Halt and Catch Fire has returned to AMC for its second season, and brought with it major changes for the core Cardiff Electric team.
When we left off at the HACF Season 1 finale, the Giant -- Cardiff’s crowning achievement in the personal computing space -- was being rolled out at an industry conference. But within Cardiff, relationships were unraveling.
Bosworth was sent to jail; Donna and Gordon’s relationship was still strained; Gordon's suspicion of Joe had reached new heights; and Joe ultimately ran from Cardiff, abandoning the company entirely.
Thanks to a time jump in the Season 2 premiere titled “SETI,” we pick up with the characters in 1985, almost two years after the end of Season 1. Cameron and Joe have split up, and Joe has settled into a white-picket-fence-type lifestyle with a new girlfriend who is the opposite of wired, reckless, and prodigious Cam. Gordon and Donna are still together, but Gordon -- now clean cut and one of the “suits” of the world -- seems to be quietly nursing a cocaine habit. Bosworth is still in jail.
And the Giant? The Giant is now... irrelevant.
The Cardiff PC came and went. Then an additional model -- the GiantPro -- came and went as well, a release that Gordon flatly describes as a “lateral move” by Cardiff. The marketplace was not truly rocked by the Giant. And now, an overseas company has purchased Cardiff Electric, laid off much of the staff, and essentially dissolved the Cardiff we got to know for ten previous episodes.
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/halt-and-catch-fire-season-2-joe-gordon-935.jpg" caption="Gordon and Joe, not speaking on "Halt and Catch Fire."" credit="AMC" alt="halt-and-catch-fire-season-2-joe-gordon-935"]
With the sale of Cardiff complete, those with shares in the company must go to the office one last time to collect their checks. Gordon and Joe both arrive, but are not on speaking terms. It pains Joe to be around Gordon, someone he abandoned, and he asks with an ache, “Did you get my letter?” While Cardiff may be done, the emotional consequences of Joe’s almost sociopathic behavior are far from complete.
Gordon, still iffy as to whether the sale of Cardiff was a good thing, collects his sizable check for his portion of the company -- almost a million dollars. With the capital, he wants to get back to the “garage” where he can ditch the suit life and get back to doing what he does best: building something new.
But when Joe steps into the conference room to collect his check, he has it torn up in front of his face and is dared to take legal action, given the lives he “destroyed” while at Cardiff. It is another brutal reminder of his own corporate brutality, one that weighs on him. Desperate for some sense of love and approval, he abruptly proposes to his girlfriend when he gets home -- though it’s unclear if what he really wants is a wife, or simply human forgiveness.
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/halt-and-catch-fire-episode-201-cameron-davis-935.jpg" caption="A scene from the Season 2 premiere of "Halt and Catch Fire."" credit="AMC" alt="halt-and-catch-fire-episode-201-cameron-davis-935"]
Meanwhile, life at Mutiny -- Donna and Cameron’s rapidly-growing online game -- is chaotic, to say the least. Donna struggles to manage the unruly coders, while cords and servers are splayed out around the house. Demand for the game is so high that their current systems cannot accommodate the users, and the women turn to a shady man dealing stolen electronics out of his van to fill their tech needs. When he rips them off, Donna and Cameron steal IBM XTs out of his car and high tail it out of the dark parking lot, a rogue operation going even more rogue.
Amid the madness, though, Donna has noticed something interesting: while Mutiny was down due to technical issues, gamers used the system’s chat platform to chat about ... well, anything. It surprises Donna some, but for us, it signals the earliest moments of the online chat revolution that would soon be underway.
Joe has plans to head to Silicon Valley and launch a new product that will make IBM shake in its boots, but his inner strife seems to be the biggest hurdle between himself and his next career move. And Gordon, on the surface, has it all now -- money, wife, kids, a home -- and yet he is unsettled by something, unsure of himself, and maintaining a persona through the use of a stimulant. Despite Joe’s marriage proposal, he has found a way to stay in touch with Cameron -- unbeknownst to her. He anonymously plays her in Mutiny, her continuing to challenge him even from far, far away.
By the end of the premiere, Cameron drives through the countryside to pick up Bosworth -- he’s been released from prison. With each character on shifting ground, it’s clear that mutiny has just begun.