Image courtesy of Prime Video
This piece contains spoilers for Halt and Catch Fire.
Halt and Catch Fire is one of my favorite TV shows of all time. During quarantine, I binged all four seasons in a week and was immediately struck by its themes of human connection — the desire for it, the difficulty that inevitably comes with it, and ultimately the necessity of it. Above all, it’s a show obsessed with change.
It’s also a show you’ve probably never heard of.
When it debuted in 2014, it drew just over 1 million viewers, making it the least-watched premiere in AMC’s modern history. Throughout its running, ratings steadily declined. Despite its lack of popularity, Halt and Catch Fire got better with every season.
Over the next three years across 40 episodes, viewers that stuck around witnessed a show brave enough to dispose of its original design and become something even greater. And that’s what intrigues me most about this show. Not its writing nor its performances (both of which are fantastic), but its evolution. What was conceived as an antihero-centric drama about surviving in the cutthroat tech industry transformed into a deeply empathetic ensemble study about finding connection in the process of creation.
Image courtesy of AMC
AMC broke into the landscape of prestige television with Mad Men and Breaking Bad, both wildly successful shows that defined an era of peak TV. This overtrodden antihero formula bled into Season 1 of Halt and Catch Fire, which tried to capture the same success as other morally-gray dramas.
Its main character, Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace), is a charismatic salesman with a mysterious past and self-destructive tendencies. In an effort to build a computer that outpaces and outprices the competition, he recruits Gordon (Scoot McNairy), a pitiful computer engineer, and Cameron (Mackenzie Davis), a rebellious coding prodigy. Donna (Kerry Bishé), Gordon’s wife, is relegated to the sideline for the majority of the first season despite a desire to utilize her own engineering talents.
Much of Season 1 treads down familiar beats and not much reason is provided for the audience to become emotionally invested. Too much of the narrative hangs on Joe, a mediocre, overconfident man who exploits those around him for personal gain. His arrogance and proclivity to go off the books is supposed to feel admirable and seductively dangerous, but ultimately comes off as manipulative and one-dimensional. The characters around Joe are far more interesting; however, so much time is dedicated to him that they remain archetypal renderings, waiting to be filled in.
Nevertheless, there are some great moments in the first season — sparks of what’s to come in later seasons. The tech revolution of the 80s makes for an engaging and nostalgic setting, transporting viewers back to a time of floppy disk drives and dial-up modems. We also see Donna and Cameron’s first interactions, as well as the fascinating dynamic of Joe and Gordon’s working relationship.
Image courtesy of AMC
The best thing the show’s writers ever did was realize that Joe wasn’t the most interesting character. Subsequent seasons trace the dissolution of his complex, as he finds himself confronting the limits of his charisma and the consequences of his actions. It’s the death of the antihero, and in its place rises a show imbued with newfound life, as the burgeoning business partnership between its two main female characters becomes the central narrative.
Season 2’s opening sequence establishes this wonderfully energetic change of pace with a three-minute scene shot entirely in one take. The handheld camera swings and pans around a suburban home crammed with coders, construction tools and cables strewn across the ground. It’s a cinematographic manifestation of the crackling energy, messiness and all, between people taking a risk to create something new. Here, we meet Mutiny, Donna and Cameron’s video game subscription service that takes center stage in Season 2 and 3.
As the two navigate the passions and pitfalls of running a startup, the melodramatic tension of the first season is replaced with a palpable lightness and ambition. There are still plenty of great dramatic revelations and story beats, but none of it feels forced or in service of a half-baked antihero arc. The stakes feel genuine and emotionally potent.
The partnership between Donna and Cameron is largely the impetus for this. I can’t think of a better portrayal of female friendship on television that I’ve seen than the one in this show. Rather than be defined by their relations to Joe and Gordon or by tropes like the working mother, they’re given agency and allowed to be flawed and ambitious and all the other things media has constantly told women not to be.
Cameron, who grew up learning how to survive on her own, opens up to collaborate and trust others — but there’s a constant fear of losing the company to which she’s dedicated her whole life. Donna, who has experienced the heartbreak of a failed product once before, comes into her own as a leader — but, by trying to always make the most logical decisions for the company, loses the partnership she needed most.
The progression of their friendship — the ways in which they support, hurt, and eventually forgive each other — is treated with such nuance, and it’s a genuinely moving relationship to watch unfold.
Their bond is just one of the many complex dynamics this show explores. As the show matures, so do its characters. Joe learns to understand the importance of those around him — that people are not only the means to an end, but the end itself. Gordon, so eager in earlier seasons to prove himself and be remembered for something, finds confidence and peace in the present, and leaves a legacy that will long reverberate in characters and viewers alike. As much as these characters grow and evolve, what remains at their core is what brought them together in the first place: a shared ambition to build something that makes a difference in the world.
Image courtesy of AMC
In computer science, recursion is a method of problem-solving in which a function repeatedly calls upon itself to solve increasingly complex solutions.
In the show’s finale, Cameron describes her inner software as run by recursion. It’s an apt realization for someone who has spent much of her professional life building her ideas into reality, only to find herself back in the same place still searching for an answer. It’s also a way to read the show as a whole.
Halt and Catch Fire is a show dedicated to its own reinvention. Across four seasons spanning 10 years, there are two time lapses, a change in location and the rise and fall of numerous companies. It’s a testament to the writers that this constant reinvention never feels choppy or stale.
Nevertheless, despite all these variables, the characters always find their way back to one another. The deep connection they all share is a sort of gravitational force, pulling them back into orbit across time and space. By the finale, it’s heartbreaking to have to see them go.
In its beginning, Halt and Catch Fire was ostensibly about characters trying to pioneer the next big tech breakthrough. As exciting as it is to watch people work toward the technological future we live in today, the show is wired in such a way that the narrative is defined by process, not by results. Rarely do characters ever succeed in their original goal. Yet, in the work and in the moments they have with one another, something greater is forged.
Products come and go; the technological industry, which is built on constant advancement, makes sure of it. This show isn’t interested in the disposability of things, but rather what endures. And the desire for human connection is one of those things that never really goes away.
It seems fitting that the last line of the series features, not a goodbye, but an offer. Even in its final moments, the show looks toward the future. Life isn’t episodic; it’s cyclical, and the show is adamant that saying goodbye doesn’t signal an end. Instead, with every goodbye comes a chance to start anew. It’s life in recursion: We watch these characters innovate and fail over and over again. But each time, they learn from their past mistakes. The hope is that, someday, it’ll be enough. Even if it isn’t, all it takes is one idea to reboot and start again.
Halt and Catch Fire is currently streaming on Netflix.