“The Way In” was another solid episode for halt and catch fire. Joe is still struggling with his post-Cardiff lifestyle, Donna and Gordon are adjusting to their role reversals and Cameron is freaking out about her business going up in flames. But the most striking part of the episode was not the “Nightmare on nerd street” line. It was John Bosworth being forced out of his sons wedding reception because he is an ex-con. Without any context, that sounds bad but once he reads his toast to his son in a dimly light parking lot, it was downright heartbreaking. Leaving his car to his son seems like a nice pause to that plot point but Bosworth’s story just keeps getting sadder and sadder.
Last week the brilliant rude hacker Tom showed up, and gave Cameron some pointers on how she should run her company, this week was plastered all over Cameron’s struggle. At first he was rude and abrasive talking about how boring and monotonous Parallax has become. And the next thing you know he’s talking her out of a panic attack. That’s the point we get to see why he joined this company at all. Going off very little we would just ask why is this asshole even working here if he hates the game so much. But seeing him open up about how he fell in love with the game was a nice eye opener for Tom. Granted he could be nicer about it.
“Father of the year”
Gordon and Donna have been hard working parents and brilliant technicians their entire life. But its starting to annoy me that these kids keep getting mentioned, and then we never see them. There are no consequences for these children. In my opinion, fewer kids on screen the better but apparently these kids are just figments of their imagination. With that nitpick out of the way, Donna made a splash last year by fixing Cameron’s (Joe’s) problem, she swooped in and recovered the data that they thought was lost. That was the similar set up here for Gordon. He’s putting all his time and effort into this program to help Donna. Because what else does he have to do. And that backfires in his face as it then destroys everything Cameron, Donna, and those sweaty little nerds, have been spending all this time with. It was funny to see Gordon try to defend himself through Donna to Cameron and then have that blow up in his face too but something tells me we don’t know the whole story yet. For a while I suspected Tom was the one who destroyed everything so that they wouldn’t update Parallax but who knows maybe Gordon is really at fault.
As for Joe, he finally felt connected to this story, maybe in a minimal way but at least he’s on everybody’s mind. The scene with Donna and Gordon trying to decide what Joe’s Fiance might look like was a great contrast to the idea that Joe has changed so much over the years. He lives in a tiny apartment with a mild meager wife. And makes almost no money doing his basement job. It’s a healthier trajectory for Joe, but the cunning and sly Joe is what I miss. And as he said he wants this over what happened at Cardiff, it’s a fascinating turn that hasn’t come to fruition just yet, but we did see the seeds of some scheme get planted in that final scene.
Happy go lucky joe
Donna has become a very fun character to watch and, for the most part, is the protagonist of the show. Cameron is bold and defiant but annoyingly so at time. Joe went from undercutting to scheming again. And Gordon is a f*ck up. But Donna seems just to love what she is doing. Sure she’s burning the candle at both ends but she made her decision after Cameron berated her and almost left. She came back in the house and offered to help. She genuinely wants this business to do well when she doesn’t need it too. It’s tough to ask the show to pick it up because things have been going at a steady pace for a while, but something major needs to happen. Character moments are great, but we need some progress for characters like Joe and Gordon to happen.
