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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)

#321

Post by jhbadger »

ai_critic wrote: post #70
tptacek wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Season 1 is Soul of a New Machine-ish, but about personal computing, not minicomputers, and is set in Texas. Season 2 is roughly about BBSs and Compuserve, and still in Texas. Season 3 is about the early commercial Internet, same characters, SFBA. Season 4 is about the Yahoo era of the Internet and about venture capital, also SFBA.

The problem with it is that it is ahistorical enough in the tech that some things just don't work. The show tackles stuff about like a decade before it was actually relevant in market, and that has subtle problems that give the business stuff an uncanny-valley feel. Still a fun drama though.

It also annoyed me that the Commodore 64s used for their online service were shown with DOS prompts. I think the set designers thought "Commodore 64s are old; old computers ran DOS; therefore Commodore 64s ran DOS"

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

#322

Post by gorjusborg »

esafak wrote: post #64
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…

Lee Pace is a first rate actor but I could not recognize him or indeed, most of the characters in this show, as representative of their roles. I struggled to suspend my disbelief. The show felt like it was written by people who imagined what it must have been like rather than people who had any experience of it. I still enjoyed it somewhat. Not Silicon Valley good but okay.

I really liked the show despite Lee Pace's performance.

Pace really nails the intense Jobs vibe, but having seen his other work, it seems like it might not be 100% acting. There's consistency to the off feeling he gives across roles.

Gordon's role was probably the most setting accurate, but I do feel the story would have suffered if the entire cast was realistic to 80s standards rather than translated into late-2010s sensibilities.

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

#323

Post by bahmboo »

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…

Maybe I should watch a full episode but this clip doesn't sell -me- on it. Heavy handed and a bit phony. Great talent in these scenes, not directed or crafted for my tastes. I'm saying my feelings not downvoting!

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

#324

Post by paulryanrogers »

anon84873628 wrote: post #317
telesilla wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's also extraordinary in Apple's Foundation, some say he carries the show. I treasure The Fall and every frame of it, in this he's uniquely blended with other great actors and images.

IMO the plot of Apple's "The Foundation" is an infuriating insult to the original series. However, the production is great and Lee Pace is awesome as usual.

I kind of love it when movies/TV don't follow the books too closely. It means more content in a world I enjoy without repeating too much.

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

#325

Post by hackeraccount »

latexr wrote: post #245
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.

I watched the first episode or so and that was it for me. I don't remember it being super grim but it was too depressing and ominous for me.

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

#326

Post by sph »

robot_jesus wrote: post #243
tptacek wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

If you like Patriot, you might enjoy Mr Inbetween. It's one of my favourite shows ever. Different story, same level of dark comedy, with a heaping dose of Aussie humour.

If you want something more American, the show for you is Barry.

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

#327

Post by alt227 »

johnnyfived wrote: post #103
dakolli wrote: post #98

I just tried to watch this show because someone told me its the next best tech show after Silicon Valley, and the second season is by far some of the worst storytelling and acting I've ever seen on a screen, I don't think I'll be finishing the show. I really don't understand why people are so into it.

The first season is pretty taut, then the follow-up seasons suffer from every character being at the center of every big thing in tech for narrative purposes, which is to its detriment imo.

This is my opinion too. I loved the first season, but after that it felt silly making the same people invent basically everything in the computer world.

However it seems most people liked it the other way around.

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

#328

Post by skeeter2020 »

This show started to get so strong into season 1 and season 2, then completely lost it for me and went full soap opera. Seems super-common for new series; they (rightfully) don't put a lot of effort into future episodes of a show that's unlikely to last beyond the first, and run out of the motivating material. In the 80's/90's sitcom this was the "have a baby" storyline; on the grittier cable series it's focus on the broken characters and lots of sex.

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

#329

Post by quesera »

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?

> Whether something sounds like a human, a book, or a language model doesn’t really affect whether the behavior it describes exists.

It matters.

> the hardest thing to scale is not software. It is trust.

For example: Is this your sincerely held belief, the conclusion of all of the preceding words, and the point you were trying to express?

Because it reads, superficially, like shallow self-help pablum.

If you want your readers to differentiate these words from those words, you at least owe them the assurance that you've thought this through, and are willing to defend this idea.

If this is your own idea, it might be worth some consideration beyond its superficial presentation. If this is the output of an LLM trained on shallow observations and presentation style, it is not worth consideration.

Why, and for whom, do you publish?

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

#330

Post by SubiculumCode »

metamet wrote: post #81
Slow_Hand wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny that this came up today. Last night I started re-watching the series after several years. Just this afternoon I was reflecting on how genuinely charismatic Lee Pace's Joe McMillen is. You really feel it. Even when we know he's a manipulative sonuvabitch. It's mesmerizing. You have to admire his ability to spin shit into gold. The man has vision. There's a sequence around S01E07 that I'm looking forward to reach…

You're making me really want to start a rewatch. It's shocking how few people have seen this show, let along watched it. Part of that probably has to do with how inaccessible it is on streaming. It's only readily available on AMC+. And no one has AMC+. This is one of those shows that would likely shoot to the top if Netflix got the rights to it and even did a mild push. It's genuinely peak prestige TV.

It used to be available as part of Prime. I've watched that series 3 times. It is very good..one of my all time faves, actually.
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