I remember picking up the show quite a few years ago, but for some strange reason I decided to stop watching it, perhaps as a result of just piling on so many other films and television shows that just took reign and slowly phased out Halt and Catch Fire; I'm not entirely sure why I stopped watching it around the second season, but revisiting the show during quarantine has had me real appreciate its uniqueness yet again.
Halt and Catch Fire is a show, a show about technology. Displaying the boom of the home computer in the 80s and then the innovative rise of the Internet in the 90s. Though, Halt and Catch Fire isn't really about the rise of such technology, it's about the very human sacrifice of a group of friends that worked together to create such innovations, as the result of attempting to bring the world together through that technology causes the very complex breakdowns of their relationships that led to them creating in the first place.
Halt and Catch Fire's star is no singular individual, it's a show that moves from one person to another, providing depth to each character as the show's events shift and spiral into new outcomes and issues; each character is given an exceptional amount of time to flourish, as it's evident where they stand on any given issue and their reasons for being where they are. It becomes very evident that there's a very human core to the harsh and manipulative startup world. Using this, Halt and Catch Fire takes into consideration realistic approaches to real-world events within its narrative, forming a greater scale of significance and stakes at hand.
With great character development comes excellent writing, and with excellent writing comes a perfect cast and set of filmmakers. Halt and Catch Fire's world feels incredibly authentic. It doesn't thrive on the thought of nostalgia, despite the endless connections to an era long gone. It's carefully crafted to display the 80s and 90s in a manner that feels like its factual. As if you're peering back in time. Each scene is perfected with amazing lighting, cinematography and setting always compliments the space in which the characters unravel. A character sits in a dimly-lit office in their home, their surroundings covered with various books, pieces of hardware, and the faint glow of a Commodore 64, a beige keyboard fills the desk space, each punching of a key given its own weight and significance within the exploration of ideas within the show.
Everything is crafted to perfection. And Halt and Catch Fire knows it's both an ode to the birth of something huge, and an exploration of the struggles and pain it causes. As the show progresses, we see a beautiful amount of passion for the world of technology from its characters, and we witness the ways it begins to poison them, as their own agendas take over, as the manipulative world of financing enters and turns people against each other and the technology is no longer the focus: money is. Success finds the characters, but the cost isn't a question, it's in front of us the entire time. However, despite the ways the characters disconnect, and their agendas push them away from one-another, they fall back on each other every time.
What does this say exactly? Well, a lot: this group of characters may be manipulative, cold, fueled by greed or passion, but they know what they want and how to get it. And with each season focusing on a different era or character's own development within the boom of computing, there's a fundamental reason for the group to come back to each other and get something done. It's rare to see this type of development within a show, in which characters are blatantly bad people when given a reason to be, but the humanity within remains. Ultimately, that's what Halt and Catch Fire is about: the humanity of an individual with a strong passion for something. Characters see they are weak and have different agendas, but manage to put such differences aside to focus on what's important.
It's rare to see such a show, one that's faithful to its time period, that focuses on technology in a way that explores it at a human level, and not just the financial side in which everyone's a genius that gets stupidly rich. It's a love-letter to technology, but one that fully acknowledges the sacrifices made to bring it where it is today. It's riddled with passion both by the filmmakers, and the writing; it truly understands the space its creating and the story it told. I'll definitely miss it.
