New Show on AMC - Halt and Catch Fire - Anyone Watching?

I watched a new show last night on AMC called Halt and Catch Fire. My wife and daughter watched it too. We are basically the computer nerd family so we all thought it was pretty good and we will definitely be tuning in each week to see how the story develops.

Anyone else catch the premiere?



From Wikipedia -

Halt and Catch Fire is an American period drama television series created by Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers, that premiered on AMC on June 1, 2014.[1][2] A sneak peek of its pilot episode was made available in May 2014. The series is set in the early 1980s and depicts a fictionalized insider's view of the personal computer revolution. The show's title refers to the machine code instruction Halt and Catch Fire, which causes the computer to cease functioning.[3]


Cast

• Lee Pace as Joe MacMillan
• Scoot McNairy as Gordon Clark
• Mackenzie Davis as Cameron Howe
• Kerry Bishé as Donna Clark
• Toby Huss as John Bosworth
• David Wilson Barnes as Dale Butler

Link to first complete episode on AMC site -

http://www.amctv.com/shows/halt-and-catch-fire

 

I watched it and thought it was OK, but not great. I'll hang in there for a while and see where it goes.

People forget how many different platforms and operating systems there were in the early 1980s, and how chaotic everything was, particularly from 1982-1984. It was a nightmare. While IBM and MS-DOS were huge, even during those years there was a huge push back from CP/M, Unix, and a lot of other operating systems.

I did roll my eyes a lot at the idea that somebody could go by hand through a ROM chip and write down the Hex numbers in the registers, then write those numbers down by hand and create a new OS that would do the exact same thing. It's a lot of mumbo jumbo designed to sort of create a smokescreen that's almost a believable plot, but not really.

The flaw with a lot of high-tech human dramas like this is that they spend 99% of their time on the humans and less than 1% on the tech, so you can never quite believe what's going on.

BTW: I notice that this show has a similar problem with The Americans -- another early-1980s drama -- where whenever they show 1980s cars, they kind of creak and sag a lot. In truth, cars in that era were much spiffier and didn't feel like they were, oh, 30 years old and falling apart. (Like the ones you would use nowadays in a TV show.)

 

Good points. The problem with going into the tech any deeper is that you would lose a lot / most of the audience pretty quickly. The majority of people out there either don't want to think that hard when watching a TV show or they are not that technically inclined to begin with. I think a lot of us here at this forum are the exception in a lot of ways and we like watching shows where we can analyze and determine whether the technical aspects are feasible.

 

It was just a little too phony to me. I think the reality is that real reverse-engineering chips would be days of work and very, very boring, so they knocked it out over a weekend and telescoped the whole thing. I don't mind that in principle, but it just seemed more shallow and superficial than necessary.

Ratings kind of suck, and I think the AMC people are concerned that they're not even a fraction of the ratings for Mad Men, let alone the huge audience that Walking Dead gets. I think the historical setting, the technology, and the nature of the characters are all tough barriers to get past.

 

Yeah I read an article yesterday that the actual ratings were nothing great. DVR ratings are not in yet and they say the streaming of the premiere had a lot of hits too. This may be one of those shows that will slowly build an audience. Like you say, the nature of the characters - basically nerds - may make it tough to attract a sizeable audience.

Of course, I don't count since I am outside the target demographic of 18-49 by being in the mid 50s.

 

This seems to be a less-sexy version of "Jobs", coming from an earlier time in personal computing a few years prior to the MacIntosh (ie. the "IBM side"). The PC universe was a bit broader & less standardized that it would eventually become very soon.

The thing is, after watching the first episode, I am left wondering just who the target demographic is. I have interest stemming from the time period being my formative teenage years, and working in the IT world for most of my adult life & seeing the progression of PC's over the past 30+ years. But, like rockclassics, being a 50 y/o puts me out of the primary range here.

The closet scene at the beginning was frankly a bit uncomfortable for me, as Joe MacMillan tracks considerably older than the young-looking rebellious college nerd, Cameron, with whom he (briefly) copulates. The whole scene seemed forced & unnecessary, other than to feed a single line later stated by Gordon when they are interviewing for engineers. Other than that, and minor technical faux pas aside, it seemed to capture the spirit of the time well enough. I have some DVR space, so am in for at least a few eps. But not counting on a long-term success.

 

Not sure why they can talk about IBM and DEC but can't use Compaq (who did the first clone) and instead create a fake company.

 

Who cares about the tech stuff, the heart of this show seems to be about challenging corporate monopolies on innovation and making some cold hard $. There's certainly a market for that.

 

It was pretty good

what about that dire
XTC cover though ?

 

It wasn't the original?

The underwritten women on the show might well prove to be the dealbreaker for me. We've got the Lori Petty-wannabe fantasy nerd girl and the complaining wife nagging her husband; both cardboard cutout stereotypes. I know it's just the pilot, but it doesn't bode well methinks.

Still, the Armadillo opening has me hoping that Lee Pace may well turn out to seriously mess up everyone's lives. Maybe even his own. There's potential for this to turn out to be interesting, as long as they don't try too hard to make their leads heroes.

 

I saw it and liked it. I'm not sure if you can do a drama series around something as esoteric as the computer industry's early days. . I believe it took the founders of Compaq a full year to do to what the characters did in a weekend of getting the ROM boot code. The problem is, in the show's setting in 1983, that IBM had already published the software code in their own Technical Manuals in 1982. I need to go back and re-watch PBS's "Triumph Of The Nerds" to refresh my memory.

 

New episode (episode 2) tonight at 10 ET / 9 CT on AMC.

 

Well, I watched Sunday's episode last night. Can't say I am really excited about this show. It seems to be plodding along. Hopefully, it will pick up a bit. I'll probably continue to watch - at least a couple of more episodes.

 

I thought the 2nd episode was less entertaining than the first. I'm surprised someone here at the Forums brought up the audio store scene.

 

I'm enjoying the show quite a bit. The guerilla tactics the businesses are using on one another never ceases to prove that big corporations never truly know what all is going on at the mid management level.

Trying to name all the equipment in the stereo shop scene was a fun diversion.

 

This week's ep is the best so far, imo. Joe will go beyond all limits to manipulate & get his agenda across. Nice cameo by Annette O'Toole. The bird metaphor was a bit heavy-handed, but got the point across.

 

Man, I did not see that surprise affair going on with our lead actor. I fell off the couch and looked like this after that scene played:

For a moment, I thought I had accidentally tuned into the Logo channel...
(not that there's anything wrong with that)

 

I hope it does well. One of the main players is a former student of mine.

 

I was skeptical after watching the pilot.. but I've stuck with it. I LOVE it. I know it's not going to appeal to the masses like Mad Men or Walking Dead.. but I hope AMC gives it a chance to build up some.. If I recall, Mad Men got off to a bit of a slow start before it became a cultural phenomenon.

 

It's pretty good , hope Cameron
gets to take a shower soon

anyone know if Haslinger is
using all analogue gear for
the score ?

 

Yeah that was a WTF moment wasn't it?

 

Great episode tonight. This is really getting interesting......finally.

 

Nice nod to Sally Ride last week & again this week, just around her 30/yr anniversary. Good timing.

 

I'm a still a bit on the fence with this one, which, I guess, really means nothing since I'll continue to watch.

There's a lot of nipples in it, which is a good thing. I was only 10 years old in 1983, but I can relate. I remember the old large floppy drives and home PCs that my rich friends had. It certainly makes me think back to the age when it was impossible to sit on the toilet and type messages to people across the world.

I see my 11 and 8 year old sitting in front of the television, not a care in the world, playing Mindcrap on the PS3 and talking to their friends through a mic hooked up to it all...and I'm sitting there remembering holding the rabbit ears on our old set, for my dad, as he checked his pager...and I know there are folks out there, still alive, who used to crank up a phonograph for family fun, or draw in the dirt, and I'm like, "Wow! I'm not sure if I want to live to 85!"

 

You're probably the last generation who remembers rabbit ear antennas! Everybody born from the 1980s on will probably only know cable TV and satellite TV, plus the internet. Hell, just finding people who can remember a time before the internet and cell phones is difficult these days.

And by the way, even at my advanced age, I can't head into the bathroom without taking my iPad! So this compulsive need to constantly stay connected, surf the web, check news sites, etc. is pervasive across all age groups.