Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

sceneandheardnu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 408 posts

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

#241

Post by companycalls »

hola-tamale wrote: post #177
airstrike wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's got nothing to do with liking it or not. This is ChatGPT: > The masterpiece quality of Halt and Catch Fire lies in how precisely it shows the zero-sum reflex at work. > Disagreement becomes disrespect. > Respect becomes status. > Status becomes survival. > When Cameron’s game doesn’t align with business strategy, it isn’t a tactical debate; it’s an assault on her identity. When Joe pivots the company without con…

Whether something sounds like a human, a book, or a language model doesn’t really affect whether the behavior it describes exists. The claim is simple: in creative orgs, disagreements often escalate into identity conflicts because people map ideas to self-worth. Halt and Catch Fire portrays that escalation pretty clearly. If that doesn’t resonate, what has your experience looked like instead?

If the claim is simple, why didn't you just state that, what is the AI Generated nonsense prose adding to anything? Prompting an LLM with 'Write me an essay linking Halt and Catch Fire to the idea that in creative orgs disagreements often escalate into identity conflicts because people map ideas to self-worth.' then pasting that into a substack is low-effort slop, embarrassing to post; embarassing to read.

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

#242

Post by latexr »

J_Shelby_J wrote: post #95
caycecan wrote: post #84

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…

Scavengers reign is from the same people as common side effects. Both shows are amazing.

> Scavengers reign is from the same people as common side effects.

In case it matters to someone, the order is reverse. As in, Scavengers Reign came before. Also, be aware it wasn’t renewed for a second season. But it absolutely deserved it, just not enough people knew about it.

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

#243

Post by robot_jesus »

tptacek wrote: post #119
caycecan wrote: post #84

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…

Patriot is amazing, more people should watch it, everyone I know who has was enthralled by it. Counterpart was great but structure made it hard for to watch knowing it'd been cancelled. Scavengers Reign was great; I couldn't get into Common Side Effects. Evil is exactly the Catholic X-Files, which is an amazing concept, but by the end of the 2nd season it is all the way off the rails and hurtling into a canyon. Given…

Patriot is my single favorite show of all time. I absolutely adore it and every preposterous, absurd line.

So many quotable moments. Vantasner Danger Meridian. Structural Dynamics of Flow. The attaché badge.

So many phenomenal scenes. I’m not surprised it didn’t get more traction with the general public but it was unafraid to take some serious and weird risks. But they pay off in spades for me!

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

#244

Post by latexr »

shinycode wrote: post #168
rerdavies wrote: post #155

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…

It’s very hard to capture everything in such an era. Maybe they made other choices that aligned with the fiction they were writing. It’s not a documentary. And TV shows can’t capture as much as books. The show successfully gives enough to people to haven’t lived in that era. It’s an amazing show.

Exactly. Chernobyl is an amazing show too, even if Ulana Khomyuk is a composite character instead of a real historical person.

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

#245

Post by latexr »

caycecan wrote: post #84

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…

> Scavengers Reign

For those curious, start by watching the 8 minute short which originated it all. If it hooks you, you’ll love the show.

https://vimeo.com/179779722

But be aware the show wasn’t renewed for a second season. Not enough people knew about it.

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

#246

Post by snapetom »

clydethefrog wrote: post #239
snapetom wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I remember the writers of SV actually somehow had to tone down the ridiculousness of the SV setting. See this quote from The New Yorker [0]: >“His [Teller, working for Google] message was, ‘We don’t do stupid things here. We do things that actually are going to change the world, whether you choose to make fun of that or not.’ >Teller ended the meeting by standing up in a huff, but his attempt at a dramatic exit was m…

I not only 100% believe this, but I'm not sure I'd be able to muster a snicker at it due to all the similarly ridiculous things I've experienced.

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

#247

Post by raffael_de »

danielvaughn wrote: post #3

Lee Pace's performance in that show is one of my all time favorites. It's incredibly hard to play a charismatic marketing guru because in some sense, you're not acting. In a given scene, the character might be trying to convince people around him of some crazy idea, but if he hasn't convinced you, the viewer, then the entire illusion falls apart. So he really has to do in real life what he's pretending to do on scree…

I have Lee Pace on the radar since Singh's The Fall.

Your assessment of movie magic is only partially correct. Obviously, a character has to be convincing by himself but the heavy lifting of the illusion is done by the peer characters acting as if they believe the role he plays.

"The king is always played by the others"

Not sure who is to credit for this quote but in my opinion it is one of the most important insights to understand how movies work and also why movie characters are never relevant role models.

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

#248

Post by snapetom »

vidarh wrote: post #234
snapetom wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've only visited Palo Alto, but I recognised way too many aspects of that series from various VC startups. Up to and including the startup I was apart of that had offices in a bedroom in a house in Atherton for a while, and the craziness around Techcrunch (which was incidentally started out of the bedroom next to "ours" in that house in Atherton).

There is a scene in the first season where they're all on a bus and Gilfoyle sees a middle aged woman on a bike waiting for a light. The soliloquy was so random and not even funny, but fit so well. That woman was basically every middle aged woman neighbor of mine.

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

#249

Post by losthobbies »

caycecan wrote: post #84

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…

Rubicon I always add Rubicon to these types of lists. Amazing spy series.

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

#250

Post by postexitus »

rerdavies wrote: post #155

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…

It is fiction. Not meant to be a documentary. You have liberties as an artist to tell a compelling story - and boy did they do it.
Post reply on HN