Trevor: I think what I’m enjoying most about Halt and Catch Fire’s final season is the sense of discovery. This is a huge story told on a very intimate scale, and it occurred to me while watching “Tonya and Nancy” that this show has had the same core ensemble for four seasons now (the only impactful characters to be added later were Tom and Diane). So what Christopers Cantwell and Rogers are doing – really well, I might add – is showing us, through the eyes of five people, the dawn of a new civilization. That might sound grandiose, or hyperbolic, but I think we can both agree that the Internet really is a civilization of its own. That’s not a new, or even particularly trenchant, point to make, but it’s a roundabout way for me to say that HaCF this season reminds me of Deadwood, which I mean as an enormous compliment.
Margaux: There’s something incredibly exciting to watch a story about beginning of Internet that isn’t just, “remember GeoCities??!” Halt and Catch Fire caught a lot of shit in its first season for trying to be like Mad Men, and they’ve definitely done a lot of work since then to become their own distinct show, but one they still share trait (and just as well). using seminal cultural events to frame their smaller, character advancement. I mean, finally, a break from tech talk and a step into my wheelhouse, figure skating. And even though they could quickly take the Tonya and Nancy subplot and blow it out to be this good vs evil storyline between Rover and Comet, they don’t. I’m going to miss this show so much when it’s over.
Trevor: One aspect I really liked about “Tonya and Nancy” was Cameron as this freewheeling, unwitting agent of chaos. After Pilgrim was canceled, she’s having, in her words, an early midlife crisis, and it makes sense that if she can’t solve her trailer problem, she can help Bos solve his search algorithm problem. This season is heading towards a very ugly confrontation between all or most of our main characters, and the fact that HaCF can have that albatross hanging over its neck and still manage to produce moments of levity (like Gordon’s surprising prowess at pool) is a tough balancing act.
Margaux: I’d rather have it all come crashing down with Cameron at the center than Hayley. They smartly sidestepped any parent-child tension between Donna and Hayley by letting them just fucking live their damn lives. Donna is clearly immensely proud of her daughter who is very much in her element at Comet, finally finding her voice to stand up to asshole sister and winning golden surfboard awards. But back to Cameron, she has a sweet off the grid set up, but how long will that last till she drives herself to boredom? Besides, Joe can barely fit in that Airstream trailer (the man is a goddamn giant), and by his own admission, he hates it out there.
Trevor: Cameron is going to go nuts out there; hell, I was going nuts watching her (there was a terrific cut, of Cameron on the ground covered in mud, to Donna drinking wine in her nice house). It’s going to come out that she gave Cecil the code for Rover. This doesn’t end well, I don’t think, and even though Bos is “officially giving them the benefit of the doubt,” I don’t see HaCF ending with Cameron and Joe riding off into the sunset. But weirdly enough, this is the most I’ve ever wanted them to. I know neither of us are super gung-ho about the two of them, but they’re approaching this not as an affair but as a relationship, and it makes them both more adult and likable.
Margaux: You can practically see the flop sweat pouring off Cecil’s face when Donna confronts him about the algorithm. Sucks that Cecil is such a facsimile of a shitty engineer that his main function, and all that we know of him, is that he sucks at his job. But hey, if that’s what we have to sacrifice to get to the point, then so be it, he’s a pawn. What is most disconcerting is Boz, who is still in debt (Tonya handling his AOL acquiring pitch like goddamn pro, she could’ve thrown him under the bus a dozen times, but doesn’t, reaffirming that SHE wants to work as a team, not Boz) and lying to Diane about it, is definitely desperate times mode which is really what’s fueling the early combustion of Rover.
Trevor: Toby Huss is turning in such great work this season and we never really talk about it that much. It would be easy for him to play Bos as desperate or manipulative, and he is definitely both of those things, but since we also get scenes like him fixing Cameron’s water line, we never lose sight of the fact that this is a decent man in over his head. Also, there’s a wonderful visual metaphor for character growth, when he and Tonya go out to get sushi. I just love the idea of Bos, with his shitkicker accent, ordering uni. Never would have pictured that from him back in season one.
Margaux: Oddly, the scene I enjoyed the most was between Joe and Gordon, shooting the shit and shooting some pool. It’s refreshing to see them working together, happily; both on the same page for fucking once. What do you think about Anna Chlumsky joining the Comet team? I’m sure her death metal monologue is about to blow up on the audition scene if actors have any sense.
Trevor: I loved that opening scene too. One of the first notes I took was how much I appreciated that they can go back to being friends now. Their relationship is so thorny, which makes it really enjoyable when they can just hang out and shoot the shit.
And, hell yes to Anna Chlumsky. I feel off the Veep train, but I love her energy and delivery. Her death metal monologue was hysterical (“folk metal, industrial metal, barely metal”); it felt like the shrimp monologue from Forrest Gump. She disappeared from the episode for a while, but she helped engender one of my favorite scenes not just in the episode but maybe in the whole series, which was the indexing competition. It sounds boring on paper, but goddamn was it fun to watch.
Margaux: The impending romance between her and Gordon is about as subtle as a piano falling, and I don’t quite know how much of a fan I’ll be if her sole function is to show up and fall in love with Gordon before he (probably) dies. Time will tell. “Tonya and Nancy” felt like a lot of artful set up for the rest of the season, like you’re at the top of the roller coaster and you think you can see your car in the parking lot. My absolute favorite part of the whole episode was the very end, probably the best (and weirdly not at all infuriating) cut to black usage on AMC ever. It’s just Joe, ranting and raving at Cameron about the crawl Rover recently deployed, and as he sounds like he’s about to gear up to give a dissertation, that’s it. The episode is over. Fucking brilliant.
Trevor: When that cut happened, I said, out loud, by myself, “Oh hell yes.” At its best, Halt and Catch Fire just makes you excited about TV as a medium. You want to talk stars?
YUP. Much like the competing teams at Rover and Comet, we’re building towards something very exciting, and also, terribly sad because we know they won’t quite become Google or even Ask Jeeves, but what will they become and what will they mean to other when it’s all over? When you care about every single character, those are very interesting questions.
4/5
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