Margaux and I say goodbye forever to Halt and Catch Fire.
Trevor: It’s fitting that Halt and Catch Fire’s final two episodes would be all about saying goodbye. In “Search,” Donna worries that she’s losing her family: Gordon is dead, and Joanie is going to China. Cameron is leaving Comet after a short stint as chief coder, and even Bos and Diane are heading to Ireland. As the penultimate episode, “Search” is in a precarious position. You can’t just give up on plot or character development, but you do have to put yourself in a position to wrap things up. “Ten of Swords” felt more like a continuation of “Search,” which isn’t meant as a negative critique. HaCF excels at meandering episodes – and season four’s frequent time jumps add to that sense – so it allowed us a proper goodbye. (I will say, one of the few benefits of the two-hour finale trend is that the last episodes of a show can feel more cohesive without a week between them.) I’m sure you can guess by now, but “Search” and “Ten of Swords” worked really well for me. How did you like them?
Margaux: “Search” was as apt a title for part one of a series finale as any, since the first hour of Halt and Catch Fire’s goodbye left all of our characters in search of what they’re going to do next. While Donna, Cameron, and Joe literally and figuratively tread water, everyone around them make the sort of Big Life Changing Plans that were once known as their signature move. Although Joe tries to drum up as much canned, tech-bro enthusiasm for Comet’s site relaunch, it really felt like it landed with a thud and sigh, a sort of obligatory “we did it,” versus the rockets launching into a clear blue sky aspiration its commercial was striving for.
Trevor: Shameful confession: I kind of liked the Comet commercial, even though the random inserts of stock footage reminded me of the obscure commercials for Gavin Volure’s company on 30 Rock.
Margaux: Another example of this show’s ability to create something, even something as small as a commercial, that is of the time period of HaCF, but also very current. I cannot tell you how many start up commercials I’ve watched over the last five years that follow the Comet commercial beat for beat.
Trevor: Okay, moving on from my garbage opinion, I really loved that scene with Bos in the doctor’s office. It was funny to see that not everyone is susceptible to his folksy charm, but Toby Huss did some great facial acting in response to Bos being told that he could see the 21st century. The incredulity of surviving everything he’s been through – prison, a heart attack, not to mention a cross-country move – plays across his face instantly, and it makes us hope so badly that Bos gets to see the future with the flying cars he predicts (these characters don’t always bat a thousand when it comes to visualizing future tech).
Margaux: The world doesn’t deserve a character like Toby Huss’ Bos; I’ll miss you most of all. It was a fun juxtaposition scenes, Bos is given a clean bill of health that also promises a future of flying cars, and then Bos unearthing a box of junk that contains an old Cardiff radio he most likely packed eons ago. It wasn’t just a nice little nod to how far they’ve come, it also lead to wistful conversation people still like have now of the “good old days,” when things were connected with real wires, not backed up to a cloud or a microchip.
Trevor: There’s a lot of tactile pleasure to be found in this show. Some of my favorite scenes in “Search” and “Ten of Swords” are of Donna being able to fix things, to use her hands, to be an engineer, which also shows HaCF’s long memory. The show can be plotless, which works to its benefit, because it’s more about the idea, about ruminating and thinking. And that’s hard to dramatize – normally. The tech setting, especially the wildly successful jump to the 1990s, is a smart way to introduce stakes. When ideas are currency, all it takes is someone spending theirs first to devalue yours. Case in point: look how much work Joe and Cameron put in to customize Comet to run on Netscape. And where did it get them?
Margaux: Joe’s assurance that this time they wouldn’t be last to the finish line because they had “the cheat sheet to the exam” only to make the discovery of Yahoo!’s inclusion on the toolbar moments later was devastating (fun fact: Yahoo! still sucks!). Halt and Catch Fire always took place in the “real world” and we know in the real world Comet or Rover doesn’t exist, therefore they to die, so to speak. It wasn’t so much about another lose dealt to Joe and Cameron (and the ghost of Gordon) because this show is as much about tech as is it about losing or never quite making it. It really becomes a question of how do they pick up the pieces and move on this time? Donna touches it this later in her speech-slash-public-apology, but it was never about the work, it was always about the people and that’s very much Halt and Catch Fire’s message, too.
Trevor: A lot of “Search” isn’t even about ideas, it’s about the idea of ideas. (This is expanded upon in “Ten of Swords.”) Alexa takes Cameron to the Sorbonne to check out some robotics, hoping it will spur her imagination. At the same time, Cameron is considering the possibility of working with Donna again. It’s always “what if” with these people, Cameron and Joe especially. Basically, this is a show that is almost 100% people talking to each other, and it’s riveting.
Margaux: Alexa basically wore Cameron’s patience on how much ideation she can take over the course of two months in Europe. That break up was even more inevitable than Cameron and Joe’s. Alexa, kind of like Joe, is in love with the idea of talking about potentially-groundbreaking ideas, but has no interest in doing any work besides what amounts to shooting the shit.
Trevor: Storming out of a car in Europe was very on-brand for Cameron. As was her decision to leave for Florida under the pretense of seeing her mother. But it gave “Ten of Swords” a good pretext for a goodbye tour, and it came as no surprise that the episode was very Donna and Cameron heavy. They’ve always been this show’s not-so-secret power couple.
Margaux: Female friendship saved this show from becoming another bullshit white male anti-hero story. So I’d say it’s not that secret. It took all season, but Donna and Cameron getting back together was where this was always going anyway. To watch team up to save Haley’s computer felt like season two all over again, and I’m sure that’s no mistake. As much a literal goodbye tour our characters were on, the subtext played a greatest hits of emotions from seasons past. You really hit the nail earlier when you said HaCF has a long emotional history. It plays throughout the two hours.
Trevor: Exactly, especially when you see that Donna has renamed the company Symphonic Ventures. She’s definitely setting herself up as the cool boss, and it seems to be paying off. And it leads to that wonderful middle third, set at the dinner party. If there were any justice in the world, that speech would be Kerry Bishe’s Emmy reel.
Margaux: It’s funny you call Donna a cool boss because I wrote in my notes that “Donna is finally the cool boss she’s always wanted to be.” Even before Haley has her computer meltdown, Donna’s house might be last stop for Cameron before Carson City, but it doesn’t seem like she’s exactly in a rush to hit the road. Oh, but before we get Donna’s women in tech mixer, what’d you think about Joe ditching out of town?
Trevor: I thought it was as expected as Cameron’s intent to do the same. Cameron had more purpose, whereas Joe is seemingly on this Quixotic quest to find…something. It wasn’t at IBM, it wasn’t at Cardiff, and it wasn’t at Comet. Spoiler alert, I like where he ends up, but I think he was really shaken by his encounter with an old colleague. “I can’t wait to see what you do next, Joe” sounds like an insult. Joe isn’t the guy who has done things, he’s the guy who is always doing something. Beyond that, I’m glad we got a Carol Kane cameo out of it.
Margaux: To be honest, I didn’t even realize we hadn’t checked on Joe for most of “Ten of Swords” until the very end. And, if I may submit one critical point against the finale, I agree with most of the internet, the last scene should’ve been Donna rushing outside to tell Cameron, “I’ve got an idea.” Not Professor Joe. It bummed me out, like do we really have to end it with this dude? Donna and Cameron getting excited about their next big idea, and leaving it open ended so it could literally be anything, felt more hopeful than the direct callback to the first season.
Trevor: I agree with you there. I think being a Humanities professor is a good fit for Joe (it’s mostly just talking about ideas, after all), but Kerry Bishe said “I have an idea” with such perfection and believability that I nearly stood up and cheered. That would be my only critique as well.
Margaux: As soon as Donna blurted out that she had a new idea, I immediately thought, “oohh, is it the Blackberry?”
Trevor: I thought her idea was the iPod, because she had just been looking at a jukebox.
Margaux: Or a Zune.
I felt that cutting back to east coast Joe, literally finding his humanity, undercut the impact of Donna and Cameron. But I don’t want to dwell too long on my grievance especially since this season and much of this show has been as perfect as TV can get. The scene where Donna and Cameron go back to the Mutiny building and look back on their shared past and talk through a future work-life cycle together, Phoenix, was a beautifully acted and shot sequence; the Phoenix light bulb above their head was a perfect illustration.
Trevor: Yep, no real notes on that one, it was pretty much a perfect couple minutes of television. I find it wonderful that a show that started out as something of a Mad Men clone pivoted so excellently and became a show about individuality, teamwork, ideas – a show that should inspire other writers and actors. I hope it does, because we need more shows like this. Halt and Catch Fire never became the enormous hit it should have, but at least it got to go out on its own terms, and at least it did so magnificently. Is there anything you want to touch on, or should we talk stars? You know the drill, episode, then season, then series.
Margaux: I think there are two things you should accomplish in order to have a satisfying finale, you want to tie up loose ends and also leave room for hope. “Search” and “Ten of Swords” did exactly that, there are a few minor quibbles, but I can’t quite hear them over the tears. It was an awesome ride, and I’m glad we stuck with this show, it has been one of the more fulfilling television experiences and hope it’s lasting legacy will be always choose people over the work.
“Search / “Ten of Swords” score: 5/5
Halt and Catch Fire season 4 score: 5/5
Halt and Catch Fire series score: 5/5
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