In a strange, almost meta way, it’s as if their own aspirations have become intrinsically tied to our own hopes of seeing the show prevail. That doesn’t just make for great television, but great characters, and those characters are partly why Halt has staved off its own demise.
Instead, every situation is laced with a degree of uncertainty, and no matter what happens, someone is bound to get hurt. Each character is perpetually up against ungodly odds, only there’s never this soothing feeling that things are going to be okay, or some deus ex machina is right around the corner. Besides, Halt has always been about The Struggle, both behind the scenes and on screen, and that David and Goliath tug-of-war is what has fueled its eclectic cast of zeroes and villains. Okay, so not everyone is living up the ’90s, but what would a reunion be without some angsty disconnect. To add more fuel to the fire, there’s Bosworth’s financial headache, Joe’s wardrobe designed by Filter’s Richard Patrick, and Cameron’s relationship woes, the latter of which leads to one of the series’ finest moments involving a telephone conversation awash with Cameron Crowe’s magic. Shit gets real, though, when Gordon’s own daughter, Haley ( Susanna Skaggs), winds up being an unlikely key for Gordon and Joe, making things decidedly rough for her mother. Unfortunately for him, he’s not alone in the market, as he’s competing with the real-life Mosaic and Donna’s own Millennium counterpart over at AGGE. They’re a random collection of websites Joe’s stumbled upon, all of which he hopes to condense and organize into the essential web browser. Those Post-It notes, however, are an essential part of the season’s larger MacGuffin.
As usual, everyone’s busy as ever: Gordon’s hosting corporate functions headlined by the Blue Man Group, Donna’s devouring developers as quickly as she does men, Cameron’s struggling to develop an online RPG in the age of the first-person shooter, and Joe’s spent the last three years accumulating 500 Post-It notes. Cantwell, Rogers, and Lisco waste little time tipping off the action, opening the season with a super sleek long shot that details the evolution of Gordon, Joe, and Cameron’s new company and drops us in 1994, where America Online is a major player, Mortal Kombat is all the rage, and Super Nintendo is the console of choice. It’s also a victory lap for everyone who championed the show from the very beginning, and that’s the feeling you get within the first three episodes.
Season four, by comparison, is less of a reboot and more of a reunion. It was a remarkable 180 from the first season, and one that won over even the most skeptical critics. As such, Mackenzie Davis’ rebellious Cameron Howe and Kerry Bishé’s maternal Donna Clark were considerably amplified, forging ahead together while the rest of the cast, particularly Scoot McNairy’s nebbish Gordon Clark, rode shotgun amiably. Following its debut season, Cantwell, Rogers, and showrunner Jonathan Lisco gave Halt a slight reboot, focusing less on trying to make Lee Pace’s Joe MacMillan another stone-cold Don Draper for the network, and more on cultivating a stronger ensemble that could engage in a variety of themes, issues, and conflicts. Since then, that anxious grey area is more or less where the show has been operating from over the last three subsequent seasons, but not without a collective effort by its creative team. So, when AMC finally opted to renew Halt for a second season that August, there were was a small contingent of die-hard fans who jumped up and down with spirited feelings of winning relief (this writer included), while a larger portion of the industry kept wondering why the network chose to keep gambling with the show.
#Halt and catch fire cast series#
Yet, like so much of the show’s nostalgic narrative, that was an alternative history that never came to fruition instead, Halt received a mild critical reception upon its June 2014 series premiere and the ratings dwindled at dangerously low numbers throughout that summer. Rogers’ ’80s tech-y drama was primed to usher in another era of critically-acclaimed programming for AMC. Following the award-winning run of both Mad Men and Breaking Bad, Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Halt and Catch Fire was built to be a hit.
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