Halt and Catch Fire ended its four-season run on AMC this past Sunday. It was not the monumental event the end of other AMC dramas, such as Mad Men or Breaking Bad, was. The show had its devoted fans, many of them the TV critic types who espoused it frequently as "the best show you're not watching."
Those of us who watched it would not argue with that assessment. Halt and Catch Fire found itself dropped into the midst of an ever-expanding TV landscape. The era of "Peak TV" has made it increasingly hard for shows to make a real impact. Halt and Catch Fire never really rose above having a small-but-devoted fan base. However, in an era when dozens of shows inspire, at best, total apathy, that's still a fact worth celebrating.
From the beginning, the show had an interesting premise that helped it stand out from the pack. It was a view of the personal computer revolution set in 1980s Texas, the "Silicon Prairie" as it was known. Halt and Catch Fire also had a fine cast, with leads like Lee Pace, Scoot McNairy, Mackenzie Davis, Kerry Bishe, and Toby Huss. What it didn't have was a show that shot out of the gates feeling fully formed.
Even acolytes of the show and the critics who came to espouse its greatness were lukewarm at best about the first season. Pace's Joe MacMillan, the ostensible lead, came from the factory mass producing "difficult man" protagonists at the time. With his mercurial personality and mysterious past, he felt like a warmed-over Don Draper, and the show seemed more interested in that mystery than any of the viewers. Cameron Howe, the young, punk computer programmer played by Davis, needed a recalibration. She was one of those characters who is supposed to frustrate and rankle the other characters on the show but ends up annoying the viewer as well. This was not a show people would proselytize for. It was not a show to be mourned.
Then, in the second season, Halt and Catch Fire unveiled its greatest strength; it's willingness to blow everything up. Joe and Gordon's misadventures at Cardiff were over, and the new focal point was Cameron and Donna's online gaming enterprise Mutiny. Suddenly, Halt and Catch Fire wasn't about a difficult and mysterious man who ended the first season by lighting a bunch of computers on fire. It was about two scrappy, but immensely different, women trying to make it on their own in the male-dominated tech world. It was a livelier, fresher, and altogether more interesting way for the show to go. Halt and Catch Fire was not yet perfect.
The leap the show made in the third season, though, was still staggering. This is when Halt and Catch Fire became a true contender for "the best show you aren't watching." Finally, the show seemed to figure Joe and Cameron out. They were still clearly the same characters, but just the best versions of those characters. The two became much more sympathetic, more understandable. The move from the Silicon Prairie to the Silicon Valley breathed so much life into the proceedings. The third season was going really well… and then in the penultimate episode, they jumped ahead four years in time and the show jumped up a whole new level. It was truly a paradigm-shifting event. The table was set for the fourth season, which then went the extra step of jumping three more years into the future at the beginning of the season premiere.
As had been the case with every season prior, Season 4 improved upon all the previous seasons. It was truly a wonderful swan song for the show. Cameron became one of the most likeable characters on TV. Joe was entirely different than who he was in the first season. Donna stepped into a pseudo-villain role, but the people behind the show had become so adept at telling stories with these characters that she never got annoying, and when they decided to redeem her after a few episodes they earned it, and I bought in. Gordon and Donna's daughter Haley, never a character of any note before this season, became the rare TV teenager who was actually a good, fleshed-out character. Though they knew they didn’t have a huge audience, Halt and Catch Fire was firing on all cylinders.
And then Gordon died. Not in the finale, or even the penultimate episode. He died with three episodes left. One of the four main characters, and the one who had been the most consistent since the beginning, was gone. It was genuinely jarring, perhaps even shocking. It did not feel like a shock tactic, though. It was entirely justified, and deeply moving. The show took a big swing, and knocked it out of the park. They also set the table for a handful of episodes that was truly the show at its best. At its core, Halt and Catch Fire was about people working in the depersonalizing world of tech and computers striving for connection. Naturally, in the wake of Gordon's death (although Scoot McNairy popped up in every episode afterward in one way or another), the emotions ran high, and it helped bring everything to a tear-jerking conclusion.
At its core, Halt and Catch Fire was about people working in the depersonalizing world of tech and computers striving for connection. Naturally, in the wake of Gordon's death (although Scoot McNairy popped up in every episode afterward in one way or another), the emotions ran high, and it helped bring everything to a tear-jerking conclusion.
The two-part series finale was a wonderful showcase for all the main actors (save McNairy), but in the end Halt and Catch Fire revealed what they truly cared about. The show that began as another TV drama about a difficult man was ultimately most interested in the relationship between two brilliant, complex women. Cameron and Donna were the true heart of the show, and getting the chance to watch them rekindle their friendship, and seemingly their working relationship, was genuinely beautiful. The show may have ended with Joe teaching a class, and the feelings were riding high there as well (but it may have been because of the feeling of knowing that in a few brief moments Halt and Catch Fire was going to end for good). It was a moment in a parking lot, though, when Donna told Cam she had an idea, that will go down in my mind as the true moment of finality for these characters that I come to care so deeply about.
Though it got to tell, and end, its story on its own terms, the small cadre of devoted Halt and Catch Fire fans will miss the show. We grew to get invested in these characters. Much like Frasier, Halt and Catch Fire pulled off the impressive task of getting us to feel sympathy for immensely rich and successful people. They still felt relatable. The world building was so strong, the show's look so distinct. Also, you'd be hard-pressed to find a show with better taste in music. It's the little things like that which will make me miss Halt and Catch Fire. It was special, even if a lot of TV viewers never came to realize it.
As I thought about the finale more as I tried to sleep, I felt myself being so emotional about it all I began pulling it apart. The entire point of culture is to elicit emotions, and any good piece of art will always do that. Emotions are integral to the human experience. Now, the next day, I'm writing misty-eyed words of praise for a show I grew to love, and that I will miss. That is the complexity of being a person in a nutshell. It's what separates man from machine. That's what Halt and Catch Fire wanted us to realize, about all else. That's what it wants us to remember. Many people won't, just like many people won't remember this show. Some of us will, though. Some of us will.
Chris Morgan is the author of The Ash Heap of History and The Comic Galaxy of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Wisely or not, he's also on Twitter.
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