Halt And Catch Fire (Season 4)

[Magooglie]

Thoughts on the finale

Spoiler

Since there was no final time jump it felt open ended, like there could be a season 5. They played out the possibility of Cameron and Donna's future business during their Phoenix conversation which was like an alt-time jump but just through words, their relationship mirroring the relationship of Gordon and Joe with Donna getting over her "Corporate Donna" personality phase similar to how Joe got over his corporate phase to eventually work again with Gordon.

One weakness of the show is the show exists in the perimeters of real world tech history so their work projects never win. The search battle gets rolled over by Yahoo like projects from past seasons got beaten by, obviously, the winners we know in the real word. The show acknowledges this during the Phoenix conversation and I suppose we can imagine the characters cycling for the rest of their lives and it's probably a good reason not to have another season since all of the adult's emotional maturity has increased to various degrees over the course of the show and it would just be them working and then getting beaten by the historical winner.

Speaking of cycles I thought it was interesting the final scene was Joe as a humanities professor and mirroring the very start of the series. But back then he was corporate Joe hunting for tech engineers escaping from Armonk and now he's more empathetic Joe escaping Silicon Valley. His former colleague kind of put him in a box when he told him he was the cutting edge tech guy. I liked that it's sort of mystery that the situation is different enough that we're not sure what he's going to do.

 

[Loiosh]

The last few episodes made me want to slit my wrists.

I don't know if I'm just in a bad place but everything about them screamed "abandon hope ye who enter here." Everything seems so pointless. So much effort, nothing to show for anything.

Cameron summed it up in one stammered confession: "Whatever. It didn't work... Nothing here did, so..."

Tech for the most part is impermanent. I guess that's the one thing Joe learned in all of this. "I wish we could have done it longer." It feels like the message is 'seize the day', but it felt like the message was 'it doesn't matter it will slip through your fingers anyways'.

I don't know. I loved this show but it's left me feeling very empty. The ending was beautifully written and excellent television, but in retrospect I could have REALLY used a cliche, happy ending.

 

[ookii]

Finally caught up with season 4 on Netflix. Bittersweet ending where Joe ended at where he began except as an english professor. He seems to be the one who keeps getting the bitter end of the stick on each venture of the season while everyone else had struck gold during parts of the season

 

[ookii]

The last few episodes made me want to slit my wrists.

I don't know if I'm just in a bad place but everything about them screamed "abandon hope ye who enter here." Everything seems so pointless. So much effort, nothing to show for anything.

Cameron summed it up in one stammered confession: "Whatever. It didn't work... Nothing here did, so..."

Tech for the most part is impermanent. I guess that's the one thing Joe learned in all of this. "I wish we could have done it longer." It feels like the message is 'seize the day', but it felt like the message was 'it doesn't matter it will slip through your fingers anyways'.

I don't know. I loved this show but it's left me feeling very empty. The ending was beautifully written and excellent television, but in retrospect I could have REALLY used a cliche, happy ending.

Yeah they could have at least thrown a bone at Joe or something. Poor guy keeps having his companies sabotaged or closed down because of some incident. I don't quite see how being a professor would bring closure to Joe since his goal was always to look for the next break trough unless he wants to look for and inspire the next Cameron, Gordon and Haley

 

[Loiosh]

Yeah they could have at least thrown a bone at Joe or something. Poor guy keeps having his companies sabotaged or closed down because of some incident. I don't quite see how being a professor would bring closure to Joe since his goal was always to look for the next break trough unless he wants to look for and inspire the next Cameron, Gordon and Haley

The depth of the sorrow in those final episodes was overwhelming.

I agree that teaching didn't seem like the right ending to his story. I mean, it's great storytelling, but for the character, it's like a wound that never heals.

 

[mushishi]

Stopped watching midway S2. Is it worth starting again?

 

[Jesus X]

I actually missed the final two episodes im waiting until they show up on netflix

 

[ookii]

I actually missed the final two episodes im waiting until they show up on netflix

They are on Netflix just a few days ago. Thats how I caught up on Season 4 when I missed it during fall because of my schedule