I recently watched all of Halt and Catch Fire, and i have to say it is a really special show. The first season is fun, but it really comes into its own in the following seasons, exploring long relationships, friendship, growth, and love in ways that really surprised me. Highly recommend.
I recently finished it too! I was pretty over it by the final season, but then the last few episodes brought me back around.
Cameron "it's all in the eyes" Howe annoyed the shit out of me at pretty much all points, which I understand is how they wrote the character but it walked a line of almost making me quit the show. As with the show as a whole, though, she brought me around a bit in the last few eps.
Silicon Cowboys[1] came out roughly the same time, and it always struck me how similar the first season of HCF was to the actual documentary of Compaq's rise
I was largely disappointed. The subject matter was special but the execution was over the top. Every time I was starting to get drawn in, there would be another affair, car crash, exploding lorry or something else just as forced. I can’t even remember the number of times it felt like they’d “jumped the shark” in even just the first season alone.
There really wasn’t any need for half the dumb shit they did in that show. It didn’t add to the drama, it just made the whole thing feel completely fake. Which is impressive considering they’re writing largely about real world computing history.
And don’t get me started on the characters themselves. I think I liked maybe half the cast. The others made me cringe every time they were on screen.
It’s such a pity because they could have just as successful show if they refined it a little.
This complaint largely lands on the same points as the ones against Mr. Robot, and it has some merit, but the shows are made for cable TV audiences, so they're a bit more niche than broadcast shows, but they're mass market vehicles. They're nearly pushing a rope to make this content entertaining at all. If people cared, they'd already know the history and the social implications of the technology, as well as the personalities involved. These kinds of shows are meant to bring more folks into the industry and help folks see the humanity in each other and in themselves if they're in it. Most folks don't watch tv for anything but storylines and personalities, so historical or current relevance in entertainment is something I'll take where and when I can get it.
What are some tech shows that you like, or dramas, for context?
I’m not suggesting the show should be factually accurate. I’m saying it doesn’t need pyrotechnics to be engaging.
Mr Robot was a different beast because that was literally about criminal and hacker culture. So you’d expect a little action in that regard.
To put it another way: you have shows that have strong enough writers where they don’t need gimmicks to keep your attention. And you have shows that are intentionally about the gimmicks. Then you have shows that aren’t about the gimmicks but the writers don’t have enough confidence in their work to avoid putting them in anyway.
Shows like The West Wing, House of Cards etc aren’t about gimmicks and don’t need them.
Shows like Stargate are about the gimmicks. And that’s ok too because you know it’s meant to be silly drama.
But shows like HCF feel like they should be executed like HoCs, yet they’re written like Mr Robot, Stargate, etc. So it’s very jarring to watch every time another gimmick gets thrown in. Maybe I expected too much from that show? But it just felt like they didn’t have any confidence in people’s attention spans.
What pyrotechnics are you referring to? In HCF? My complaint about this show is sort of the opposite --- that it's basically Six Feet Under, but replace the funeral home with a series of tech startups.
(I think it's a solid B-tier prestige series; I don't hate it).
Joe setting the truck full of computers on fire is the only thing that comes to mind. That was somewhat over the top and they did settle the character down somewhat in later seasons (though not completely).
I mean “pyrotechnics” in the metaphorical sense. A big flash of drama from nowhere and then nothing afterwards. But that was a poor choice of words on my part. (It was late and I was tired, sorry).
I’ve discussed my thinking in the other responses so won’t go in-depth here. But to summarise:
The general story had real potential but was marred (in my opinion at least) with cliffhangers that felt jarring and unnecessary to the underlying story.
Yeah, there was at least the one lady he pushed onto the tracks right as the subway came in that I remember distinctly. Ice cold.
I think their point was that in HCF, the off the wall dramatic swings felt more like jumping the shark. In HoC, it felt totally in character for Spacey to do that. It was just better written and acted, despite the intensity of the violence being much higher, because it made sense in the context of the story, and it didn’t in HCF, at least not to me.
That’s one gimmick and it was weaved throughout the show. It was also used to further the story telling.
HCF created drama in places it wasn’t earned. And did so just so that episodes could have cliffhangers.
Think of it like a shower scene in a movie. More often than not, it has literally no relevance to the movie. It doesn’t further the plot. It’s not even part of the story. It’s just there so that it can be used as a clip in the movie trailer.
Well HCF was full of stuff that, admittedly wasn’t there for trailers (or at least I don’t think they were), but they also added nothing to the story. They were just there to artificially add some drama. But that drama wasn’t earned.
For example, the suicide was very poorly handled. It was used as vehicle for discussing open source vs proprietary code. But you could have easily done that without the death. Instead you ended up with interesting plot themes being overshadowed by this one lazy plot device.
The show was absolutely full of stuff like that. Things that were completely out of the blue and if it made it to the cutting room flow then the show would have flowed just the same without it.
I think you have the show backwards. It's trying to tell stories about people using the technology industry as a framing device; it isn't trying to tell stories about technology.
You’ve got my point backwards. I’m not talking about the technology. I’m talking about how those stories keep getting overshadowed by nonsensical episodic cliffhangers.
It’s dramatic. But it doesn’t mean it’s a particularly good drama.
If they’d replaced the backdrop with any other normal drama setting and almost nobody on here would watch it because they’d think the show was stupid.
Stuff like setting fire to a truck, and then never talking about it again afterwards, has absolutely nothing to do with tech nor stories about people. It’s just a dumb gimmick thrown in because the network doesn’t believe their audience has enough of an attention span to watch the show otherwise.
Like I said downthread, I think this is a B-tier show (better than Suits or The Good Fight, worse than Better Call Saul) --- but I don't think that has anything to do with whether "open source" is overshadowed by suicide. The show isn't "for" you.
The only reason technology is featured in it is that it's a way to show a period of rapid change happening underneath the characters. More than anything else it's a period show.
> don't think that has anything to do with whether "open source" is overshadowed by suicide. The show isn't "for" you.
You’re misunderstanding my point about the suicide. I said that the suicide was unearned and didn’t tackle the real discussion about mental health. And thus it was a distraction from the plot thread.
I’d have actually preferred it if the plot focused more on mental health if they were going to have a supporting character kill themselves. Then the death would have been earned.
> The only reason technology is featured in it is that it's a way to show a period of rapid change happening underneath the characters. More than anything else it's a period show.
You keep lecturing me on this point despite everything I’ve posted clearly being about how the drama (ie not technology) was written.
Are you sure you’re not the one hung up on the tech aspect given you assume that’s what everyone else is? Because everyone in this thread already gets it isn’t a documentary ;)
For example, the suicide was very poorly handled. It was used as vehicle for discussing open source vs proprietary code. But you could have easily done that without the death [...]
It's totally fine if we're not making any productive progress in this part of the thread. It's art, it's all subjective, we can just disagree. I think the interpersonal dramas in HACF are as earned as they are in any series; certainly, I'd put every season of HACF several notches above Six Feet Under Season 4 and its Scooby-Doo finale.
At the same time, I don't think there's any kind of important broader theme or message or ideas in HACF; the A-tier of prestige dramas have that --- The Wire, Mad Men, Better Call Saul. Mad Men and The Americans are I think the best comparands; both period shows with high-concept settings, both bigger idea/theme shows than HACF.
I’m saying that the death was poorly handled. I’m not commenting on whether there should have been more or less emphasis on tech. I’m saying the death was a lazy plot device that added nothing to the story.
Edit:
> At the same time, I don't think there's any kind of important broader theme or message or ideas in HACF; the A-tier of prestige dramas have that --- The Wire, Mad Men, Better Call Saul. Mad Men and The Americans are I think the best comparands; both period shows with high-concept settings, both bigger idea/theme shows than HACF.
I think you’re on to something there.
HCF felt shallow and that was likely for the reason you’ve described.
> Think of it like a shower scene in a movie. More often than not, it has literally no relevance to the movie. It doesn’t further the plot. It’s not even part of the story. It’s just there so that it can be used as a clip in the movie trailer.
Depends on the movie. Once I studied films and film theory (just in undergrad, not trying to claim any special authority on the subject), I appreciated more how these interstitial scenes are meaningful. It's all part of mise-en-scène. It lets the scenes feel alive and lived in, and not just a 2D image flying by at 24ish FPS.
> Mise-en-scène has been called film criticism's "grand undefined term". Ed Sikov has attempted to define it as "the totality of expressive content within the image". It has been criticized for its focus on the dramatic design aspects rather than the plot itself, as those who utilize mise-en-scène tend to look at what is "put before the camera" rather than the story. The use of mise-en-scène is significant as it allows the director to convey messages to the viewer through what is placed in the scene, not just the scripted lines spoken and acted in the scene. Mise-en-scène allows the director to not only convey their message but also implement their aesthetic; as such, each director has their own unique mise-en-scène. Mise-en-scène refers to everything in front of the camera, including the set design, lighting, and actors, and the ultimate way that this influences how the scene comes together for the audience.
If you've seen many horror movies, you know to expect a jump scare, but because the actual original scare in a shower scene[0] is so played-out by now, audiences expect it, so it has to be subverted.
Just was going over the thread again to see if there were any new posts, and I glanced over your comment again and wanted to reply to this point, because I agree with you and I think I didn't acknowledge this, and it really brings your point upthread home and validates it.
> For example, the suicide was very poorly handled.
I completely forgot about that part. Good call-out. Mental health issues and self-harm, especially imagery of it, are not plot devices to be used carelessly. Representation matters, and yet it's so hard to do well because those being represented need understanding also, not just seeing triggering stuff on TV and movies. That definitely didn't feel earned, and it didn't land well. I don't know how else it was supposed to feel though, considering the seriousness of the issue. It's a hard topic to put to film. Thanks for mentioning it.
> To put it another way: you have shows that have strong enough writers where they don’t need gimmicks to keep your attention. And you have shows that are intentionally about the gimmicks. Then you have shows that aren’t about the gimmicks but the writers don’t have enough confidence in their work to avoid putting them in anyway.
Can you elaborate a bit about the gimmick(s) in Halt and Catch Fire? I think it's a drama, so there are human concerns and interactions, but that's like, what tv shows are? I don't know what you mean specifically.
> Shows like The West Wing, House of Cards etc aren’t about gimmicks and don’t need them.
The West Wing is statist propaganda for liberals. House of Cards is statist propaganda for neocons.
> Shows like Mr Robot are about the gimmicks. And that’s ok too because you know it’s meant to be silly drama.
I actually really appreciate that every hack shown on Mr. Robot had a real world POC and used actually existing tools and techniques. The storyline is hokum and gives hackers a bad name, but black hats are kinda supposed to have a bad name. Elliot is kinda gray hat, but he definitely violated CFAA multiple times and would probably be dead or in jail irl.
By “gimmicks” (poor choice of word on my part but it was late and I was tired) I mean unnecessary drama that isn’t there to further the plot. It’s just there to offer episodic cliffhangers.
So much of the “drama” in that show was completely redundant and over the top too.
Things like setting the truck alight for no reason other than “I’m so emo”. Affairs that are talked about for one episode then forgotten about. Suicides that didn’t touch on mental illness and instead focused on an open source (you could have done that without the death) and thus that death felt completely redundant, mishandled, and there just for another cliffhanger.
I get the need to make things exciting. But the drama didn’t feel earned. It felt shoehorned because some executive was worried people might get bored about a show which uses the computer industry as a backdrop.
I think I would agree with you that it’s a dramatic show, and since these are characters, they tried to smash too much together into a supergroup of larger than life achievers with egos to match. I think you’re right that they did try to juice the drama a bit more than was believable in a few cases, but it was meant to show the full gamut of the tech industry and associated scenes, and it kind of felt strained or forced at times. I wouldn’t really call it a gimmick either, but perhaps that is the best word for their reach exceeding their grasp.
It’s a kind of myth making, I suppose. Folks want to feel like their own lives are meaningful and exciting, and so they seek out content that is familiar and validates their life choices. Lots of folks in the tech industry are passionate. Others want to want things, but their get up and go got up and went. Halt and Catch Fire is a kind of wish fulfillment for tech folks, but there aren’t unqualified happy endings in the show, so the successes of the characters do feel largely earned by them, even if the dramatic hurdles do seem somewhat overblown or unrealistic. I’ve known enough folks in the industry to see all kinds, from very stable geniuses to shameless sycophants. Most are just regular people, but they rarely make for good television, so regular folks are the side characters or spouses. The viewers are here for drama, not realism.
I'm glad to see I'm not alone here! Was really excited about it, and tried pretty hard to make it through the first season but couldn't make it.
It just had too much of that early 2000's cable TV style drama. Which I understand is required since it was on network tv. I honestly think if it was made again today as a netflix/prime series it would be a lot better.
It looked a bit like Compaq then it pivoted to, I expected, to look more like Apple with the Comdex angle. But it didn't. I did like the show. But it skirted the reality of the era with a lot of other stuff.
Just to +1 this and then add some more color, the show doesn’t try to be a Pirates of Silicon Valley where they cover a single specific company/set of events but instead they compress the entirety of the 80s and 90s key events into their couple of seasons. It’s fun so long as you don’t mind.
Ah right I did know that much about then following seasons. I thought the previous poster meant different in that the characters etc and over the top-ness was different but from my understanding of reading the synopsis it’s still basically the same characters and storytelling style so I think I’ll probably have the same problem with it heh. But I do love historical stuff like this even when fictionalised so maybe I should power through it.
I believe some TV executive thought "Mad Men for the tech industry" would be a good cash cow. It even had its own Don Draper character, if a very poorly executed one.
IMHO it felt like the show was (understandably) targeting a demograph more interested in the drama / relationships of the characters. Since my expectations were different, I could never get into HCF.
As far as tech driven shows are concerned, Silicon Valley and IT Crowd are personal favorites but they're really more comedies.
I wouldn’t have minded if it were about relationships with tech as a backdrop but I don’t think the writers did a good job fleshing out those relationships either. Most of the time it felt very one dimensional. Largely because the characters were one dimensional. Ironically, the supporting cast felt more “human” than the leads.
Agreed with your point about SV and IT Crowd. There does seem to be a real lack of drama using tech as the backdrop which isn’t either a comedy nor non-fiction.
> “Computers aren’t the thing; they’re the thing that gets us to the thing.”
I used to be overly pedantic about the kinds of things programmers often obsess over—like micro-benchmarks, the whole “I use Arch, by the way” attitude, and other obnoxious quirks. But this quote stuck with me and helped me move past that shallow, one-upmanship view of computers. Great show to ones who haven't watched yet.
It's a great line. I think our current tech industry has forgotten this. You can't make a product for everyone but you can make an environment for everyone. Something that can be adapted for (almost) anyone.
Take the phone industry. They're happily gouging developers, taking large sums of app sales. But at the same time, a smart phone isn't a smart phone without apps. Everyone has different ones installed and ones they highly depend on that aren't from Apple/Google. It's the program that makes the tool.
But this kind of thing is happening more and more and can only happen because consolidation. It maximizes profits for today but at the cost of higher future profits and better products. It's funny how there was a strong counter culture early on but it feels like that was lost.
Thinking about HCF, they did a better than average job of showing Women in Tech. I worked at IBM and DEC in the 80s and maybe as many as one third of Programmer / Analyst positions were held by women. IIRC, 1985 was the peak at IBM and it started falling after that. But my memory was female software engineers did not seem as much an endangered species as they do now.
All of the characters had flaws, but I appreciated the representation. Though I suspect the flaws were added for dramatic effect. Perfect people doing perfect things doesn't make for drama.
Everyone in here is critiquing the intricacies of plot and forced drama, and here I was just annoyed by the regular expression on a chalkboard behind Cameron when she was working on implementing a BIOS, and the fact that a Jeep Comanche pickup outside of a motel -- a vehicle that was either brand new or not even yet released -- had badly oxidized paint.
Oh wow, I had no idea they made a miniseries about ART+COM. I had heard of that company many times as a connection point of people associated with the Chaos Computer Club, but never looked into it.
> The Bechdel test (/ˈbɛkdəl/ ⓘ BEK-dəl),[1] also known as the Bechdel-Wallace test, is a measure of the representation of women in film and other fiction. The test asks whether a work features at least two women who have a conversation about something other than a man. Some versions of the test also require that those two women have names.[2]
Favorite show of all time....a few members of the cast were at the 10th anniversary panel as part the ATX Television Festival last year ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6L1suN-mGE
Personally, I felt HCF was a much better reflection of the tech industry compared to Silicon Valley.
While I love both shows to death, I feel HCF really nailed a lot of the emotional and interpersonal aspects that come with entrepreneurship, venture capital, and engineering leadership.
It was also great watching HCF with my dad who started his career during the tail end of the show, and could call out a number of the technical aspects (eg. PBXes, the COBOL vs OOP wars, the search engine wars, etc).
Some of it drove me a little nuts, like s4's insistence on using Sun workstations everywhere but showing MS Windows or NeXT software running on them. Yes I know x86 boards were available but people weren't buying $30k computers just to run software designed for $3k computers.
yup. I was in tech in Dallas in the 80s and early 90s before chasing the money to sili Valley. I laughed for weeks at the short vignettes of Donna talking about and dealing with Texas Instrudlements management. They got it SPOT ON. Even the guy wearing the 3 piece suit interviewing Donna on her way out.
Loved the show but the biggest problem was that the same core group of characters kept being the top innovators in wave after wave of advancements. I do wonder if the writers and producers planned on handling that differently but backed out when the main characters turned out to be more popular than expected.
In season one, Joe and Gordon are the main characters, with Cameron a small step behind them. Donna and Bos were firmly secondary. In season two, Cam and Donna became the focus, Bos became more prominent, and we got a bunch of new characters. Joe and Gordon were still important but clearly had less focus on them. I have to wonder if the plan was for each season to introduce new characters who would be set up to be the season after that's main focus. The Mutiny crew could have been pioneers of gaming in the third season, with some Donna and Cam still there, and special appearances by Gordon and Joe. The new characters from that season could be the main of the internet/virus season. For consistency, Bos could have been the common thread in all of the companies as the business manager going along for the ride as the main characters innovated.
Maybe that wasn't the plan and I'm just spit balling but it would have been a nice way of handling the advancing technology without making the same characters the titans of industry constantly. Not sure how well the fans would have reacted to their favorite characters, even Cameron, being relegated and eventually ghosted.
I just binged the show a few weeks ago for the first time, and while that was my impression as well, I then realized that while being unrealistic in a literal sense, it represents well that a lot of major "big things" were always kind of in the air for innovative people, and in the end a mix of luck, speed and execution wins. On the realistic side, they stand for all those people who tried to be in that group of winners and lost.
On the negative side, I also thought that sometimes makes for sloppy writing and the feeling that the characters are basically cosplaying history.
I may have to develop additional content. The thing I noticed about the show is they got many obscure details of life in Dallas in the 80s correct. The neighborhood they filmed Gordon and Donna's house in? It looked very much like Richardson. [though I'm pretty sure it was actually Atlanta.] Joe's condo? It looked very much like some condos they put in on the north side of Woodall Rogers. The night club? Just like the Starck Club. Even the house Donna and Cameron set up Mutiny looked very much like a friend's house on Vickery. [again, most certainly shot in Atlanta]
I read the production designers used old issues of Texas Homes, D Magazine and sears catalogs as visual guides, and it really shows through. I had a very strong nostalgic reaction. The only thing missing was an avocado green refrigerator.
I think it would be fun to take some of the shots and then try to find photos of places, people and things that might have influenced the designers.
Somewhere in season 2 I realized that a huge portion of Cameron was just "say something needlessly hostile or combative, then emphasize it by making your eyes really wide"
She was alright in season 1. She was young and inexperienced and she got too much shit from other people. In season 2/3 she has money and her own company and anytime anyone with more experience than her gives her even the smallest amount of advice she responds like someone is trying to break into her house. Worse, when someone has a good idea that isnt hers, she shuts it down
The point, to me, was that it’s a show about flawed people. Cameron’s flaws were frustrating sometimes, but so were Joe’s, Gordon’s, Donna’s flaws. She was chasing something… (the thing that computers get us to? Connection?) and was constantly worried someone was going to wreck it by taking it in the wrong direction. Like what happened in s01 with the interactive chat based OS she was building.
I dont remember donna having any flaws, shes just surrounded by morons and babies
When donna pointed out how popular chat was, cameron wanted to kill it because it wasnt her idea, even if it was perfectly in line with her vision for what computers could be. To me she's just an arrogant narcissist
I’ve rewatched it last year and, like a really good book, I found myself liking a different set of characters than on my first watch. There’s truly a lot of depth there. And a lot of humanity, which is something we sometimes forget about the tech industry.
Very nice! Love the CRT TV style. In terms of approach I’m a bit confused by the call for a ‘book club style watch party’ and the content which follows an education course format. With the first I expect a CTA button to join a session, maybe a scheduled Discord session or Sign-Up list for interest of same. So maybe the format of the program is an online meetup, with a short talk, and then discussion. The point here is community.
With the second I expect a CTA for a course, with the end result being some type of qualification, perhaps conformance to the startup mentality of the key characters, to help people form groups. The point there is to advance projects and also set yourself up as an authority.
At the moment it feels like a not-so-strong mix of the two.
Easily one of my favourite "tech" TV shows. But now I'm curious, has anyone recently found something similar to HCF that they similarly enjoyed? I've never found anything I've enjoyed quite as much as HCF.
If you get a chance, go back and check out the C64 power LEDs. They're all off. I suppose they intended to CGI the red glow in later but went overbudget?
In fairness, I didn't notice this until my 2nd time watching the series.
I wonder if they got confused with the Amiga, which had an audio bypass filter which was off, when the led was off. I don't know anyone that didn't do so, an everyone's power LEDs were off, as a result, on Amigas.
I recently watched all of Halt and Catch Fire, and i have to say it is a really special show. The first season is fun, but it really comes into its own in the following seasons, exploring long relationships, friendship, growth, and love in ways that really surprised me. Highly recommend.
I recently finished it too! I was pretty over it by the final season, but then the last few episodes brought me back around.
Cameron "it's all in the eyes" Howe annoyed the shit out of me at pretty much all points, which I understand is how they wrote the character but it walked a line of almost making me quit the show. As with the show as a whole, though, she brought me around a bit in the last few eps.
Silicon Cowboys[1] came out roughly the same time, and it always struck me how similar the first season of HCF was to the actual documentary of Compaq's rise
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4938484/
I was largely disappointed. The subject matter was special but the execution was over the top. Every time I was starting to get drawn in, there would be another affair, car crash, exploding lorry or something else just as forced. I can’t even remember the number of times it felt like they’d “jumped the shark” in even just the first season alone.
There really wasn’t any need for half the dumb shit they did in that show. It didn’t add to the drama, it just made the whole thing feel completely fake. Which is impressive considering they’re writing largely about real world computing history.
And don’t get me started on the characters themselves. I think I liked maybe half the cast. The others made me cringe every time they were on screen.
It’s such a pity because they could have just as successful show if they refined it a little.
This complaint largely lands on the same points as the ones against Mr. Robot, and it has some merit, but the shows are made for cable TV audiences, so they're a bit more niche than broadcast shows, but they're mass market vehicles. They're nearly pushing a rope to make this content entertaining at all. If people cared, they'd already know the history and the social implications of the technology, as well as the personalities involved. These kinds of shows are meant to bring more folks into the industry and help folks see the humanity in each other and in themselves if they're in it. Most folks don't watch tv for anything but storylines and personalities, so historical or current relevance in entertainment is something I'll take where and when I can get it.
What are some tech shows that you like, or dramas, for context?
I’m not suggesting the show should be factually accurate. I’m saying it doesn’t need pyrotechnics to be engaging.
Mr Robot was a different beast because that was literally about criminal and hacker culture. So you’d expect a little action in that regard.
To put it another way: you have shows that have strong enough writers where they don’t need gimmicks to keep your attention. And you have shows that are intentionally about the gimmicks. Then you have shows that aren’t about the gimmicks but the writers don’t have enough confidence in their work to avoid putting them in anyway.
Shows like The West Wing, House of Cards etc aren’t about gimmicks and don’t need them.
Shows like Stargate are about the gimmicks. And that’s ok too because you know it’s meant to be silly drama.
But shows like HCF feel like they should be executed like HoCs, yet they’re written like Mr Robot, Stargate, etc. So it’s very jarring to watch every time another gimmick gets thrown in. Maybe I expected too much from that show? But it just felt like they didn’t have any confidence in people’s attention spans.
What pyrotechnics are you referring to? In HCF? My complaint about this show is sort of the opposite --- that it's basically Six Feet Under, but replace the funeral home with a series of tech startups.
(I think it's a solid B-tier prestige series; I don't hate it).
Joe setting the truck full of computers on fire is the only thing that comes to mind. That was somewhat over the top and they did settle the character down somewhat in later seasons (though not completely).
I mean “pyrotechnics” in the metaphorical sense. A big flash of drama from nowhere and then nothing afterwards. But that was a poor choice of words on my part. (It was late and I was tired, sorry).
I’ve discussed my thinking in the other responses so won’t go in-depth here. But to summarise:
The general story had real potential but was marred (in my opinion at least) with cliffhangers that felt jarring and unnecessary to the underlying story.
Didn't Kevin Spacey directly kill multiple people over the course of House of Cards to suddenly end a plot thread?
Yeah, there was at least the one lady he pushed onto the tracks right as the subway came in that I remember distinctly. Ice cold.
I think their point was that in HCF, the off the wall dramatic swings felt more like jumping the shark. In HoC, it felt totally in character for Spacey to do that. It was just better written and acted, despite the intensity of the violence being much higher, because it made sense in the context of the story, and it didn’t in HCF, at least not to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark
That's what I'm asking! It's like, did we even watch the same show?
Not to mention, HoC had a major gimmick driving it (spacey breaking the 4th wall).
That’s one gimmick and it was weaved throughout the show. It was also used to further the story telling.
HCF created drama in places it wasn’t earned. And did so just so that episodes could have cliffhangers.
Think of it like a shower scene in a movie. More often than not, it has literally no relevance to the movie. It doesn’t further the plot. It’s not even part of the story. It’s just there so that it can be used as a clip in the movie trailer.
Well HCF was full of stuff that, admittedly wasn’t there for trailers (or at least I don’t think they were), but they also added nothing to the story. They were just there to artificially add some drama. But that drama wasn’t earned.
For example, the suicide was very poorly handled. It was used as vehicle for discussing open source vs proprietary code. But you could have easily done that without the death. Instead you ended up with interesting plot themes being overshadowed by this one lazy plot device.
The show was absolutely full of stuff like that. Things that were completely out of the blue and if it made it to the cutting room flow then the show would have flowed just the same without it.
I think you have the show backwards. It's trying to tell stories about people using the technology industry as a framing device; it isn't trying to tell stories about technology.
You’ve got my point backwards. I’m not talking about the technology. I’m talking about how those stories keep getting overshadowed by nonsensical episodic cliffhangers.
It’s dramatic. But it doesn’t mean it’s a particularly good drama.
If they’d replaced the backdrop with any other normal drama setting and almost nobody on here would watch it because they’d think the show was stupid.
Stuff like setting fire to a truck, and then never talking about it again afterwards, has absolutely nothing to do with tech nor stories about people. It’s just a dumb gimmick thrown in because the network doesn’t believe their audience has enough of an attention span to watch the show otherwise.
Like I said downthread, I think this is a B-tier show (better than Suits or The Good Fight, worse than Better Call Saul) --- but I don't think that has anything to do with whether "open source" is overshadowed by suicide. The show isn't "for" you.
The only reason technology is featured in it is that it's a way to show a period of rapid change happening underneath the characters. More than anything else it's a period show.
> don't think that has anything to do with whether "open source" is overshadowed by suicide. The show isn't "for" you.
You’re misunderstanding my point about the suicide. I said that the suicide was unearned and didn’t tackle the real discussion about mental health. And thus it was a distraction from the plot thread.
I’d have actually preferred it if the plot focused more on mental health if they were going to have a supporting character kill themselves. Then the death would have been earned.
> The only reason technology is featured in it is that it's a way to show a period of rapid change happening underneath the characters. More than anything else it's a period show.
You keep lecturing me on this point despite everything I’ve posted clearly being about how the drama (ie not technology) was written.
Are you sure you’re not the one hung up on the tech aspect given you assume that’s what everyone else is? Because everyone in this thread already gets it isn’t a documentary ;)
I'm just keying off this thing you wrote:
For example, the suicide was very poorly handled. It was used as vehicle for discussing open source vs proprietary code. But you could have easily done that without the death [...]
It's totally fine if we're not making any productive progress in this part of the thread. It's art, it's all subjective, we can just disagree. I think the interpersonal dramas in HACF are as earned as they are in any series; certainly, I'd put every season of HACF several notches above Six Feet Under Season 4 and its Scooby-Doo finale.
At the same time, I don't think there's any kind of important broader theme or message or ideas in HACF; the A-tier of prestige dramas have that --- The Wire, Mad Men, Better Call Saul. Mad Men and The Americans are I think the best comparands; both period shows with high-concept settings, both bigger idea/theme shows than HACF.
> I'm just keying off this thing you wrote
Because that was literally the plot!
I’m saying that the death was poorly handled. I’m not commenting on whether there should have been more or less emphasis on tech. I’m saying the death was a lazy plot device that added nothing to the story.
Edit:
> At the same time, I don't think there's any kind of important broader theme or message or ideas in HACF; the A-tier of prestige dramas have that --- The Wire, Mad Men, Better Call Saul. Mad Men and The Americans are I think the best comparands; both period shows with high-concept settings, both bigger idea/theme shows than HACF.
I think you’re on to something there.
HCF felt shallow and that was likely for the reason you’ve described.
> Think of it like a shower scene in a movie. More often than not, it has literally no relevance to the movie. It doesn’t further the plot. It’s not even part of the story. It’s just there so that it can be used as a clip in the movie trailer.
Depends on the movie. Once I studied films and film theory (just in undergrad, not trying to claim any special authority on the subject), I appreciated more how these interstitial scenes are meaningful. It's all part of mise-en-scène. It lets the scenes feel alive and lived in, and not just a 2D image flying by at 24ish FPS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise-en-sc%C3%A8ne
> Mise-en-scène has been called film criticism's "grand undefined term". Ed Sikov has attempted to define it as "the totality of expressive content within the image". It has been criticized for its focus on the dramatic design aspects rather than the plot itself, as those who utilize mise-en-scène tend to look at what is "put before the camera" rather than the story. The use of mise-en-scène is significant as it allows the director to convey messages to the viewer through what is placed in the scene, not just the scripted lines spoken and acted in the scene. Mise-en-scène allows the director to not only convey their message but also implement their aesthetic; as such, each director has their own unique mise-en-scène. Mise-en-scène refers to everything in front of the camera, including the set design, lighting, and actors, and the ultimate way that this influences how the scene comes together for the audience.
If you've seen many horror movies, you know to expect a jump scare, but because the actual original scare in a shower scene[0] is so played-out by now, audiences expect it, so it has to be subverted.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho_(1960_film)
Edit:
Just was going over the thread again to see if there were any new posts, and I glanced over your comment again and wanted to reply to this point, because I agree with you and I think I didn't acknowledge this, and it really brings your point upthread home and validates it.
> For example, the suicide was very poorly handled.
I completely forgot about that part. Good call-out. Mental health issues and self-harm, especially imagery of it, are not plot devices to be used carelessly. Representation matters, and yet it's so hard to do well because those being represented need understanding also, not just seeing triggering stuff on TV and movies. That definitely didn't feel earned, and it didn't land well. I don't know how else it was supposed to feel though, considering the seriousness of the issue. It's a hard topic to put to film. Thanks for mentioning it.
Person opens the shower curtain after much tension building
It's just the cat
But they don't have a cat...
> To put it another way: you have shows that have strong enough writers where they don’t need gimmicks to keep your attention. And you have shows that are intentionally about the gimmicks. Then you have shows that aren’t about the gimmicks but the writers don’t have enough confidence in their work to avoid putting them in anyway.
Can you elaborate a bit about the gimmick(s) in Halt and Catch Fire? I think it's a drama, so there are human concerns and interactions, but that's like, what tv shows are? I don't know what you mean specifically.
> Shows like The West Wing, House of Cards etc aren’t about gimmicks and don’t need them.
The West Wing is statist propaganda for liberals. House of Cards is statist propaganda for neocons.
> Shows like Mr Robot are about the gimmicks. And that’s ok too because you know it’s meant to be silly drama.
I actually really appreciate that every hack shown on Mr. Robot had a real world POC and used actually existing tools and techniques. The storyline is hokum and gives hackers a bad name, but black hats are kinda supposed to have a bad name. Elliot is kinda gray hat, but he definitely violated CFAA multiple times and would probably be dead or in jail irl.
By “gimmicks” (poor choice of word on my part but it was late and I was tired) I mean unnecessary drama that isn’t there to further the plot. It’s just there to offer episodic cliffhangers.
So much of the “drama” in that show was completely redundant and over the top too.
Things like setting the truck alight for no reason other than “I’m so emo”. Affairs that are talked about for one episode then forgotten about. Suicides that didn’t touch on mental illness and instead focused on an open source (you could have done that without the death) and thus that death felt completely redundant, mishandled, and there just for another cliffhanger.
I get the need to make things exciting. But the drama didn’t feel earned. It felt shoehorned because some executive was worried people might get bored about a show which uses the computer industry as a backdrop.
I think I would agree with you that it’s a dramatic show, and since these are characters, they tried to smash too much together into a supergroup of larger than life achievers with egos to match. I think you’re right that they did try to juice the drama a bit more than was believable in a few cases, but it was meant to show the full gamut of the tech industry and associated scenes, and it kind of felt strained or forced at times. I wouldn’t really call it a gimmick either, but perhaps that is the best word for their reach exceeding their grasp.
It’s a kind of myth making, I suppose. Folks want to feel like their own lives are meaningful and exciting, and so they seek out content that is familiar and validates their life choices. Lots of folks in the tech industry are passionate. Others want to want things, but their get up and go got up and went. Halt and Catch Fire is a kind of wish fulfillment for tech folks, but there aren’t unqualified happy endings in the show, so the successes of the characters do feel largely earned by them, even if the dramatic hurdles do seem somewhat overblown or unrealistic. I’ve known enough folks in the industry to see all kinds, from very stable geniuses to shameless sycophants. Most are just regular people, but they rarely make for good television, so regular folks are the side characters or spouses. The viewers are here for drama, not realism.
I believe ryan, especially his death, was about Aaron Swartz and the value of open information and less to do with "open source"
I'm glad to see I'm not alone here! Was really excited about it, and tried pretty hard to make it through the first season but couldn't make it.
It just had too much of that early 2000's cable TV style drama. Which I understand is required since it was on network tv. I honestly think if it was made again today as a netflix/prime series it would be a lot better.
I 100% agree. I couldn’t finish it and bailed during the first season. It was all just so over the top!
I thought Micro Men was way better executed as a comparison point https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men
Completely different show after season 1, I almost bailed at the end of s01 too. But also, different strokes for different folks :)
Really! Interesting. How was it different?
Shifts from looking like compaq, to early internet stuff, from memory.
It looked a bit like Compaq then it pivoted to, I expected, to look more like Apple with the Comdex angle. But it didn't. I did like the show. But it skirted the reality of the era with a lot of other stuff.
Just to +1 this and then add some more color, the show doesn’t try to be a Pirates of Silicon Valley where they cover a single specific company/set of events but instead they compress the entirety of the 80s and 90s key events into their couple of seasons. It’s fun so long as you don’t mind.
Ah right I did know that much about then following seasons. I thought the previous poster meant different in that the characters etc and over the top-ness was different but from my understanding of reading the synopsis it’s still basically the same characters and storytelling style so I think I’ll probably have the same problem with it heh. But I do love historical stuff like this even when fictionalised so maybe I should power through it.
I believe some TV executive thought "Mad Men for the tech industry" would be a good cash cow. It even had its own Don Draper character, if a very poorly executed one.
IMHO it felt like the show was (understandably) targeting a demograph more interested in the drama / relationships of the characters. Since my expectations were different, I could never get into HCF.
As far as tech driven shows are concerned, Silicon Valley and IT Crowd are personal favorites but they're really more comedies.
I wouldn’t have minded if it were about relationships with tech as a backdrop but I don’t think the writers did a good job fleshing out those relationships either. Most of the time it felt very one dimensional. Largely because the characters were one dimensional. Ironically, the supporting cast felt more “human” than the leads.
Agreed with your point about SV and IT Crowd. There does seem to be a real lack of drama using tech as the backdrop which isn’t either a comedy nor non-fiction.
It's so good and criminally underrated.
Edit: removed spoilers
Spoilers! If HN has spoiler text maybe use that or redact. The shock is part of the importance of that event I think.
> “Computers aren’t the thing; they’re the thing that gets us to the thing.”
I used to be overly pedantic about the kinds of things programmers often obsess over—like micro-benchmarks, the whole “I use Arch, by the way” attitude, and other obnoxious quirks. But this quote stuck with me and helped me move past that shallow, one-upmanship view of computers. Great show to ones who haven't watched yet.
It's a great line. I think our current tech industry has forgotten this. You can't make a product for everyone but you can make an environment for everyone. Something that can be adapted for (almost) anyone.
Take the phone industry. They're happily gouging developers, taking large sums of app sales. But at the same time, a smart phone isn't a smart phone without apps. Everyone has different ones installed and ones they highly depend on that aren't from Apple/Google. It's the program that makes the tool.
But this kind of thing is happening more and more and can only happen because consolidation. It maximizes profits for today but at the cost of higher future profits and better products. It's funny how there was a strong counter culture early on but it feels like that was lost.
Thinking about HCF, they did a better than average job of showing Women in Tech. I worked at IBM and DEC in the 80s and maybe as many as one third of Programmer / Analyst positions were held by women. IIRC, 1985 was the peak at IBM and it started falling after that. But my memory was female software engineers did not seem as much an endangered species as they do now.
All of the characters had flaws, but I appreciated the representation. Though I suspect the flaws were added for dramatic effect. Perfect people doing perfect things doesn't make for drama.
Sadly the WorldWideWeb emulator link from 11 (www) [1] doesn't seem to be working anymore: https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/browser
Looks like it's 404 since February. [2] Any idea what happened?
[1] https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/halt-and-catch-fire-syllabus/c...
[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/https://worldwide...
Everyone in here is critiquing the intricacies of plot and forced drama, and here I was just annoyed by the regular expression on a chalkboard behind Cameron when she was working on implementing a BIOS, and the fact that a Jeep Comanche pickup outside of a motel -- a vehicle that was either brand new or not even yet released -- had badly oxidized paint.
Billion Dollar Code on Netlfix is a nice apertif to run the same experiment (watch club + research) on in a shorter commitment budget.
Oh wow, I had no idea they made a miniseries about ART+COM. I had heard of that company many times as a connection point of people associated with the Chaos Computer Club, but never looked into it.
Discussed at the time (of the article):
Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25912241 - Jan 2021 (173 comments)
It was observed at the time that it passed:
> The Bechdel test (/ˈbɛkdəl/ ⓘ BEK-dəl),[1] also known as the Bechdel-Wallace test, is a measure of the representation of women in film and other fiction. The test asks whether a work features at least two women who have a conversation about something other than a man. Some versions of the test also require that those two women have names.[2]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test
Favorite show of all time....a few members of the cast were at the 10th anniversary panel as part the ATX Television Festival last year ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6L1suN-mGE
Personally, I felt HCF was a much better reflection of the tech industry compared to Silicon Valley.
While I love both shows to death, I feel HCF really nailed a lot of the emotional and interpersonal aspects that come with entrepreneurship, venture capital, and engineering leadership.
It was also great watching HCF with my dad who started his career during the tail end of the show, and could call out a number of the technical aspects (eg. PBXes, the COBOL vs OOP wars, the search engine wars, etc).
Some of it drove me a little nuts, like s4's insistence on using Sun workstations everywhere but showing MS Windows or NeXT software running on them. Yes I know x86 boards were available but people weren't buying $30k computers just to run software designed for $3k computers.
yup. I was in tech in Dallas in the 80s and early 90s before chasing the money to sili Valley. I laughed for weeks at the short vignettes of Donna talking about and dealing with Texas Instrudlements management. They got it SPOT ON. Even the guy wearing the 3 piece suit interviewing Donna on her way out.
Loved the show but the biggest problem was that the same core group of characters kept being the top innovators in wave after wave of advancements. I do wonder if the writers and producers planned on handling that differently but backed out when the main characters turned out to be more popular than expected.
In season one, Joe and Gordon are the main characters, with Cameron a small step behind them. Donna and Bos were firmly secondary. In season two, Cam and Donna became the focus, Bos became more prominent, and we got a bunch of new characters. Joe and Gordon were still important but clearly had less focus on them. I have to wonder if the plan was for each season to introduce new characters who would be set up to be the season after that's main focus. The Mutiny crew could have been pioneers of gaming in the third season, with some Donna and Cam still there, and special appearances by Gordon and Joe. The new characters from that season could be the main of the internet/virus season. For consistency, Bos could have been the common thread in all of the companies as the business manager going along for the ride as the main characters innovated.
Maybe that wasn't the plan and I'm just spit balling but it would have been a nice way of handling the advancing technology without making the same characters the titans of industry constantly. Not sure how well the fans would have reacted to their favorite characters, even Cameron, being relegated and eventually ghosted.
I just binged the show a few weeks ago for the first time, and while that was my impression as well, I then realized that while being unrealistic in a literal sense, it represents well that a lot of major "big things" were always kind of in the air for innovative people, and in the end a mix of luck, speed and execution wins. On the realistic side, they stand for all those people who tried to be in that group of winners and lost.
On the negative side, I also thought that sometimes makes for sloppy writing and the feeling that the characters are basically cosplaying history.
The intro for the show is quite nice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucSUs3adMQ8 https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=halt+and+catch+...
One of the greatest shows ever created, absolutely amazing resource here.
I may have to develop additional content. The thing I noticed about the show is they got many obscure details of life in Dallas in the 80s correct. The neighborhood they filmed Gordon and Donna's house in? It looked very much like Richardson. [though I'm pretty sure it was actually Atlanta.] Joe's condo? It looked very much like some condos they put in on the north side of Woodall Rogers. The night club? Just like the Starck Club. Even the house Donna and Cameron set up Mutiny looked very much like a friend's house on Vickery. [again, most certainly shot in Atlanta]
I read the production designers used old issues of Texas Homes, D Magazine and sears catalogs as visual guides, and it really shows through. I had a very strong nostalgic reaction. The only thing missing was an avocado green refrigerator.
I think it would be fun to take some of the shots and then try to find photos of places, people and things that might have influenced the designers.
I liked HCF as a show but I couldnt stand Cameron. It seems like you could always rely on her to do the wrong thing
Somewhere in season 2 I realized that a huge portion of Cameron was just "say something needlessly hostile or combative, then emphasize it by making your eyes really wide"
She was alright in season 1. She was young and inexperienced and she got too much shit from other people. In season 2/3 she has money and her own company and anytime anyone with more experience than her gives her even the smallest amount of advice she responds like someone is trying to break into her house. Worse, when someone has a good idea that isnt hers, she shuts it down
The point, to me, was that it’s a show about flawed people. Cameron’s flaws were frustrating sometimes, but so were Joe’s, Gordon’s, Donna’s flaws. She was chasing something… (the thing that computers get us to? Connection?) and was constantly worried someone was going to wreck it by taking it in the wrong direction. Like what happened in s01 with the interactive chat based OS she was building.
I dont remember donna having any flaws, shes just surrounded by morons and babies
When donna pointed out how popular chat was, cameron wanted to kill it because it wasnt her idea, even if it was perfectly in line with her vision for what computers could be. To me she's just an arrogant narcissist
Donna was arrogant and that caused the friction between her and Cameron, I found Donna in the end to be soulless and awful.
Did you tap out before the end? We spend a lot of time with donna’s flaws after the mutiny ipo sitch.
I think i got to like season 3 or 4?
HCF! Such a great show!
I’ve rewatched it last year and, like a really good book, I found myself liking a different set of characters than on my first watch. There’s truly a lot of depth there. And a lot of humanity, which is something we sometimes forget about the tech industry.
Very nice! Love the CRT TV style. In terms of approach I’m a bit confused by the call for a ‘book club style watch party’ and the content which follows an education course format. With the first I expect a CTA button to join a session, maybe a scheduled Discord session or Sign-Up list for interest of same. So maybe the format of the program is an online meetup, with a short talk, and then discussion. The point here is community.
With the second I expect a CTA for a course, with the end result being some type of qualification, perhaps conformance to the startup mentality of the key characters, to help people form groups. The point there is to advance projects and also set yourself up as an authority.
At the moment it feels like a not-so-strong mix of the two.
This looks like one of the best weekend plans I've seen in a long time. Will see if anyone locally is up for it.
The length of the plan seems like a DnD campaign in terms of length though, it's roughly 3 months of consistent activities, but it may be worth it.
be sure to invite some grey-hairs so they can tell you more stories of tech in the 80s.
Easily one of my favourite "tech" TV shows. But now I'm curious, has anyone recently found something similar to HCF that they similarly enjoyed? I've never found anything I've enjoyed quite as much as HCF.
Mr Robot was right up there for me.
It's one of the shows which gets better every season. Season four was so good, absolutely loved it!
If you get a chance, go back and check out the C64 power LEDs. They're all off. I suppose they intended to CGI the red glow in later but went overbudget?
In fairness, I didn't notice this until my 2nd time watching the series.
I wonder if they got confused with the Amiga, which had an audio bypass filter which was off, when the led was off. I don't know anyone that didn't do so, an everyone's power LEDs were off, as a result, on Amigas.
European Amigas got Power LED dimmed instead of being completely off.
Come to think of it, I think the same was true for me too.
Some models needed a hardware hack to turn it off, maybe those ones were off.
Yay, great excuse to rewatch the show!