While my writing partner is busy literally moving across the country (not to get farther away from me, but to further his education. What a one-upper) I’m left to my own devices to process the two-hour season premiere of Halt and Catch Fire, Joe-style, alone and in a basement with Post-Its as wallpaper.
So It Goes and Signal To Noise covered a lot of ground and unpacked quite a bit of emotional baggage, which is to be expected with this group considering what they’ve gone through together.
The opening montage spanned the course of three years where we learned, distressingly, that Gordon only owns one flannel shirt despite living in the Bay Area. We got to watch CalNect artfully outgrow the basement, leaving Joe behind to obsess over Cameron and keep serial killer-levels of Post-Its of every website on the internet (could you fucking imagine doing that today? You’d have to dedicate at least three floors to porn sites). If I’d only ever watched the first season of HaCF and decided to come back to watch season four, but didn’t watch the in between seasons, you’d be hard pressed to convince me that basement dwelling Joe, with his greasy hair and creepy librarian glasses, is the same 80s imitation Don Draper Joe McMillan we’d met fresh off getting canned from IBM.
In stark contrast, the passage of time has been kind to Donna Emerson (formerly Clark), she is truly living her best life. Banging hot guys, shattering the hopes and dreams of young upstarts so subtly they don’t even realize it’s happening until she’s left the room, shading power tripping dickheads in board meetings by delicately suggesting perhaps they should circle back and go fuck themselves. It was exciting to see Donna on the other side of the table for once, in the driver’s seat instead of babysitting adults and children alike.
It’s not like the divorce and windfall of ISP money has turned Gordon into some kind of Howard Hughes recluse either. But there is nothing that screams fleeting 90s wealth like having the Blue Man Group perform at your 40th birthday. It would also stand to reason that Gordon has taken up the ‘no lady’ mantle his ex wife left behind; from shooting down Joe’s browser dreams, and dismissing “the Yellow Pages” of the internet, Gordon is perfectly happy with his station in life. But as Joe ominously intones, “no one remembers the power plant”, also, as we see later, power plants are susceptible to imploding.
Oh, and then there’s Cameron. Dear, sweet, childish Cameron. I understand you lived in Japan for the last five years or so, but could you not start every goddamn sentence with, “when I was living in Japan”. WE KNOW, GIRL, WE KNOW. I appreciated the reveal that Cameron, who is prone to a white lie or two per conversation, wasn’t just back in the States for her ill-fated game Pilgrim. Not like it was a total surprise to discover she and Tom didn’t work out, they didn’t strike me as a long haul couple, but it was a little suspect she was so flippant about who Tom left her for.
And like a ghost descending upon Christmas to impart some yuletide lessons, Cameron is visited by two bridges she left charred in her wake, the first is Joe, who emerges from the darkness of Gordon’s party to make soft-spoken small talk before evaporating into Karl the Fog whispering to Cameron, “you’re cruel”. The second is Donna, but not before we’re treated to a hungover Joanie, which made me feel like one of those “you know you’re getting old” memes. Anyway, Donna storms in the morning after Gordon’s big birthday in some 90s country club realness getup, and instead of her hungover daughter, she lays eyes on Cameron (in Gordon’s sweatpants no less). Full disclosure, I do not give a fuck about Joe and Cameron, it’s Donna and Cameron I’m rooting to get back together, they’re my Ross and Rachel. Their brief, awkward exchange about the forgotten internet browser Mosaic with its in-line images was strangely heartbreaking; “I thought it was you”, is that the new “you had me had hello”.
Despite a warning from Gordon to Cameron to stay away from Joe during another disappointing Pilgrim demo, Cameron and Joe, unsurprisingly, find a way to reconnect. It was an endearing runner to have their not-so-long-distance phone date, even if the first story Joe tells Cameron during their day-long phone conversation (I bet the hotel phone bill was heinous) was the opposite of upbeat. I mean, did that lady die in the Safeway parking lot or not? Why wouldn’t you tell that part of the story? Because she’s dead? JOE! Conversely, I’d like Lee Pace’s cover of the Fresh Prince theme song as my ringtone ASAP. It was sweet to watch them slowly warm to each other again, it reminded me of my favorite Doris Day movie, Pillow Talk.
But while Joe brought Cameron up to speed on America in 1993, CalNect seemingly collapsed, unbeknownst to Joe, and Pilgrim was placed on indefinite hold, Cameron made aware by an Atari rep knocking on her hotel door. And while Gordon and Joe are busy (Gordon) and distracted (Joe) is Donna going going to beat them to Joe’s idea? This group dynamic is as predisposed to clashing as it is to working harmoniously, suffice to say the race to be first to basically invent Google will be brutal and personal. But who will get the credit?
CTRL+ALT+ETC:
-I love Boz, Toby Huss brings so much life to this character. And although I am heartened to see Boz and Diane going strong, I worry about his reluctance to share the news of his debt with her. I feel like there’s something more to this house flipping thing.
-Solving a puzzle that brings you back to the beginning of a game sounds fucking infuriating. I get that this is all a metaphor for Cameron’s journey, but Cameron, work all that crap out in therapy, not in your video game.
-I was unsure if Hailey could talk there for a second, luckily she had to explain to Gordon the difference between a pony and a mini-horse. Hint: one of them whinnies.
-Between Bill Clinton, the passing of Audrey Hepburn, and the Superbowl, I’d say we’re in Spring(ish) of 1993.
-Why didn’t they call it CalNext? Missed opportunity there, guys.
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