller song until I found out the theme song was actually... Trentemøller

It bears a strong resemblance to "Still on Fire," but I figure artists are quite welcome to steal from themselves

Since it’s the last day of the year I finally want to settle something.

Joe MacMillan was killed in an isolated Y2K incident that caused an elevator he was in to fall 48 stories.

He was the only casualty of the 2000 computer bug and became famous worldwide.

Happy New Year.

— Christopher Cantwell (@ifyoucantwell) December 31, 2020

typical!

Guess I can blame JK Rowling for this, right?

just finished watching the whole series. fantastic show, very sad to see it end. A+ acting, hope all the leads get new roles as worthy as the characters they played here.

lee pace didn't just play joe mcmillan, he IS joe mcmillan

VAXXED pic.twitter.com/gdtSb0TncT

— Lee Pace (@leepace) May 16, 2021

IDK, I can't really picture Joe rocking camo

just re-watched the whole thing ... awesome the second time through. knowing the key plot points deepens the experience. rip gordon.

The first episode is hilarious and bad - the computer nerd who isn't just uncool but is a loser and deadbeat dad, the stupendously hot and cool and rebellious and talented female coder, and the glengarry salesmen - who gets to fuck the coder. But we stuck with it and yeah it gets better. Midway through S2 now, still good but seems to be trying a bit too hard to generate suspense - the legendary engineer just happens to write a devastating virus by accident? The games company that goes two years without even coming up with a single idea for a new game? And I don't quite get the timeshare idea, the mainframe is only available out of office hours so how can they use it during the day?

The scene in the first season where Lee Pace stands on the office roof, rips his shirt off, and screams into the rain, is really one of the worst things ever filmed (topless Lee Pace aside). It’s amazing how good it got later on.

when i re-watched with the family we started at S1E7 (at the LV convention) since the first eps were pretty ropy. really is amazing how good the show became.