‘Halt and Catch Fire’ season 3 spoilers: On new-found responsibility

The third season of “Halt and Catch Fire” is coming to AMC on Tuesday night with two episodes, and based on what we’ve seen of it so far, it’s incredibly enjoyable — not that this is much of a surprise, given that this show has perpetually been in our eyes one of the most consistent scripted series out there. It’s smart, funny at times, but also deeply dramatic and dark at others. It doesn’t have the extremely subtlety of a “Mad Men,” but we do think that if you opened it up and looked at the parts, they’d share some of the same motherboard.

The most apparent difference between this upcoming season and the two before it is that we’re no longer in Texas. The setting’s shifted over to Silicon Valley, and Mutiny will be reaping many of its rewards from the jump this time around. They’ve found some success! Yet, at the same time, that is far from the end of the struggle. There are new motivations, and also realities that if you fail now, there is even more of a burden put upon you. These ideas are something that Mackenzie Davis (Cameron) sets up in an interview with Entertainment Weekly setting up the season:

“I think, for some of us, it feeds this desire for more power and more ambition, and for others, the reality of the life you dreamt of is less powerful than the dream was … Cameron can no longer abandon the project or go and do something else if this no longer stimulates her. I think the weight of this responsibility is welcome, and feels like important growth, but it’s also deeply uncomfortable.”

Whatever direction the story goes in, we’re excited for what happens. Through two seasons, “Halt and Catch Fire” has given us the ability to trust the process and turn off as much of our critic-brain as possible. That’s important if you are ever to analyze a series fully.