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Halt and Catch Fire S2E10 (S2 Finale) - "Heaven Is A Place" Recap


Following the WestNet disaster, Sara files for divorce from Joe and Jacob is removed as CEO of Westgroup Energy. Meanwhile, Cameron grows increasingly frustrated with the new network partner of Mutiny, so she goes in search for a used IBM mainframe that Mutiny can use to host their network.

Gordon is undergoing group therapy to manage his stress better so he can keep his health under control. Joe is also struggling with trying to start over yet again, and bombs a job interview despite giving it his best effort but his past sins mean that the company only gave him the interview out of morbid curiosity.

When Cameron minds the IBM mainframe, Donna warns her that it is enormously expensive and it is also located in California. To buy it and move it is a bit too far out of their reach. Donna later gets into an argument with Gordon because he learns that she helped Cameron conspire to sabotage Joe's speech and Gordon thinks that Joe didn't deserve this. Gordon admits during the fight that he had a one-night affair while in California and he said that he acted out after learning he was sick and felt like he no longer had his marriage. Their daughter Joanie runs out due to hearing her parents fight.

The following morning, Donna heads to Mutiny early and tells Cameron that Mutiny should head to California and start over. Gordon visits Joe at his apartment and gives him an antivirus program he wrote in order to counter Sonaris, Tabula Rasa. He wants to help Joe get his life back on track.

Bosworth is at a company lunch with his son's company when he comes to realise that he has made a mistake in leaving Mutiny.

Gordon and Donna are in a panic over being unable to find Joanie but they discover her hiding in the backyard. They have a talk with her to reassure her that no matter what, they will always love her. After sending her back inside, Donna tells Gordon she wants to work things out but in order to do so, they need to move to California, buy and fix up the mainframe Cameron wanted, and they will both work for Mutiny. Though they're unsure that it will fix things, Donna knows that if they stay where they are, their marriage won't make it.

Joe secures another meeting with the company that had blown him off before. He infects their system with a virus and then uses Gordon's antivirus program to fix the problem and afterwards manages to secure venture capital.

Afterwards, Joe tries to recruit Gordon for his latest business venture that he will be embarking on, but Gordon has to turn him down because he will be working for Mutiny to work things out with Donna, though he is happy that things have turned around for Joe.

One months later, the entire Mutiny team boards their flight for San Francisco. Cameron had stopped by Tom's place to make him one final offer to join them by presenting him with a plane ticket to join them. The Mutiny team is elated when Bosworth boards the plane but unfortunately for Cameron, Tom doesn't show up to the plane. On board, Gordon reads about Joe securing 10 million dollars to start an anti-virus software firm, which is what he had been trying to bring Gordon on board for but Gordon had turned him down without knowing the extent of what he was being offered.

Finally, Joe is shown to be in the Bay Area looking at office space for his company, MacMillan Utility.

Halt and Catch Fire S2E9 - "Kali" Recap


Donna and Cameron must determine the best course of action against Westgroup, and Cameron ends up deciding to sell the rights to the game "Extract and Defend" in order to help keep funding Mutiny. Tom is hurt and betrayed by her doing so without consulting him and it's enough to end their relationship. When Mutiny meets with Funtime Games, they're able to sell "Extract and Defend" for $50,000.

Joe bails Gordon out of jail and Gordon immediately begins to investigate the computer company he believes stole his idea. During his investigation, Gordon has a memory lapse and cannot remember where he parked his car.

Westgroup is going to have its annual shareholders meeting and Joe is set to give the keynote speech. Cameron visits him beforehand and the two share a kiss but Joe tells her they cannot do this, as he is now married to Sara. Though Joe gives Cameron credit during his speech, he doesn't know that she had uploaded the Sonaris program to the Westgroup mainframe, thereby sabotaging the presentation.

Gordon has an accident where he falls down a flight of stairs and breaks his leg. The doctor informs Donna that Gordon is suffering from psychological stress that is separate from his brain damage, causing Gordon to finally relent and tell her that he needs help.

After the fiasco at Westgroup, Sara is upset at Joe and insists that he still has feelings for Cameron. He is only thinking of himself. He can't even bring himself to deny his feelings for Cameron. It would appear that their relationship is on its way out.

Bosworth informs Cameron he'll be leaving Mutiny to pursue another job that will be better suited for his more advanced stage in life relative to all the young people working at Mutiny. Cameron also learns that Tom was the one who had organised the set up for the meeting with Funtime, causing her to want to get back together with him but it appears it's too late for this relationship as well.

Halt and Catch Fire airs on Sundays on AMC at 10PM.

Halt and Catch Fire S2E8 - "Limbo" Recap


While Donna and Cameron's relationship is further strained by Cameron's hard stance against selling Mutiny, Joe is on surprisingly okay terms for the time being with his father-in-law not that he and Sara have gone to the courthouse and gotten married. As for Gordon, his brain condition is worsening judging by the hallucinations he's having, or perhaps that's just the manifestation of his guilt about cheating on Donna. Dare we even consider that Gordon may have grown a conscience?

Tom is surprised by Cameron's decision to copyright the code in the game that they've co-created. But she's over having her work stolen, despite his puppy-dog pleas that they never would've met if he hadn't been able to access the code in her game. They later have an argument about it in which Tom declares his love for her, much to her shock. The Mutiny mixer is an opportunity for Cameron and Donna to come face-to-face with a lot of their users/fans. One user is emotional upon meeting her, thanking her for giving her a community of friends that helped her find the strength to leave a bad home life. This leads Cameron to learn that the large majority of the Mutiny users are doing so in order to access the message boards, something that Donna had come up with and not Cameron.

Joe returns from his honeymoon and meets Jesse, a bright up-and-comer hired to replace him and Joe doesn't seem to take the news very well. Jesse is essentially a younger and more efficient embodiment of all of Joe's strengths. Gordon is also going through a rough patch when he learns that his associates are quitting their work with him. His spiral continues when he spots an ad leading him to confront his old friend Stan and accuse him of stealing his idea. Gordon ends up arrested because Stan had called the cops when he heard someone breaking in.

Joe heads out with Sara to a swanky night-club and the two are rolling high on MDMA. But Joe needs to sober up fast when he learns that Jacob and newcomer-Jesse have conspired to steal Mutiny's subscriber base and network. Joe quickly heads to Mutiny to tell them what's happened and that he had no part in it but all of Mutiny has already discovered that Mutiny is gone and they can no longer access it, instead finding this new network. But with the severity of Joe's past crimes, they don't believe that he wasn't involved in this underhanded crime.

Halt and Catch Fire airs on Sundays on AMC at 10PM.

Halt and Catch Fire S2E7 - "Working for the Clampdown" Review


So Joe's proposed an acquisition of Mutiny and though Donna is willing to give the proposal some thought and consideration, Cameron's not willing to even consider it and makes a big scene of turning the employees of Mutiny against the idea and tearing up the offer of acquisition in front of them while they chant. We don't know whether she's doing this because she's just stubborn in wanting to hold onto the company or simply because of her personal grudges against Joe. Perhaps it's a combination of the two. But it doesn't take long for the employees to have second thoughts when they learn of how much of a pay raise they'd potentially be receiving. But it was a nice touch from the writers to give Cameron and many of the characters a reality check. While they were getting entirely swept up in their personal dramas over whether or not they should sell Mutiny (and likely lose personal relationships in the process), they're all summoned to the hospital where one of their employees was hospitalised after being assaulted by homophobic catfishes.

Donna learned the truth about Gordon's condition but the harshest truths from each of them have yet to be revealed. Joe and Cameron's interaction at the episode's end presents a stark contrast. Though they are no longer a romantic item, he is entirely truthful with her about what will happen if she sells the company and we then support her entirely as she tells all of her employees that she will not sell Mutiny. It feels like we can finally track some true progression and development for these characters, for better or worse, and we can only speculate as to what's to come for the remainder of the season.

Halt and Catch Fire airs on Sundays on AMC at 10PM.

Halt and Catch Fire S2E6 - "10Broad36" Review


After a full season of Joe MacMillan raising hell while Cameron, Gordon, and Donna were left to follow in the waves of destruction he wreaked, who'd have thought that he'd have risen to become the most sympathetic character? Perhaps it's due in large part to Lee Pace's tremendous acting abilities, but with Cameron and Donna scheming to dupe Joe while Gordon's off having an affair in the woods, somehow the morally grey of the characters has widened in scope. Joe truly seems to be working his hardest to prove that he's of upstanding character, to his girlfriend, his future father-in-law, and perhaps even to himself. Gordon's never been the most sympathetic character but his pathetic moping in the woods lamenting how he hasn't shared his ailing health with Donna just didn't pack the type of emotional punch we needed to be able to be understanding of his choice to cheat on her. But with Donna hiding her pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage from him, perhaps they really are a good match for each other. Cameron tries to use Joe's past sins as a means of justifying her attempts to scam him but in the end, Joe is the one that comes out of the scuffle looking bright and shiny as ever, with a planned proposal to his boss that they acquire Mutiny. Looks like this group will be spending more time in closer proximity to each other than we've seen all season and that's bound to make for some juicy plot developments.

Halt and Catch Fire airs on Sundays on AMC at 10PM.

Halt and Catch Fire S2E5 - "Infiltrator" Review


It was inevitable that Joe and Cameron would be reunited at some point and tonight was the night. While Donna continues to keep her pregnancy a secret, Gordon gets some bad news that may threaten to blow up the idyllic fantasies he had going after his big payoff.

We first catch up with Cameron enjoying some post-coital bliss with her new-found beau Tom. It's refreshing to get to see a brighter, less burdened side of Cameron. Though we do enjoy her biting sass, it's nice to get to see a wider range from her. But her good mood is squashed when she learns the  deal to use more servers has been set up by both Gordon and Joe, the two people who she has no love lost for. The reunion between Cameron and Joe didn't pack quite the bang we'd have expected from them. But given the circumstances, professionalism was demanded from the both of them. They're both looking to prove something, with Cameron set on making Mutiny grow and succeed, while Joe wants to prove his worth to his future father-in-law.

But Joe's wedding may be over before it's even begun. Once Sarah gets a glimpse of the old Joe, the one with the ability to be slick and talk anyone into anything, she doesn't seem to be as keen on him. So she asks to slow down their relationship, and just as Joe had signed the prenup to prove how all he really wanted is her! It's interesting to see the re-shaping of Joe this season. It leaves us pondering just who the real Joe is. Is it the trouble-maker of season one or the seemingly reformed man we see in season two?

Donna and Gordon both have heavy burdens to bear. While Donna struggles to decide what to do regarding her pregnancy, she has yet to share the good(?) news with anyone. Her quiet torment is beautifully acted, as we feel the weight of her bracing herself for what's to come with trying to juggle new-motherhood once again along with her career with Mutiny. It's nice to see her confide in Boz when he discovers the pregnancy test and falsely assumes it's Cameron's. As for Gordon, he's left with perhaps the worst news of anyone; that he has irreparable brain damage that may yet worsen. We've been watching Gordon unravel heavily this season and it'll probably be difficult to watch him further spiral. When will Gordon hit rock-bottom? We'll have to stay tuned to find out.

Halt and Catch Fire airs on Sundays on AMC at 10PM.

Halt and Catch Fire S2E4 - "Play with Friends" Recap


Mutiny must rebuild from the group up. This means that the employees who choose to stay will have to forgo their paycheques in exchange for shares of the company instead. One worker, Yo-Yo-, leaves because he thinks the company won't go anywhere and he has student loans to pay off. Boz proposes they send someone out to be a door-to-door salesman to recover their most lucrative users. Naturally, he volunteers himself. At the first house, he's able to convince the boy's "Luddite" mother that online-gaming is a good way for him to socialise and she decides to allow the boy to renew his subscription.

Cameron wants to cut the Community rooms, deeming them a risk to their network, but Donna doesn't want to because this is her idea and because it's been growing ever since she implemented it.

Joe gets a big idea about converting the servers at the oil company to be used by other users and he goes behind Sarah's father's back to do it. He recruits Gordon to help him by converting the mainframes for outside users to dial in. Gordon doesn't want to help at first but when he hears about Donna's Community programs getting cut, he decides to go ahead and help Joe in exchange for mainframe support for Mutiny. But he doesn't let Donna know about this. While Joe must agree to keep quiet about this, Gordon will have to do the same about this conversion at the oil company.

Cameron runs into Tom at the grocery store, where he has been picking up extra shifts. She is later implored by Donna to try out the Community before deciding to cut it, also challenging her to ponder whether she's just trying to cut it because it didn't come from her. Cameron tries it out and uses it to talk to Tom. But in their chat, she sends the following message about Donna, "Gordon = The guy who hung two kids on her and now she's trappeD!" The final "D!" typo is also a command that causes the message to be sent to everyone at Mutiny, much to Cameron's horror. This further humiliates Donna at work, as everyone stares at her awkwardly as she reads the message. Donna later tells her to never talk about her children again and to come to her directly if she has an issue to address.

During a round of Nerf gun battles, Cameron and Tom end up in a closet together and decide to come up with the next big idea for Mutiny: the first online multiplayer shooting game. Some time later, they share a kiss.

Gordon passes out in the server room while doing some work and when Joe asks him what happened, he downplays it but is shown to later be pondering going to a doctor to rule out anything serious. During this, he's talking to Donna who is still in the bathroom. He shares the news about he's leveraged a deal with his latest job (with Joe) to help get her more server space. She tells him it's amazing news, all while keeping secret the fact that she's just taken a pregnancy test that has come back positive.

Halt and Catch Fire airs on Sundays on AMC at 10PM.

Halt and Catch Fire S2E3 - "The Way In" Recap


Joe is struggling to find the balance between thriving and not at his father-in-law's company. He determines some changes that could be made in order to improve the system, which prompts Jacob Wheeler to promote him but at the cost of firing many other people so Joe can start up a new department from the ground up.

He and Sara decide to throw a dinner party and invite Gordon and Donna, who agree to go in order to size up the new Joe and see just what type of woman he has gotten himself engaged to. They even form their own theories. Donna thinks it's an Upper East Side model type while Gordon thinks it will be a secretary-type to not challenge him the way Cameron did.

But Gordon's work on the network catalyses a whole lot of problems for Mutiny. Though Cameron and her new not-yet-beau Tom have been bickering over whether the concept or the tech of a game is the most important aspect to entice new players. Once Gordon uploads his Sonaris program to the server, absolute pandemonium ensues, forcing Cameron to make the call to shut down Mutiny's network (but not before having an awkward phone call reunion with Joe in which she doesn't utter a word because it's the last person whom she thought would answer the phone.

Donna and Gordon leave after they realise that Mutiny has been trying to get a hold of her. They've learned about how Joe was screwed out of his share of Cardiff's profit. Donna believes that Joe has Sara completely fooled into this new demeanour he's showing but Gordon seems impressed by both Sara and the new Joe.

Boz is shown to be getting back in touch with his old family again, and mending fences isn't so easy after his prison stint. His wife hooks up with him before announcing that their relationship is over and that she's taking the house. Boz has an easier time getting along with his son, who is getting married in the morning and invites Boz to come to the wedding, not caring if his mother doesn't approve. Boz doesn't want to create problems on his son's big day so he says they'll get together another time. Instead, he leaves his beloved Mustang to his son as a wedding gift and his son is overjoyed.

When Donna and Gordon arrive at Mutiny, Gordon learns that it was his program that wiped everything out and Donna is trapped in the middle while Cameron and Gordon exchange verbal hits. Cameron accuses Gordon of not being able to mind his own business and being jealous of the innovative work they're doing at Mutiny, while Gordon tells Cameron she and the rest of Mutiny would e nothing without Donna paying their bills and holding everything together. Donna sends Gordon home and tries to continue to fix things at Mutiny and with her even further damaged relationship with Cameron. She also wants to know why she kept secret her dinner with Joe. Cameron lashes out at Donna and tells her to leave, warning her not to secretly pay for Mutiny again or else she'll be fired. Talk about ungrateful. Donna keeps her distance but insists on staying at Mutiny to help work on building things. She doesn't head home until the morning.

Cameron starts to have a panic attack and Tom is there to talk her through it. He's able to calm her down by talking about Parallax and he even admits that he enjoyed the game, talking about a chapter where the player had to crack a dragon's egg on the fourth wizard's chest to make him human again.

Finally, Joe appears to have struck gold with a possible idea involving the machines in IT at work, that sit unused for the hours during which the employees themselves are not in the office. Could this be the big break Joe needs? We'll have to wait and see.

Halt and Catch Fire airs on Sundays on AMC at 10PM.

Halt and Catch Fire S2E2 - "Run Time" Recap


Joe meets the father of his fiancé Sara, Jacob Wheeler, who is insistent that Joe take a job offer from him so he'll be able to support Sara once the two are married. Sarah doesn't quite approve of him doing this but Joe thinks that this could be an opportunity for him to get to work in sales. In actuality, this new job consists of him doing data-entry in the basement.

Gordon goes in for a check-up because of his nose-bleeds. Of course the best thing for him to do is to cool it with the cocaine. He tells the doctor that he only used it briefly but the doctor is still insistent that Gordon not use it any further. But when Gordon returns home, he heads to the garage to begin working on a computer and snorts some cocaine in the process.

Cameron has brought Boz in to be the new boss of Mutiny, since she and Donna don't want to do it themselves, but Donna is angry that Cameron didn't talk with her about it. It also doesn't look great to have a former convict running their company. The two have to head to a meeting with a venture capitalist that may be interested in funding Mutiny. Beforehand, they're stressed about their drastic difference in outfits. While Donna has dressed up in a fancy dress suit, Cameron's all grunged up with holes in her jeans. But the meeting devolves when the misogynistic Mr. Bondham asks about their "biological imperatives" to have children, which could be a disruption to business. So needless to say, the meeting doesn't quite go the way they had hoped.

Gordon turns up to Mutiny, insistent that he has a fix for a glitch in the Tank Battle game. Of course this is done as a result of a cocaine-binge. But he has to leave Mutiny once he gets a call from the school that his kids were apparently almost-kidnapped but it was actually Stan, whom Gordon had asked to pick the kids up from school.

Donna and Cameron return to Mutiny and find that a hacker named Tom Rendon has hacked their system and upgraded the gym, after which he proceeded to give the game away for free. They hunt down Tom's address and confront him at his home. He just wanted to get their attention and hoped to get a job offer. Cameron is still angry from the disastrous business meeting and threatens to sue Tom but once she sees that he has potential, she begins to reconsider.

Lev, one of the workers at Mutiny, opens one of Boz's letters to Cameron and gets caught by Boz while reading it aloud to the rest of the group who had already decided it was too personal to keep listening in on. Things aren't working out so well for Boz at Mutiny, as he just isn't meshing well with the rest of the group. Cameron catches them and send them all out, even yelling at Lev for his rudeness. Cameron and Boz had written to each other while he was in prison, something Cameron used to do with her father while he was in Vietnam, where he died. We also learn that Cameron's real name is Catherine, something no one but Boz (that we know of) knows. She began using the name Cameron after he father died, as it was his name.

After Tom hacks the games once again, this time allowing multiple users to play the game on a single phone line, Cameron pays him a visit and decides to offer him a job, but without asking Donna. Donna is not happy once again, as she had been spending the whole afternoon researching legal strategies and warns Cameron that she won't be sticking around if Cameron keeps making decisions without talking to her first.

Joe's job isn't going quite as well as he wanted. He even has to help clean the bathroom and has to ask permission to use the microfiche. Sara tells Joe that her father is punishing Joe because of her ex-husband scamming money out of him because Sara had let her guard down. Joe decides that his future father-in-law is putting him to the test and Joe is more than up to the challenge. We start to hear some of that devilish charisma creep back into Joe's voice and we couldn't be more thrilled! Even though Sara wants to call her father and tell him to stop, Joe sways her not to.

When Donna comes home from work, Gordon tries to claim that he has a home-cooked meal he worked hard on but Donna knows it's takeout, as she saw the containers in the garbage. When Gordon learns about the gamers who had figured out a way to play the game for free, Gordon gets struck with inspiration and heads to the garage to begin doing some tinkering of his own.

Halt and Catch Fire airs on Sundays on AMC at 10PM.

Halt and Catch Fire S2E1 - "SETI" Recap


Fast-forward two years from season one and we find our team of tech-geeks busy at work. Cameron and Donna opened up an online-gaming company called Mutiny which is showing signs of predicting the need for chat rooms, IMs, social networks. Gordon has successfully orchestrated the sale of his company and Joe is living a happy life of domestic bliss with his girfriend and former college sweetheart, Sara. They're shown to be enjoying some quality time together with some other friends/couples around a campfire sharing a few beers. Sara shares the story of how they met and it's honestly a bit disarming to see Joe so settled. He talks about getting out of the computer industry because he was unhappy with himself and needed a bit of self-maintenance. He helped a company grow and be sold and now with his large share of the profits he plans to move from Texas to the Silicon Valley to start his own company... though it doesn't look as if Sara's quite as keen on moving.

When Cameron and Donna's power goes out at their house, Cameron begins to plug some of their equipment into the outlets next door. Donna warns her they need to stop breaking those laws but Cameron is confident that they can handle the fines and she'll get more equipment to handle things. Later Donna and Cameron get into an argument because Donna feels she has to pick up the slack to make sure things get taken care of but she doesn't want to be the resident-mother; she took this job because she wanted to do what she loves.

Gordon is shown to have developed a bit of an affinity for cocaine. But he's got a big day ahead, as he's got a large check to collect. While waiting in the lobby, Joe shows up and Gordon seems perturbed that Joe would show up to get his share of the pie. There's no love lost between these two though they do get to talking. Joe notes that perhaps it was a mistake selling the company so soon since the company is apparently worth a lot more. They both admit there are plenty of mistakes they've made. Gordon gets to go in first to pick up his check, roughly 850K. Then it's Joe's turn. Nathan berates him for all his wrong-doings and rips up Joe's check, including setting the first shipment of computers on fire and getting John Bosworth sent to prison. Nathan welcomes Joe to sue him but Joe surprisingly leaves without kicking off on a temper-tantrum.

Cameron and Donna buy some stolen computers since they need the parts and equipment. They hold their own to ensure they're not scammed when it comes to price but after they've made the sale, and the man has driven off, they find that they're counterfeit and unless they can code in Chinese, they're out of luck. Since Donna's away making this bad buy, Gordon's left to look after the kids. It's then that Gordon starts to get a nosebleed, clearly a repercussion of his coke habit.

Cameron and Donna are out for some beers and Donna pushes Cameron to be the boss of Mutiny. This is the point where most companies go under because they're plateauing. They need new users, new subscriptions, they haven't put a new game out in 6 months, and buying stolen XTs isn't going to cut it anymore. Cameron isn't interested in being in charge because she just wants to work instead of doing project managing. Donna points out how people are spending time talking to each other instead of just when they're playing. Donna wants to develop some work with this idea so they agree to split the managerial responsibility. When the man who made the bad-sale walks into the bar, they head over to demand their money back but he pushes Cameron against the wall and tells her to walk away. She and Donna walk out only for Cameron to reveal that she swiped the man's keys. They go to presumably mess his car up but then they find that he has two new XTs in the truck, still in the boxes. They then go to steal the computers and drive away into the night just as the man comes running out.

Joe returns home without having fought for his fair share of the Cardiff sale so he returns home and admits to Sara that he didn't get the money and was shut out instead. He's moved by how much Sara believes in him and proposes to her. She is skeptical but he then gets down on one knee and she says yes. Later, Joe is shown to be doing online gaming against Cameron. Then Cameron drives up to the penitentiary to pick up John Bosworth, who had taken the rap for our programming team's cyber-crimes in season one.

Halt and Catch Fire airs on Sundays on AMC at 10PM.
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