SummarySet 1983, former IBM sales executive Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace) recruits reluctant Cardiff Electric engineer Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy) and programmer Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis) to reverse engineer IBM's BIOS system.
SummarySet 1983, former IBM sales executive Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace) recruits reluctant Cardiff Electric engineer Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy) and programmer Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis) to reverse engineer IBM's BIOS system.
It would be easy for all this reinvention to feel jarring, or like Halt desperately racing from one idea to the next because the last one ran out of steam. But each transition has felt natural, earned, and of a piece with what came before.
A tremendous drama that doesn't coat it's audience in sugar or tug blatant emotional levers to evoke sympathy. Instead we have a fierce drama with characters who are borderline obnoxious to the extent of psychological disorder . Somehow, despite not especially liking any of them, and I mean any of them, we are fascinated by them and need to know how their world turns out.
To some this will be perplexing or even boring to watch as you need a little retro techno knowhow to understand what's going on and an appreciation for nerd culture especially the 80's version. The story evolves and explains technical advances in way that is both satisfying and seamless with the narrative. There is sadness and hubris and revelation in this season, it’s more poignant than the previous for sure. The finale leaves us satisfied and wanting more at the same time.
The pace is gradual and then jumps multiyear and then gradual again. A nice technique to propel the story. What I like most are the stand alone scenes scattered throughout the season that are not pivotal or necessary as such but just develop the individual characters.These are subtle gems . Excellent show.
A show that gets better and better. Even the acting has improved! If there is one word that would sum up that show it would be "tempo". What a great pacing, what a great sense of where to cut, to make that elliptic jump and to focus on the core of the story even though most viewers are computer illiterate.
The paranoid atmosphere is also rended in a far more electrifying manner than the AMC flagship, the ever slowly sinking The Walking Dead.
Things don't really get moving until the second hour, but Halt's elegantly told tale about four people desperate to play a role in shaping the future remains impressively acted and timely as ever. [19/26 Aug 2016 p.104]
Halt and Catch Fire finally seems to know how to fluidly move from one proverbial decibel to the next, all in the hope of finding a place where you feel comfortable being yourself.
In episodes that alternate percolating energy with quiet ruminations on loyalty, leadership and the ways in which people lie to themselves and others, the satisfying third season builds up an admirable head of steam and gives the core cast (including the wonderful and previously under-used Toby Huss) and guest star Annabeth Gish smart material to work with.
The more Halt and Catch Fire continues to lean into the emergence of Cam and Donna as two of the major forces behind the show’s alternate-reality internet revolution, the more interested I am in seeing where it goes. Also, the more it does that, the more this series about the Silicon Valley before HBO’s Silicon Valley feels like must-watch TV, as opposed to just should-watch TV.
Halt and Catch Fire is the perfect example of a television show that just keeps getting better and better. With great directing, phenomenal acting, and very intelligently written with surprising shocks and turns, Season 3 brought all the right ingredients to go down as the best drama of the year.
HCL is great and very engaging. I have enjoyed every episode and I hope it gets new seasons and episodes!
It is one of the few shows about computer and it is based on real events!
Great through S2 then it gets unrealistic. These guys are essentially supposed to be responsible for pioneering online gaming and primitive EBAY? I get they need more content, but I'm must waiting for the VR play at this point. The pivoting needs to just slow down a little1
Made it through most of season 3. I really hate to go against the grain here, but this fictional account of the early days of the personal computer revolution is seriously flawed. I get that it's fiction, but like good science fiction, it's supposed to be based on facts. The technology timelines are faltering at best and smell like they were written by someone who didn't live through them. The environment is better, but still flawed. Cameron Howe's character is simply a phony construct of someone's idea of what a revolutionary young woman would look and act like. They should have modeled her on a more believable real person(s). The other characters are more believable, but not endearing. I find myself wishing for their plans to fail (which they all do) rather than rooting for them. I do appreciate the contentional relationship shown between sales and engineers. That is depicted rather well.
The commercial use of Commodore 64s is ludicrous. I loved my C64, but it didn't have ANY commercial following and the IBM XT was actually very short lived. Where is Intel depicted (a major player)? They got the concept of time sharing totally wrong, as if technology leaped from Main Frames to PCs in a single bound. What about the entire era of minicomputers (Control Data, DEC PDP and VAX, Data General Nova. Hewlett Packard 3000 2100 and 1000 series)?
I know I sound like a technology snob, but I lived through this revolution (like millions of others) and I found that I could not overcome the blatant misrepresentations of this series. As a tv show it has managed to hold my attention. Unfortunately it has done so in much the same way as a train wreck attracts observers. No matter how this series ends, I will not feel good. Too much misinformation and a lack of decent human behavior make this a sad attempt at presenting a great time in history.