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Halt and Catch Fire: TV’s best drama you’ve probably never heard of (2021)

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Re: Halt and Catch Fire: TV’s best drama you’ve probably never heard of (2021)

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider just fast-forwarding past a scene you can't handle. Like many shows, it takes a few episodes before the actors truly understand their characters. The feeling you're experiencing has a name: it's called "cringe". I can't watch Frasier for more than about half an episode because of it. Or I Love Lucy... same problem. But Seinfeld, which has plenty of the same humour mechanic, always seems to manage to stay jus…

Idk man, the entire second season gives me that feeling of embarrassment, I couldn't finish the show. The first season was alright, but honestly the second season is some of the cheesiest/worst storytelling/acting I've ever seen.

We're in the minority, but I'm with you. It felt like in the first season, the tech and era took center stage to the point it was accurate enough to be an enjoyable element of the show. After that, they just wanted to rush and touch on different eras and the tech and eras were no longer the center stage. However, the stories were too cringey and couldn't carry it. And I'm just not a fan of Lee Pace. His deliver is one-dimensional.

Re: Halt and Catch Fire: TV’s best drama you’ve probably never heard of (2021)

#193

As someone who lived through that era, I couldn't watch it. A deep sense of uncanny valley. The 97% that they got completely right was ruined by the 3% that that they got wildly wrong. Often senslessly so. Stuff that a technical consultant would have caught in an instant. I did rather enjoy the way that they captured the manic energy of the generation of dirtbag sales and marketing people that drove the PC industry i…

I hear you. After the first season, the tech and industry was just a backdrop, and I couldn't get into because the rest of it was pretty weak.

I had the same feeling but the opposite outcome with Silicon Valley. Growing up in Palo Alto, it took me a while to figure out if I was enjoying this show because it was genuinely funny or if it was just because it hit the absurdity of the time and place so well.

Re: Halt and Catch Fire: TV’s best drama you’ve probably never heard of (2021)

#196
post #165
post #19

It's quite good, but it gets very Six Feet Under by the end, and you have to suspend a lot of disbelief about technology; it's a little like Hackers in the sense that it's trying to communicate a feeling about operating in specific eras of computing, but not so much trying to realistically depict what it was like. Christopher Cantwell, the showrunner, is also doing the new series of The Terror (aka North Pole Bear Sh…

A new The Terror? The one that came out some years ago was incredible, and very under-discussed I think.

The first one, the one based on the book, was great and did fly a good deal under the radar. But definitely one of those ones with a core fanbase that evangelized for it and good critical notices. Elsewhere in this discussion Jared Harris's role in Foundation has been mentioned; he's a major, consistent, and excellent fixture in The Terror.

Since they used the book's story already, they made a turn for the series to be an anthology of loosely thematically-similar stories (think American Horror Story). The basic setting of season 2 is Japanese internment during World War II in America, and it's from different writers than the first, and of course isn't adapting the novel anymore. It was much less popular both in terms of viewers and critics.

I'm a little surprised they think the brand still carries enough power to put another original story in there under its name for a season 3. It's also a bit of a double-edged sword: you do get name recognition and some built-in initial audience, but you're also taking on expectations and baggage from the original. This is a factor in season 2's tepid reception, and there have been other similar attempts to slide something unrelated in under an existing banner that backfired: True Detective Night Country comes to mind.

Re: Halt and Catch Fire: TV’s best drama you’ve probably never heard of (2021)

#197

As someone who lived through that era, I couldn't watch it. A deep sense of uncanny valley. The 97% that they got completely right was ruined by the 3% that that they got wildly wrong. Often senslessly so. Stuff that a technical consultant would have caught in an instant. I did rather enjoy the way that they captured the manic energy of the generation of dirtbag sales and marketing people that drove the PC industry i…

> ruined by the 3% that that they got wildly wrong.

Please tell us about it! I always thought it's more of a 50-50 (it's an American series anyway), but I was only a kid back then, so I would be very interested to hear your complaints!

Re: Halt and Catch Fire: TV’s best drama you’ve probably never heard of (2021)

#199
I started watching this and was genuinely interested, but I kinda got tired of all the drama around the stuff I actually found interesting. I know that for a general audience, you need to pad technical stuff with scenes of the tech screwing the business guy, but I just wanted the computers!

Re: Halt and Catch Fire: TV’s best drama you’ve probably never heard of (2021)

#200

HACF is a goodie but there's a lot of great shows no one's heard of. In an effort to sing the song of underappreciated works of greatness... Patriot - a CIA hitman who writes folk songs about his exploits imdb.com/title/tt4687882/ Counterpart - not a multiverse, just a biverse imdb.com/title/tt4643084/ Scavengers Reign - Robinson Crusoe by way of a nature documentary of a very bizarre alien planet. imdb.com/title/tt2…

Station Eleven. Wouldn't have made it past a few episodes if I didn't know how good Mackenzie Davis was from watching HCF 1000 times. I stuck through a few things I didn't care for at first, now it will probably remain my favorite show of all time.
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