‘Halt and Catch Fire’ Episode 1.1 “I/O” (8 out of 10) Created by Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers; Starring Lee Pace, Scoot McNairy, Mackenzie Davis, Kerry Bishé; Sundays on AMC
As the show’s opening scene explains, the term “halt and catch fire” refers to a command that forces a computer to cease functioning and devolve into a memory-checking spiral—occasionally causing the computer’s circuits to fizzle and smoke. After watching the season’s first episode, I can’t think of another show/title marriage that I like more than this one. From the moment Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace of ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘Pushing Daisies’) peels a bloody armadillo from the grill of his Ferrari, it’s evident that we’re dealing with characters who—literally, in this case—don’t know when to stop.
Set in circa 1980’s Texas, ‘Halt and Catch Fire’ tells a fictionalized version of the PC boom that resulted in our current reliance on the personal computer. Caught in this crossfire of RAM and motherboards are three lost souls who happen to have a preternatural understanding of what the personal computer could mean for the future. MacMillan, a GQ geek with all kinds of unrevealed skeletons in his closet; Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy, ‘Argo’), a dejected computer engineer whose family is saddled with mounting financial difficulties; and Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis, ‘That Awkward Moment’) a rebellious computer genius with strong parallels to a certain girl with a dragon tattoo. When Clark and MacMillan get pinched for an attempt to reverse engineer IBM’s PC, they find themselves in a legal pickle with their employers at Cardiff Electric, who had no knowledge of their project. Since firing them would imply Cardiff’s guilt, they’ve been asked to hire a new, legally clean, engineer, which is where Howe comes in.
As far as casting goes, ‘Halt and Catch Fire’ is packing some serious heat. Pace plays MacMillan with all the swagger of Don Draper, but it’s easy to see that at one point in his life, he was a sad geek with nothing more than some talent and delusions of grandeur. McNairy, who seems to be the go-to guy if you need a period-specific nerd, captures Clark’s financial and aspirational desperation and his onscreen relationship with his wife Donna (Kerry Bishé, also in ‘Argo,’ also as McNair’s onscreen wife) is believably strained. Though I sense a lot of potential for Davis’s character, she didn’t get a whole lot of screen time in this episode, which made her feel like the same anti-establishment genius that we’ve seen in ‘The Social Network’ or ‘Good Will Hunting.’
The first episode set up a lot of interesting directions for the show to take. All we really know about MacMillan is that he had a mysterious falling out with IBM, which could imply everything from his being a misunderstood genius to a con artist. Though Gordon and Donna Clark manage to become a unified front at the end of the episode, the high-risk/high-reward drama could throw all kinds of obstacles in front of them as they try to look out for their family. The only one who seems like she has nothing to lose and everything to gain would be Howe, though there is one scene at the end where she arrives for her first day at Cardiff Electric and is rudely ignored by the receptionist because of her manky sweater and army fatigues—I can foresee some non-conformist sentiment becoming a problem for her later on.
With AMC’s critically adored ‘Mad Men’ on its final season, the cable network will have a definite gap in its Sunday night programming—but it’s a gap that ‘Halt and Catch Fire’ just might be able to fill. It’s got a lot of the same things going for it that ‘Mad Men’ had: Spot-on, period-specific setting and wardrobe; a terribly good-looking cast; and morally ambiguous characters who are addicted to the pursuit of greatness.