Halt and Catch Fire, Season 1, Episode 5: “Adventure”
Directed by Ed Bianchi
Written by Dahvi Waller
Airs Sundays at 10pm EST on AMC
It’s possible that my expectations have been lowered significantly after five weeks of watching Halt and Catch Fire, but this episode is really entertaining. In the last decade, AMC has built its brand on “quality” television, producing shows dealing with difficult characters and complicated themes. But what if this show is actually a soap opera and everybody involved is starting to figure that out? And I’m not trying to disparage Halt and Catch Fire by labeling it that way. I just mean that the joy of this kind of show relies on anticipating what the characters do, not exploring why they do it. With skilled writers and charismatic actors, this type of TV can be compelling, even addictive. I fell in love with television on Monday nights after middle school watching Melrose Place. I delighted in watching those characters fight and sleep with and backstab each other every week. In its best moments, “Adventure” captures some of that excitement.
Yes, this hour is full of tortured half-baked themes, mostly about fathers (some are assholes, some die in a war, the Japanese respect all of them). It has entire scenes of exposition, finally providing a little back-story for Joe and Cameron but not bothering to integrate these revelations with much of what’s going on in the present. And yet it is the most satisfying episode since the pilot, probably because the writers are giving up on trying to make the show they think they should make, the one that competes in the pantheon with Mad Men and Breaking Bad. They’re making a drama with a capital D, and they’re beginning to have fun doing it.
Cameron starts the hour in a weakened position, coming back from an assigned business trip to Cleveland and finding that Joe has hired a motley crew of programmers, including the Lou Avery-esque Steve, who relegates Cameron to doing busywork instead of creating code. By the end of the episode she’s regained control, manipulating Joe with the same techniques he uses, proving that she has business acumen as well as programming skill. Joe is taken down a few notches, first by Cameron after a surprise conversation with his estranged father, and then by Gordon, who reveals that his own father-in-law has closed the investment deal that Joe thought he had saved. The power dynamics between the three central characters are illuminated beautifully, and their jostling for control over one another makes the show hum in way that no Vietnam story or half-baked Bill Gates anecdote can manage.
Unfortunately Donna is back at home, making two pies at a time and standing on the sidelines. Hopefully her alter ego Susan Fairchild – the most ‘80s name ever – will see fit to return to Cardiff. Mackenzie Davis and Kerry Bishé have a fun, antagonistic chemistry and the show would be smart to take advantage of it. Sadly, the chemistry between Cameron and Joe continues to be non-existent. There is a heaviness to Lee Pace’s performance, an effort that seems increasingly unnecessary as Halt and Catch Fire continues along its sudsy path. Joe McMillan should be a fun character to watch and to play – he’s the JR Ewing, the Alexis Carrington, the Dr. Peter Burns of the show. Right now Pace is trying to play him as Hamlet.
After tonight Halt and Catch Fire will have passed its halfway point, with only five more episodes to go. A second season is far from a sure thing, so I hope the writers can go all in – exploring the characters’ relationships, pitting them against each other when necessary, finally sharing their unnecessarily mysterious pasts, and letting them finish building the damn computer.
Other thoughts:
The only thing more ‘80s than the name Susan Fairchild is Donna banging out a sonata on her Casio keyboard.
Thank God for secretary Debbie and her pink Post-its. Debbie for president!
But no more Hunt. Please. Hunt sucks.
“The Japanese don’t come to Dallas to have a shrimp cocktail dressed up as a sushi roll, they come for steak.”
“I gave him the world and he spat in my face!” THAT is some good TV writing.
“Welcome to the short bus.”