‘Halt and Catch Fire’ season 2, episode 6 review: Broadband appeal
Is anyone on “Halt and Catch Fire” not self-destructive in some way? Joe MacMillan ended last season by burning a truck full of his own computers, and tonight Cameron wanted to rebel against Joe and Jacob Wheeler’s company so much over new terms that she deliberately tried to deceive him.
The irony this time around is that with this deception, Cameron may have been able to create an entirely new path to the future for her company, one where she and her team utilize broadband in the place of a convention modem. Her fake out actually contained such advanced technology that they could pave the way for the future, which is why Joe told Wheeler at the end of the episode that if they were smart, they would acquire Mutiny as soon as possible. It was such a brilliant, surprising left turn, and one that could very much turn the entire world of the show on its head. We couldn’t be more thrilled about it at the moment.
The story of Gordon tonight was a particularly interesting one, mostly because what we saw here was an attempt by him to set himself free of the world … in pretty much the worst way imaginable. He thought that it would actually be a benefit to him to go out to the middle of nowhere with a woman from his past while on a trip to spend time with his brother. What happened? They slept together, and then he proceeded to go on and tell her more or less his entire life’s story at the moment, including his present diagnosis and how afraid he is that his brain is starting to slowly go berserk. She realized eventually what he was doing (using her to dump off his emotions), and that was the end of it.
Ultimately, what we learned tonight is that everyone is trying to bury their problems away in their work to varying degrees of success. We feel for many of them, yet at the same time we question them. This is a show and an episode that kept us constantly unnerved, which in turn reminded us of its brilliance. Grade: A-.
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