AMC’s “Halt and Catch Fire” is well written,
has some good performances from a few solid cast members, and is based on an
intriguing premise borrowing from real events. There were times while watching
the first season that I desperately wanted to like it, but found myself
irritated by many of the choices made. Other times I was so annoyed with it
that I wanted to hate it (and was successful during some of the season’s more
obnoxiously manipulative moments), but somehow found myself obsessively
binge-watching anyway. I will continue watching despite the constant
contrivances and distasteful characters, mostly because 10 episodes aren’t
enough to make a definitive decision about the tech-heavy melodrama.
There are two essential elements to the
series: the fact that it is loosely based on real events, and the complete
fabrication of the characters involved in these real events. Not unlike
Showtime’s “Masters of Sex,” the truth behind the events is often dismissed in
favor of petty melodrama and outrageous character development. Though the
initial premise of the show is based on advances in PC technology that arose
from a trio of men stealing the inner workings of a patented IBM computer, the
facts and characters have mostly been fabricated. Every so often throughout the
season we are given nuggets of truth, clever little references that tech fans
will appreciate, but the focus mostly remains on the creation of fictional
relationships within this process.
The series takes place in 1983, located in Texas despite IBM’s New York
headquarters and the rise of computer programming in California ’s
Silicon Valley . Former IBM employee Joe
McMillan (Lee Pace) arrives to work at the fabricated Texas
Changing one of
the three men into a woman may have seemed like a clever way to inject social
agenda into the show, but the character of Cameron Howe is often a double-edged
sword for feminism. Although she is punk rock and defiantly independent,
Cameron simultaneously feels more like a computer programmer’s fantasy. The
entire character ends up feeling contradictory and endlessly irritating. While
she has short hair and dresses like a punk, seemingly because she does not care
about her appearance, Cameron also never appears without heavy make-up to
highlight the fact that an attractive actress was hired for the role. Despite
seen to have all of her possessions in a single duffle bag, Cameron has endless
outfits to show off the fact that she never wears a bra. Davis
If Cameron’s
character is a failed attempt at infusing feminism into the show, there is
almost a successful counterpart in the role of Donna Clark (Kerry Bishé), the
wife of Gordon the engineer. For the first half of the season, Donna proves
that a female character can be intelligent without being condescending or
arrogant. She proves that a woman can be both an excellent mother and an
indispensable asset to the workforce, both a supporting wife and an admirable moral
guide. This helps offset the self-destructive over-sexualized characterization
of Cameron for the first half of the season, before the show’s writers
mistakenly enter Donna into a derivative adultery sub-plot and allow her to
suddenly transform into a weak and passive character. In the final episode she
is seen drunk, stoned, and thrown from car like a ragdoll in three separate
sequences, completely tearing down the character development from the first
half of the season. Even the children seem to go missing from the storyline in
the last few episodes.
This is the
problem with “Halt and Catch Fire;” no matter how interesting the true aspects
of the story are or how well the actors are able to commit to the roles, it
feels as though the characters are written by different writers from one
episode to the next. Either that or all of the characters are bipolar. Even
when I found myself fascinated by the period setting, engaged by clever
writing, or drawn into the contrived melodrama, the huge personality flaws of
all four main characters made “Halt and Catch Fire” nearly impossible to like.
And I also could not help but feel that the title theme music was ridiculously derivative of the title
music for British computer nerd sitcom, “The IT Crowd.” I hope this was an
intentional homage, because otherwise it borders on
plagiarism. Don’t believe me? Check out both intros below and decide for
yourself.
The Blu-ray
release of season one includes all ten episodes on three discs, along with a
Digital HD copy. There are also four featurettes, very briefly covering some of
the show’s elements. There is a making-of featurette for the first ten
episodes, one covering the 1980s setting and elements in filmmaking needed to
recreate it, and featurettes that go into a bit more detail about the true
facts and technology behind the show’s story.
Entertainment Value:
8/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 7/10
Historical
Significance: 6/10
Special Features: 5.5/10
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