5 Reasons Why ‘Halt and Catch Fire’ Is the Most Underrated Drama on TV

Okay, maybe that’s a little bit of a lie. The Gordon character has never been better than a distant fourth in terms of interest, even after the show got great. But Donna, Cameron, and Joe, with Gordon mixed in for depth of flavor and the requisite marital anchor, have such a satisfyingly rich and complex series of relationships. Donna and Cameron’s initial partnership has such a sense of rebel energy to it; two women setting out for themselves in the male-dominated ’80s tech industry. The requisite splintering of their relationship, fraught with ambition and mistrust that only success (or the prospect of success) can bring has been heartbreaking because the audience so desperately wants to see them win. Meanwhile, Joe MacMillan has become not merely a brilliant bastard but one who’s become intermittently sympathetic even in his most ruthless moments. Joe and Cameron have this star-crossed thing; he and Gordon have their old grudges; Donna feels a massive sense of professional wariness of Joe; Gordon feels a one-sided competitiveness with Cameron, plus a low-grade “my wife might be more successful than me” male anxiety. The relationships are never not thorny and intertwined.

Starting with the great Toby Huss as mentor John Bosworth, Halt boasts an incredibly well-chosen supporting cast. The team surrounding Donna and Cameron’s Mutiny company is a wonderfully familial band of misfits. Mark O’Brien (Arrival) makes a doomed character like Cameron’s for-now husband Tom someone to care about. Kathryn Newton, who played Reese Witherspoon’s oldest daughter on Big Little Lies plays Donna and Gordon’s teenage daughter. Annabeth Gish did a great job as a businesswoman who vacillated between ally and rival. And this season we’re getting Anna Chlumsky in the bargain. A total win!

This is coming from someone who is generally tech illiterate past a certain very rudimentary point. So if Halt and Catch Fire is cheating with the expert tech specifics, I’d never know. But for the regular TV-watching audience, Halt deals with tech pretty perfectly. It’s a show that tracks the development of the tech industry through the ’80s, so there are of course copious opportunities for winks and nods to what’s coming in the future. But even as Mutiny dabbles in gamer communities and chat rooms and the World Wide Web, we see then through Cameron and Donna’s eyes, and it’s pretty fascinating to see the false leads and dead ends that existed back when this technology was wide open without a set path for the future. Cameron wants to preserve an open forum for their users; Donna needs to ward off things like identity theft. It’s all stuff that reverberates today, but in their most elemental form.

This is perhaps my favorite thing about the greatness of Halt and Catch Fire: that I’m on the edge of my seat about the future of Mutiny, or whatever venture Donna and Cameron and Joe have on the horizon next, and without having to resort to mob plots or drug deals or the threat of violence, the show remains compelling as hell. TV tends to default to very violent tropes in order to create what it sees as compelling drama. There’s a quiet confidence to Halt and Catch Fire in not resorting to anything cheap to goose its inherent drama. It’s all about those relationships! If you get the audience to care intensely about whether Cameron and Donna do or do not have a professional breakup, you really don’t need a drug deal gone wrong to keep things interesting.

The small army of acclaimed directors who have stepped behind the camera for Halt and Catch Fire over its first three seasons:

• Phil Abraham (Emmy-winner for directing the Mad Men pilot), three episodes.
• Karyn Kusama (director films The Invitation, Jennifer’s Body)
• Kimberly Pierce (director of Boys Don’t Cry)
• Reed Morano (Emmy nominee this year for The Handmaid’s Tale)
• Craig Zisk (Emmy nominee, Weeds, The Larry Sanders Show)
• Andrew McCarthy (yes, that Andrew McCarthy)

Where to stream Halt and Catch Fire