"Halt and Catch Fire," Year Four

Minor spoilers ahead.

I understand why "Halt and Catch Fire" is held in such high regard by some viewers, but I came away from it a little shell shocked, and I'm still processing the last stretch of episodes.  I want to make it clear up front that I enjoyed the whole series and I admire that the show's creators were willing to take their characters to some pretty difficult emotional places.  Nobody gets what I would consider a happy ending, but at least they reach an understanding about who they are, and who they are to each other.  

It's now the early '90s, and Gordon and Joe are working on internet indexing/search, with Cameron often flaking on them as she finishes on her newest video game.  The Clark girls are now teenagers, rebellious Joanie (Kathryn Newton) and nerdy, brilliant Haley (Susanna Skaggs).  Meanwhile, Donna is leading a team that is putting together Rover, a competitor to Gordon and Joe's outfit, which will eventually be named Comet.  There are a couple of new faces in the mix, including Anna Chlumsky as a new Comet employee, and Molly Ephraim as Alexa, a financier who is very interested in working with Cameron.  

After a big time jump in season three, the only relationships among the four main characters that are doing pretty well are Joe and Gordon's working partnership, and the tentative rekindling of the Joe and Cameron pairing.  "Halt and Catch Fire" continues to have its tech innovation battles stand in for the animosity between the characters, and this time it's personal with Donna on an opposing team.  The show is much better now that it's putting more focus on the characters' growth and change, and boy have there been some changes.  I think Donna in her relative isolation has the most ground to cover this year.  She's now a much more Joe-like figure on the finance side, struggling to balance priorities and decide what she really wants.  Cameron also makes some important breakthroughs and finally acknowledges some of her faults.  I spent most of the season rooting for her and Joe, and knowing from pretty early on where that storyline was going.

I didn't really connect to Joanie and Haley as characters, but the actresses are great, and they signal a new generation on the rise.  Parenting is one of the big themes of the season, and suddenly Gordon and Donna's relationships with their daughters are put front and center.  Gordon and Haley get the bulk of the screen time, with a little interference from Joe, but Donna and Joanie certainly have their moments.  The Clark family functions so differently from how they did in the first season, with Gordon and Donna practically switching roles.  The girls' issues reflect how they've been in the thick of the drama the whole time, so a lot of their storylines feel like Gordon and Donna's chickens coming home to roost.  Boz, of course, is still the best Dad in the show by a considerable margin. 

The shift into the '90s and the internet era  is a lot of fun, bringing a different set of cultural references that I was more familiar with.  (Haley's a comedy fan, so "The Kids in the Hall" gets a shoutout).  The passage of time is a major part of the story, with season four taking place a full decade after season one, and a lot of history repeating itself.  Even Boz ends up in trouble again, though this time around it's in a completely different context.  And finding everyone running the same races and fighting the same fights is a big reason why the final round of resolutions play out as well as they do.  I reacted badly to the ending initially, but the more I think about it, the more I like it.  I'm still getting my head around what kind of story "Halt and Catch Fire" really is, and that it's way more thoughtful and perceptive than it appears to be at first glance.

I probably shouldn't have binged so much of the show, but I enjoyed the ride immensely.  I'll get into more discussion of spoilers in my Top Ten episodes list for "Halt and Catch Fire," coming up soon.

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