Despite the best efforts ofGamerGate to demonstrate otherwise, Internet communities formed around video games arent always nightmarish pits of despair. Trying your hand at something new and unexpected in the company of fellow digital thrillseekers? Sounds like a good time, right? Thats the idea behind Halt and Catch Fires second season, a virtual reboot that begins with tonights premiere episode: And so far, watching our core quartet of computer whizzes attempt to build an online world is as much fun for us as it is for their networked clientele.
For one thing, almost nobody screams at each other. Halt spent much of its first season dropping its protagonists into pointless peer-to-peer pissing contests and shouting matches. The idea was obviously to amp up the dramatic stakes; the result, however, repeatedly ground narrative progress and character growth to a you-know-what. Plus it had a knack for turning most of its heroes into unlikeable dicks all the more unforgivable when your cast is well-stocked with nuanced actors like Lee Pace, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, and Kerry Bish. Fortunately, this episode title: SETI is a comparative lovefest. With the exception of a reasonable argument between Cameron Howe and Donna Clark about the latters den-mother role at the new company they created to ride the coming Internet wave, everyone is suddenly capable of speaking politely, sincerely, and softly. You watch the shows core group together and understand why theyd associate, how they could build something special together. Take a look atMad Men if you doubt how important that is.
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Another major point in the premieres favor isnt a what, but a when: We rejoin the Cardiff crew almost two years after we left them, guaranteeing fresh and unfamiliar territory. The Season One finale ended with Gordon asking What are we gonna do next? By the time we see him again, hes already done it, having orchestrated the sale of the company entirely offscreen. Our resident alpha dweeb has also picked up a heck of a coke habit, apparently; building a second machine the Giant Pro may have been a lateral move, as he puts it, but switching from beer to yayo as your addiction of choice certainly isnt.
While we were out, Cameron and Donna built their startup into an exciting and respectable, if buggy, online-gaming company named Mutiny one that anticipates the demand for chat rooms, IMs, and social networks. (All this in 1985!) Former master of the universe Joe MacMillan, meanwhile, appears to have settled semi-happily into a life of yuppie domesticity with his girlfriend, Sara. (Say hello to Aleksa Palladino, best known as the doomed spouse of Boardwalk Empires Jimmy Darmody. What is it with this actress and emotionally remote romantic screen partners?) He spends cozy evenings around a fire with friends like a wintertime beer commercial; instead of fighting tooth and nail for his share of the Cardiff sale, he heads home and pops the question instead. Not that Joe is beyond backsliding, of course, but after a season that kept repetitively asking if he was capable of happiness or change, youre relieved to see the question answered so easily.
Across the board, Halts great leap forward makes for a breezier, better show. Though the painstaking process of chronicling the groups personal-computer empire-building last season gave the show a sturdy core, it was also exhausting for the audience as well as the characters. Jumping ahead means skipping past the back-and-forths that bogged the series down just as surely as calling a ceasefire on the constant hostility does.
And it clears some space in the hard drive for much cooler stuff. Theres some just-this-side-of-showy stylistics, like the opening sequence in which a hand-held camera follows Donna around the chaotic Mutiny office for minutes on end. Theres a nifty metaphor for Camerons where you see a wall, I see a door thinking in her customer-service call, where she coaches a gamer trapped in a room full of holograms to escape by simply walking right through them. Theres a more playful sense of humor, from the goofy mid-Eighties commercial for the Giant to the sight of a coked-up Gordon reading William Gibsons cyberpunk classic Neuromancer and muttering What the hell?? with a bloody tissue up his nose. There may even be a new structure, since for all we know each season will focus on a brand-new aspect of the tech biz like how The Wire handled Baltimore, but with joysticks.
The episode closes on Cameron taking a trip to the penitentiary to pick up John Bosworth, her old boss and unlikely friend, imprisoned after taking the rap for the young programmers cybercrimes. Its a fitting note, and not just because its soundtracked by John Fogertys The Old Man Down the Road itself the subject of a bizarre self-plagiarism lawsuit reminiscent of the Cardiff crews legal battles to control their own code last season. Brought to life by series MVP Toby Huss, Boz was the shows most endearing, least predictable player during its inaugural run. Halt 2.0 appears to have embraced that spirit with the same giggly ferocity of the pairs post-prison hug. Game on.