Halt and Catch Fire has so farfailed at delivering us the telecasting dramaabout the rise of the personal estimator that we deserve . In sequence four last night , we see a modest glimmering of Bob Hope , as the one theatrical role who might be Cardiff Electric ’s lay aside thanksgiving has also become the show ’s lone redeem tone . How meta !
Warning : obvious mollycoddler onwards .
“ Close to the Metal ” opens with 22 - year Cardiff vet John Bosworth and the satiny unexampled guy Joe MacMillan right away edge drumhead . No blow that John , who ’s spent a career at Cardiff sell ham radios , rectifying tube , and CPU software , is doubting Joe ’s imagination for the time to come . Hell no , John does n’t think this new buck can make a information processing system that weighs less than 15 pounds , has two floppy phonograph record cause , and an incorporated keyboard and monitor . It ’s just not possible , nor is it financially viable , what does he recollect this is , 1992 ? !
What John does n’t understand is that Cardiff engineers have remove the Doherty Threshold , which , as Joe explain , mean when you require your computer to do something , it respond in less than half a indorsement . Meaning , it will keep people paste to this newfangled machine they ’re building , because it can actually do thing comparatively quickly .
Anyway , in this instalment we see the emersion of fire as a motif . We decidedly should have seen that come , because fire is in the title of the show and because that ’s about how cornball most of what we ’ve been amaze is . After Joe addresses the company explaining the Doherty Threshold milestone , he grabs the IBM manual and lights it on firing , allege ( wait for it ) “ now that ’s what I call cookin ’ the books . ” Cooking , because fervour , and books , because manual , and terrible , because wow .
Because Cardiff is really swan on this computing equipment undertaking , the Wall Street Quarterly decides to off reporter Ron Caine down to Dallas to compose them up . Joe seek to ready the office to put its best foot frontward , part of which mean enlisting Debbie , the poor dummy repository with the put - on of a Texas accent , to make Cameron , the distaff programmer who is mostly around for sex , attend more feminine .
You want more motif ? How about OLD versus NEW . sheer to a cattle ranch ( sometime ) where John is meeting with the ( honest-to-god ) owner Nathan Cardiff , who basically threatens him to keep thing in check over at Cardiff , because his life history depends on it . During the conversation , Nathan oversees some manpower incline to a disgusted and dying ( old ) horse . Eventually the rancher directs the hands to just shoot the thing and put it out of its wretchedness . The metaphor is about as subtle as most Georgia O’Keefe painting .
Now it ’s back to Cardiff , where the newsman has get , only to tell Joe that no one ’s going to want to read about a computer society because it ’s boring . Which , why did he go , then ? Cameron , who is seem more than a little rough around the edges after long night of programming and listening to Black Flag and crushing orangish sodas , has lost all of her body of work thanks to a big businessman upsurge when the janitor plug in a vacuum on the same ability landing strip . All her code is blend in , and there are n’t any back ups . Caine of line reporter sees a massive jamboree and get word that basically , Cardiff ’s project might have already fail . Later on , you learn that the whole thing was a set - up at the helping hand of the ever - so - manipuative Joe , who create a trouble he knew was fixable , so as to make drama and give Caine a good and interesting story to write .
Caine assures Joe that now definitely he will be writing about Cardiff , aka Icarus , who “ flew too nigh to the Sunday ” only to burn up in the shadow of behemoth IBM . Again with the ardour thing .
Everyone and everything is melting down ( attack ! ) , until Donna comes to the rescue . If you recollect , Donna does n’t even mould at Cardiff , but her husband , the falter Gordon , does . Despite forgetting to pick up his children from work and slash Donna with them yet again , Gordon beg her to assist . And it becomes very clear that Donna and only Donna is the one who ’s going to save their asses . So she go far at Cardiff , daughters in tow , and begins to evaluate the position . She ’s appraising Cameron ’s study methods — how she write code , how often she back up , etc . , and Cameron incriminate her of trying to mother her , which , at first seems like a unearthly place to go but later it becomes unmistakable that Donna really just mothers every character in this show , necessarily so . Cameron is also in about DEFCON 3 in terms of carry it together , which she is fully not doing .
Donna cultivate through the nighttime to retrieve the bulk of Cameron ’s computer code , somehow . But when the newsman asks the name of the talented woman who saved the 24-hour interval , Gordo bursts in and generate a fake name — Susan Fairchild — so as not to get them into any hassle , considering it was a Texas Instruments employee ( Donna ) that fix their job . Cardiff has already been in legal bother with IBM , so they ca n’t get in trouble again . Also , Gordon , c’m on humans ! You have this red-hot smart married woman who puzzle out problems . ascertain to give credit where deferred payment is due .
Which actually bring up the point that Donna is becoming the sole compelling reason to watch the show . While the other characters are uniformly abhorrent , vacuous , and stereotypical , she ’s jump to gain a little bit of depth . You see her as having some pity for Cameron , in bitchiness of calling Cameron out for sleeping with her boss , and criticise her lack of organisation . At the end of the episode , when Donna has finish working her magic , she assure Cameron that her code is “ like a musical composition of medicine . ” This episode really laid the foundation for Donna to finish up working for Cardiff eventually . Cardiff needs her . The computer task will not follow without her .
The kicker here , however , is that after Donna and Gordon ( but mostly Donna ) spent an integral nighttime retrieving Cameron ’s code , we find out that Joe set up the whole state of affairs in the first piazza . He was the one that unplugged the machine , and he rig it up to produce dramatic event , and give Caine a reason to indite up Cardiff ’s underdog PC project . You ca n’t facilitate but feel a bit pandered to when you figure this out . Because in a mode , of course Joe would pull a stunt like that . He had everyone up in arms , over something he knew was fixable . He even had his own musical accompaniment , just in pillow slip it was n’t He ’s the asshole , after all .
Although , once again we get in this eldritch zone where the author essay to humanize Joe via violence . He gets pulled over by state troopers for no intellect on his means home , and they beat his ass to a flesh . You know all along he has been gear up up — most potential by ol’ John , who bail him out of jail . Joe , you have to learn your situation or there will be result , chum . Not really sure the point of this part of the story , but again , we feel the architectonic plates of old school and new school day grinding up against one another .
Anyhow , the episode close out with Cameron back at Cardiff , backing her code up , and eat a sandwich , both of which show that she is taking Donna ’s salvia advice . The content we get here is that not only does Cardiff require Donna , but the show needs Donna . She ’s the only character who seems to see the unlike layers to thing . She see that Cameron is talented , but young and in need of guidance . She sees that Gordon is a shitty father , but that he ’s brainy , and at the very least trying . She learn Joe for Joe , and she knows not to trust him . Donna is the only character on Halt and Catch Fire that actually has layers . By this banner , she is busting through the rigid stereotype this show has ascribed its women to . She ’s a mother , and she ’s an engineer . She ’s impudent , and she ’s compassionate . She has a lot of potential . But to pin the promise of a floundering show on one persona is a plenty to ask .
Update : The original version of this mail incorrectly stated that the Doherty Threshold was not a real thing . That was wrong . Here ’s theDoherty Threshold , listed on the IBM website , as described by generator Walter J. Doherty in 1982 . As demonstrate in this installment of Halt and Catch Fire , it is when a information processing system has a response fourth dimension of less than one-half asecond :
When a computer and its users interact at a pace that ensure that neither has to wait on the other , productivity soar , the monetary value of the work done on the calculator tumbles , employees get more satisfaction from their work , and its quality tends to improve . Few online estimator arrangement are this well balanced ; few executives are aware that such a proportionality is economically and technically feasible . In fact , at one time it was thought that a relatively slow reaction , up to two second , was acceptable because the person was think about the next chore . Research on speedy reception fourth dimension now indicates that this early theory is not borne out by the facts : productivity increase in more than direct dimension to a decrease in reception time .
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