I’ll be honest I didn’t expect this show to be back. I enjoyed the first season, and I love the characters, but it just seemed as if nobody knew that this show existed. With that said I’m glad to see this show back in an entirely different setting with at least for this episode entirely different leads. Last year Halt and Catch Fire was all about building the next great computer. And this year set the tone with some new steaks. Donna and Cameron are trying to build a gaming company out of a makeshift house with a bunch of rowdy nerds. And Joe has apparently moved on after burning a truck full of computers and living in the woods. While Gordon may have a bit of a drug problem. but he’s watching the kids while Donna is stealing from criminals.
Donna stood out this week; she’s always been an interesting character simply because she’s the coding and tech-centered wife of Gordon. But moving out on her own with Donna and trying to run a lawless company is a fun transformation for her. A lot of the time she had to keep the peace between the rambunctious fellow “Employees” and you could see all this get to her as she said “I don’t want to be the mom here.” when that seems like it’s a big part of her role that she’s carved out for herself. Seeing her getting drunk with Cameron while Gordon sits at home eating ice cream with his daughters was a funny twist on a few scenes last year. Speaking of Cameron it was fun to see her and Donna interact without the guys around.
“Can you code in chinese?”
The scene of the two talking in the bar about intimidation was excellent, showing off that Cameron wears her intimidation proudly like a badge. And watching them get ripped off beforehand by the obviously shady man in a shady looking van was a tense scene especially since he started hitting on Donna. But the exclamation point to all of that was when the ladies stole back what they had been ripped off, and Donna shouted back out the window, “You still want my number!” It will be a fun arc for these two women to see them either crumble or rise in this burgeoning business.
The two men toke a backseat to the ladies this week, and Joe seems to have changed the most out of the four main protagonists. And apparently he’s getting married, to some women we’ve never met but the bonfire scene was a nice if not obvious way to catch us up. From the Moment Joe walked into Cardiff to get his check, you could tell something wasn’t going to go as planned. He did have a nice moment with Gordon and talked about him vanishing but when Nathan Cardiff exploded on him you could tell that Joe had changed, the Joe of old would’ve said something snarky and cut him off. And while he did come back at Cardiff with a line about the future, its seems as if there is no more ruthless Joe from last year, or maybe he will build back to that by the end of the season, hopefully not for his fiance’s sake.
“so no hard feelings for burning this company to the ground?”
Gordon probably had the weaker of the three plots this week, mainly because he’s lost. He doesn’t know what to do with his life anymore. The scene of him and Joe in the elevator was nice, but ultimately that’s Joe’s scene. It’s him we see devastated by his past, not Gordon. But Gordon did have the best line of the week talking to his kids “You never want to get just one elephant” but that scene eventually lead us to his weird nose bleed. But you can defiantly tell that Gordon feels a bit sick, and a bit underwhelmed by the PC he helped create or at least underwhelmed by what comes next.
Bosworth Coming back is not a surprise he was an excellent character from season one, and I can’t wait to see what kind of shenanigans he brings to Cameron and Donna’s venture. There is a lot to look for this coming season on Halt and Catch Fire, Joe wants to move out West, Donna and Cameron plan on running a company, and Gordon needs to find purpose. With Cardiff in the rear view mirror, this show could go anyway it wants. Online Gaming and the Internet are big dogs to this season, and as long as these characters are going to take us there it should be an interesting trip through 1985.
