Halt and Take hold of Fire Epitomize: The Human Touch on

Halt and Grab Burn down has spent the opening episodes of its final flavour pushing effectually building blocks. The start three episodes have been strong, particularly in episode ii'south epic phone telephone call. But "Tonya and Nancy" feels similar the story is finally shifting into a higher gear. Nigh of the people are in place, the major themes and ideologies take been introduced, the teams are coalescing, and the stakes are getting higher. Information technology's fun.

The competition between Rover and Comet is at present explicit rather than assumed. Afterwards the cease of episode 3, when Gordon and Donna confabbed about Comet, I wondered if Halt and Catch Fire would dither over Donna's reticence to compete against her own family. I shouldn't have worried. "Tonya and Nancy" moves straight into a caput-on visitor versus visitor race, with Haley and Donna trying to negotiate the tension at abode while non belongings back in the slightest at work. At that place's no time to debate the ins and outs of trying to vanquish your daughter's company — there's no fourth dimension to fence, period. The show goes flying forward, skipping through weeks and months as it speeds to reach the nearly interesting moments. (Note to Game of Thrones: This is how yous go nigh skipping the boring bits.)

Let'due south take it apart in layers. On the plot level, Comet is growing past leaps and bounds while Rover struggles. Joe and Gordon reply to the massively expanding Spider web by hiring a mass of experts, who trawl the internet for new sites to index, sorting through the good and bad stuff, categorizing and blurbing their favorites. We go a glorious entrance from Anna Chlumsky as Comet's new chief ontologist, who's both motivated and wonky. It is massively fun at Comet, and Joe and Gordon turn down VC funding and an conquering offer from AOL mostly because they're happy.

Meanwhile, Rover falters. Poor Cecil, a cardboard-cutout character who exists simply to be bad at his job, cannot crack the nut of their devastating algorithm troubles. (Even when Cecil finally does get some screen time, it'due south merely to admit his own uselessness.) Although he tells Gordon otherwise, Bos is nonetheless desperate for greenbacks. He attempts to leverage AOL'south offer for Comet into a buy-out for Rover that would salvage his own bottom line. It fails. Tanya rightly takes him to job for putting his own needs to a higher place the visitor's, and and then Bos gets an thought from Cameron that catapults Rover back into search-engine importance. At the stop of the episode, the fortunes have been inverted: Rover is back on top and Joe wonders how Comet can compete against a company with Serial A funding.

It'southward a solid structure for a story — two competing companies, racing for relevance — and the episode's threaded references to the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan rivalry is a dainty historical frame. But the very black-and-white frame works all the better because HACF refuses to let us take 1 as fully good and the other as evil. We root for Comet because of Anna Chlumsky'south chanting and because Haley throws a pie in Gordon's confront and we want to believe in Joe's vision of the human bear upon. At the same time, though, Donna kicks ass as a venture capitalist, and we want her to rub her success in her male partners' faces. Fifty-fifty as she cracks downwards on her team, the evidence deftly uses her maternity to balance her prototype. She is painstakingly conscientious not to pressure or alienate Haley at home, in spite of how plainly weird it is for both of them. And over on the Comet side, Halt and Catch Fire finally gives us something it's been prepping united states to want for a long, long time: Joe and Gordon, happily and productively working together.

While the surface plot is a relatively minimal A versus B story, it's layered over such a thoroughly, thoughtfully messy network of family relationships, past betrayals, ambitions, and passions that you lot inappreciably even notice how simple the story has get. (I certainly don't hateful "simple" in a negative way here; it's simple in an archetypal, story-equally-old-as-time sort of style.)

Underneath all of that delicious chaos of warring companies and business partners and parents and children and Anna Chlumsky'southward crimped hair, there's Halt and Catch Burn down's deeper story of how technology evolves. Rover and Comet stand for ii apparently opposed strategies. Every bit Tanya explains in her defense of seeing Rover equally a "big swing" idea, the earth volition need some way to navigate a Web that'due south so large, no team of people could ever index it all. It is a machine over heed strategy. Comet is the boutique, curated, homo touch side of Spider web browsing. Both companies are too early to see that their strategies aren't competing for a zip-sum slice of the pie. Eventually search and curation will come to seem like entirely different projects, both of them necessary. But at this early phase, they represent HACF's favorite technological preoccupations: the interactions between people and machines, the way technology helps people connect, and the difficulty of building a hereafter no one's imagined yet.

The machine side seems common cold and heartless, and the people side looks then much more joyful. So let'southward talk nearly Cameron. The show has its Tonya and its Nancy (and its poor Tanya, who regrets the mode her name has been co-opted by a villain). They're duking information technology out for eyeballs and cultural relevance. Cameron, meanwhile, is stuck trying to find herself with an Airstream and a dirt bike ("space bike!") and a plot of muddy country. It'southward frustrating to see her separated from the main action of the series. She gets that stellar little sequence where the Airstream slips and everything goes quite literally to shit, just I miss her and Donna together. I miss her engaging with such a dynamic tech moment.

In the Rover vs. Comet battle, though, it makes a lot of sense for Cameron to be stuck somewhere afloat in the eye. She'southward always been on the people side of the "how people interact with tech" division, so I have no incertitude she wants to put her organized religion in Comet. Merely she knows an algorithmic approach will exist what the Web really needs. Where does that go out her? She's tied to Joe, she'due south alienated from Donna, Comet'southward civilisation would be exactly her speed, and withal Rover is obviously the idea she believes in. No wonder she's out there in the boondocks trying to become excited near chili-pepper lights.

I hope this episode volition be Cameron's turning bespeak. I'm ready for her to go back to work. Considering, as Joe yells in one of the best cut-to-blackness moments I've seen in a long while, Rover is in trouble. The crawler is interacting with the data indexing! Their whole human approach is now completely and totally fu— (stop scene).

• Every scene with Haley working at Comet is a beautiful perfect gem that I want to treasure forever. Is Scientology a faith or a cult? Per Comet'southward company-porn protocol, she is at present stepping away from the machine. And the glow on her face up when she nails Gordon with that pie? Information technology fabricated me so happy information technology almost hurt.

• I'm very excited to run across more of Comet's new master ontologist. Enhance your hand if you also rewatched that death-metallic monologue a couple of times. No? Merely me? Cool.

• One of the biggest shifts HACF fabricated afterward its starting time flavour was toward a greater sense of humour. Now, we get moments like Joe swearing upward and down that click beetles are a existent thing, and Gordon insisting that no, Joe, they are from Star Trek. Which you did see.

• At some point, I'll get into this at greater length, just for at present allow me just say how amazing information technology is to have a series about the nascence of the internet age where ane company is shepherded by a female VC exec and her driven, capable assistant who'southward also a black adult female, while the other company is founded by a 15-year-old daughter who now continues to drive its growth, and the best new ideas about how to crawl the Web come from the show'southward resident female genius programmer. Sure, we've also got Gordon and Joe, just nothing beats Donna, Haley, and Joanie on the sofa together.

Halt and Catch Burn Epitomize: The Human Touch