I'm going to take a rare dip into contemporary pop culture for today's television review. I use that phrase 'contemporary pop culture' with hesitance because though AMC's Halt & Catch Fire is indeed a show on the air today, it's set thirty years ago during the computer boom in Texas and has hardly penetrated pop culture to the same degree of the network's apocalyptic behemoth The Walking Dead. Apart from the same opaque cinematography, the two shows have very little in common. As a complete neophyte to the world of computers, I start zoning out ten seconds after someone begins explaining the difference between MS-DOS and MSN. If I were a TV producer who had to choose between airing a fictional drama about the computer boom or another about zombies starring the cue card-toting Brit from Love Actually, I'd send the first person straight out the door. But from an artistic standpoint, I would be dead wrong.
For starters, Halt & Catch Fire isn't about computers just as The Walking Dead isn't really about zombies at heart. While the latter begs the question of what would happen to society if the technology-driven world were to end, the former is all about creation, progress and how technology dramatically changed the way society functions. It is a show set in the early 1980's when the internet, multiplayer online gaming and even the idea of social media had a little more than a decade to find itself in just about every household in the United States. There are indeed many winks and inside jokes that foreshadow many of the social customs influenced by technology today. Halt reveals to us how these ideas were rooted long before many of us were even born, much less sat in front of a computer.
This connection between the past and present allows the show to comment on contemporary issues from long ago. In one episode from the second season, a character goes on a blind date arranged through a chat room only to discover their suitor is not at all what they had imagined. This would have been relevant ten years ago when we were chatting with strangers on AOL Instant Messenger, and it's relevant in today's dating world driven by mobile apps. Almost every episode features an inside joke or "What if..." diatribe from a character in which the punchline is a culture-moving monolith, from Nintendo to the concept of the internet itself.
What really drives Halt is its four uniquely compelling protagonists. I first became interested in the show after Mackenzie Davis' brief but charmingly nerdy cameo as a NASA communications specialist in 2015's The Martian. On Halt, she plays something of an expanded version of that role as the rebellious but vulnerable programming prodigy Cameron Howe. While some have critiqued her character as cliche, I think seeing a woman play the role of a young, restless and somewhat troubled innovator is something of which we need to see more in film and TV. Similarly, the show's other female protagonist played by Kerry Bishe is equal parts Nuclear Mom and engineering genius. These characters do not function as the "women" characters on the show, they are at the forefront and by the second season, the stories center around their ambitions just as much as the men. There's nothing cliche in all of that.
It is hardly a show that specifically makes feminism its intentional focus, which is part of why I appreciate it. Halt doesn't feature stories about the struggles of women with the intent to combat sexism, it merely does so within its reach as a TV show by giving the women equal if not more driving roles than the men. The males are just as well-developed and interesting to watch onscreen. Lee Pace plays the bi-sexual, smoke and mirrors wielding PR visionary Joe MacMillan who incites both disdain and empathy from the viewer with his cold but impulsive antics. Scoot McNairy's broken engineering genius Gordon Clark is his best foil as everything Joe is not; insecure and somewhat short-sighted yet pragmatic. These characters all function as incendiary matches and fuses to each other; who knew that the creation of computers involved so much sex, vandalism and shady business transactions?
The second season increases plot accessibility and entertainment factor by shifting the focus to its female leads and placed them at the forefront of online gaming. The most interesting and inspired development of the show is Cameron founding her own game developing company Mutiny, which places more archetypal and mostly male portrayals of programming misfits in a workplace somewhere between a college frat house and a comic book store. This youthful and irreverent bunch clashes with the big business world of oil companies and provides a David and Goliath type drama which correlates with today's world in which corporate distrust has reached an all time high and tech entrepreneurs are emerging from their garages every day.
Halt & Catch Fire lacks the audience and therefore the self consciously desperate need to tow the dramatic line as seen in The Walking Dead. The strength and compatibility (or lack thereof) of the characters makes them interesting to watch, even if they're merely hovering over a monitor or sitting in a conference room. There's no real gun battles in the show, but it's interesting to see how a friendly NERF fight in Mutiny may have led to the idea of a first person shooter. Though it appropriates the feel early 1980's, it's not exactly appropriate to dub the show as nostalgic. With its messages rooted in today, it's about as contemporary as any other show on TV now.
And as a huge fan of early punk rock, it's a love letter to someone like myself to hear such an offbeat, sometimes surprisingly obscure soundtrack provided by a cute nerd like Cameron.
-J
No comments:
Post a Comment