Gordon Clark is dying. Or not. (Theres a lot of that going around tonight.) The truth is that we dont know the long-term prognosis for his chronic toxic encephalopathy, the chemical solventinduced brain-damage condition with which he was diagnosed. Weve just seen the symptoms his depression and exhaustion, his jittery movements, his flip-of-the-switch personality shifts and hole-digging backyard meltdowns. But whether or not the disorder is a terminal one, the damage is done. His mental problems arent glitches, theyre a system failure. To a man of the mind like Gordon, thats death by another name.
Leading a review of Infiltrator, tonights typically terrific episode of Halt and Catch Fire, with Gordons broken brain makes it sound like a huge downer. Which it was, at times! Watching Gordon sleepwalk through the revelers at a local nightclub, have a rare moment of connection with his mother-in-law soured by money talk, or completely fail to connect with his wife Donna whos having a crisis of her own via an unplanned pregnancy felt like a series of slaps to the face.
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But this is the shows strength now: Its got such a command of its characters and situations that it can switch from sad to giddy without breaking a sweat. Gordons grim physical state is only half the story; the other half in the very funny way he handled Donnas discovery that hes outsourced Mutinys servers to his old nemesis. The person Ive been dealing with over there is Joe, he squeaks out. Joe who? she demands, dreading the answer. Her husbands response is to sheepishly grimace and become a human shrug emoji.
He handles the man himself in an equally entertaining way when MacMillan threatens to boot Mutiny off the servers rather than make their backroom deal legit. Youre not the reptilian son of a bitch everyone says you are. Youre a changed man, he barks, practically willing this new improved Joe 2.0 into existence. (Not to mention playfully calling attention to the shows own strategy for its former asshole alpha-male this season.) And it works. A story like this inevitably involves some wallowing in failure, but it can just as easily show people tap-dancing right past it.
Thats kind of John Bosworths deal this week. You assume hed take the new relationship between his surrogate daughter figure Cameron Howe and her hotshot new employee Tom Rendon poorly not out of any reverse-Oedipal impulse, just a misguided attempt to play parent. Sure enough, he starts micromanaging things more around the office, from replacing beat-up office chairs to banning the Internets first troll from the service. But in a heart to heart he has with Donna after Howe lets him have it, he reveals that he thinks shes with child; he wasnt meddling with her social life, he was genuinely trying to make things easier. Its a clever fake-out that emphasizes Bozs likability and unpredictability, some of the shows great strengths since day one. (See also his hilarious reaction to discovering game designer Lev is gay: . . . I got a cousin . . . good!)
Halts got many strengths besides its characters, of course; its period pop-culture reference game has rarely if ever been as on point as it was tonight. Cameron and Toms rental of The Terminator, for example, takes on any number of roles within the narrative. Arnold Schwarzeneggers voice gives them funny accents to flirt in. Renting the video provides Tom with a convenient excuse for one of his many sudden I gotta gos, which seems to suggest a secret at home. The films totally-Eighties nightclub-massacre scene is beautifully recreated in Gordons own visit to the local hotspot, with a zonked-out computer engineer substituting for the gun-toting cyborg. The Mutiny crew watches the scene featuring the famous line And it will not stop, ever, until you are dead, which echoes Clarks understanding of his disease. And the first-person shooter the company wants to develop will, in all likelihood, owe a lot to the visceral violence and implacable antagonists of James Camerons classic.
Ditto the just-imported Nintendo Entertainment System that Gordons kids cant wait to play. Like the Macintosh that appeared at the end of last season like one of 2001s monoliths, the NES will create a massive cultural explosion that Cameron and company will have to deal with. The childrens prophetically passionate response shows how important the characters family lives can be to their professional ones, if only they pay attention. The bemused way Donnas mother describes the game theyre playing (A bunch of little men fighting turtles) illustrates how easy it is to ignore a Super Mario Brossized forest for the trees. It also indicates the weird alchemy required to create a world that gamers will want to immerse themselves in again and again, which is Camerons current quest for her theoretical online multiplayer game. Maybe its a coincidence that so many shots in this episode showed characters as small figures against big backgrounds, Mario-style but if so its a coincidence that counts.
Previously: Trapped in the Closet