Halt and Catch Fire – The Most Human of Shows

There are very few shows that have mattered to my sense of self as much as Halt and Catch Fire. Which may, if you haven’t seen it, seem odd. Looked at from the outside it’s a show about some folks doing some tech stuff in the 80s. And sure, that’s there. I heard it described, before I’d seen it, as “Like Mad Men kinda but with computers and in the 80s?” and … look I can see how you get there but no.

The thing is, and this will have spoilers of a sort for an eleven year old show as I discuss it so I am sorry, the thing is though that what Halt and Catch Fire is, was, whatever – what it is is human.

The show outright says it early on: Computers aren’t the thing. They’re thing that gets you to the thing.

These are people who love technology in all of it’s forms. They love the beauty of code, the complexity and wonder of it. They also love the hardware, the engineering of it. The interconnected disciplines that come together to solve puzzles, while being in and of themselves, puzzles.

But their love for it, overall, is how it connects relates, and reflects, their own humanity. Code can be an escape, easier to relate to strings of commands and complex math then it is humans who are messy and unpredictable. Hardware can be easier to grasp than the pathways of a life. It can be a form of escape, but also that human side can never be escaped from.

Laid out like that this is some simplistic shit, sure. But when you have characters who are endlessly human – each one a good person and a bad person, sympathetic and totally not depending on the context – you get somewhere. When your story is deeply human, just people trying to do the things they’re great at, to prove themselves to themselves and the people they hold close, even when they don’t want to admit they even like those people, well then you get gold.

Halt and Catch Fire then is, for me, a look at what it means to be human, and to strive for connection with other people. It’s a show about raw human connection, how hard we fight for it, how easily we miss our chances at it, and how brutally we can push it aside in fear and anger.

Gordon wanting to prove his worth to himself, but also to have the people around him reflect that worth back to him, until he gets to a place where he can accept himself so he can accept how others see him instead of fighting back against it, and know the truth of himself for himself.

Cameron losing herself in code because people are just too hard, learning over time that pushing people away because of her own fears that they can’t accept her for who she is just ensures she remains isolated, as she turns that anger inward and pushes people away harder. She finds out that letting people see you is a doorway to seeing yourself, and accepting both yourself for who you really are as well as accepting others for the same.

Donna’s desperation to prove she is everyone’s equal, and she is, as she goes down a bad path of becoming someone she hates just so she can look, from the outside, like what she thinks is strong. That weakness, that shines from her like a warning light that she can not see, until she finally gets to see herself as she has become in a harsh glare of truth. Eventually figuring out that softness can be strength, too, and that the softness was tied into what she rejected in herself, but can learn to embrace and cherish instead.

Joe needing to burn so bright and so hard in order to leave a dent in the world itself, to prove to the universe he exists that he burns himself and anyone close to him time and time again, until at last he learns the truth in what he’s said all along – that humanity is the point of it all. And humanity is weakness, is letting others in, that the armor he built over years to project this figure he thought protected him, was what held the world and real connection at bay.

Bosworth embracing his role as someone who fixes things, fixes people, and works as a rock for others to enable them to rise higher off his own quiet catalyst. The strength that raises others and is, by that service, itself raised. His love of the future, of the next thing, allow him to push others in their own journey as well.

And every single one of them fucking it all up by their own design, damaged by their past and their fears and desires for the future. Each of them being given just enough grace by the people close to them to try again and rise higher each time.

Working, pushing, and living to share joy, to love, and to grieve. Together. In honesty, and in fear. That’s the show.

It charts friendships from beginnings to, in some cases, ends, and in others to honestly. To that special place you can only get to with your friends and loved ones if you work at it, if you want it badly enough.

Halt and Catch Fire is also a show about loss, in large ways. Here are four people who are determined to do the big thing, to push things forward, and yet you know, you know because of the way the show weaves itself into our world, that their additions will never work the way they want. They will always be just off the curve.

You see their heartbreak coming, and that could be frustrating but instead it becomes an almost joyful thing of watching them get so close and really get what was in their head as close to real as they can, before it comes crashing down again. Even when they fail, they don’t do it for lack of trying.

Then they get up, reluctantly, regretfully at times, and take another swing. There’s always a second chance, a third, a fourth. Not because they are given it, but because they take it, the world be damned.

That’s beautiful. It’s human. They don’t lie down and give in. They dust themselves off, change their lives where they need to (or think they need to) and set back out.

And at the end, a scene which encapsulates everything for me. Donna and Cameron, standing together, discussing a possible new partnership. Discussing it, describing it, from start to finish, and accepting it instead of fighting it for once. Their love for each other binding them, willingly and whole, for once.

They come to a place where you can stand and see the future, and bask in it, and then take a breath and live in the moment, satisfied. For a while. Because the future is always there. Lurking, waiting, taunting you to, daring you to do better. To hope. To believe. To dream, and to work for that dream.

And if you can, if you have people you can trust and lean on and help with their own fights, that future is always just over the next hill, one more area to crest and conquer, even in failure. Because that’s what life is – a constant striving for connection, for betterment, and for self knowledge.

That’s Halt and Catch Fire.