Halt and Catch Fire: Season 1, Episode 2 "FUD"

Halt and Catch Fire: Season 1, Episode 2 "FUD"

June 08, 2014


After creator Christopher Cantwell set the ball rolling with his excellent foundation-laying work in the series premiere, he gets to work here. “FUD” is a character-driven episode that features fine performances from Pace, McNairy, and Davis. Pace continues his secret, troublemaking ways. Boy, he knows how to deliver a tantrum-whether it was destroying Cameron’s basement office or the information we learn that he caused two   mjllion dollars worth of damage to IBM when he left. Or the ending! Davis continues getting into mischief as she shoplifts. Also, Gordon is still at the mercy of his wife, who seems to exhibit some professional jealousy. The wheels are turning, and we are getting more and more into our characters.

The episode starts with the IBM legal team hammering Cardiff to see if any of their secrets are being stolen. Joe makes them believe that all they are doing is creating a PC clone and Cameron was hired to write BIOS code. Joe’s mission becomes clear. He wants to create a supercomputer half the price, but twice the speed as an IBM computer. It turns out that Gordon and Cameron are not on the same page as Joe. Gordon believes that Joe’s idea is too much and would ultimately end Cardiff. Cameron views this as just another boring project but is worried she would be terminated after completing her portion. Unless their idea works, Cardiff could have some big copyright infringement problems on their hands.

This is a fun episode that flowed very well. There are times where I laughed. Cameron marking up a sleeping IBM lawyer’s face or John Bosworth’s deadpan is definitely worth the few chuckles. The mysterious shadows behind Joe lessen somewhat, but he remains a really fun character to interact with. Lee Pace was born for this kind of role.

My Grade: A-

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

Image
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.” Ah, wise words from our new young friend, Ferris Bueller. In John Hughes’s 1986 film, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off , all Ferris wants to do is take a day and have fun. That is the most simplistic theme the movie has. You can go deeper, but the main takeaway is that it is okay to have fun. That is a motto I have taken to heart. I really loved the film. People consider The Breakfast Club to be Hughes’s best and most important movie. That’s a fine statement to make, but I would personally rank the film number two behind this particular one. The teen characters are instantly relatable, it has a memorable antagonist for the children, and this is basically a thirty-year-old travel guide for Chicago. Just how Woody Allen creates his movies as love letters for New York, this is applicable for John Hughes. A Chicago love letter!   Like all of his films, Hughes wrote
Read more

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Image
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) The James Bond franchise is one of those franchises that will never die. It has been going strong since the first movie rolled out in the early 1960’s, and new James Bond movies are still produced today. What makes this series unique is they use multiple actors to play the titular character over the years. They all bring their own gravitas to the role, and each Bond is a different man when compared to each other (although the martini, shaken not stirred and the beautiful women among other things remain a constant.) So my first James Bond review for this blog is 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me. This wasn’t my first look at the series, but it was my first look at the older movies. I really liked what I saw. This is an old-fashioned story that combines a spy drama and an action-packed war movie into one package. Like many of the older Bond movies, the story can get borderline preposterous. The cheesiness of the plot did come to grow on me after awhile, even
Read more

Broadcast News (1987)

Image
  Broadcast News (1987) If you watched the trailer for James L. Brooks’s Broadcast News , you would be forgiven if you thought this film is about a romantic love triangle set in a news station. Yes, there are aspects of romance, but it is way more than that. Brooks is a very smart, adept director who makes a living in creating deep, meaningful characterizations. In my eyes, Brooks had ideas about how work can overtake personal lives and any romance for these workaholics is essentially just a front because quite frankly, these people love to work…as we see detailed with our main characters. In addition, this film is quite informative. Even in 1987, news stations were more about entertainment and the looks, rather than delivering the actual news itself. It was a newer trend that eventually took over networks. With all the insanity within the newsroom, this film manages to find humanity within its characters. This is a detailed human portrait that is engaging, emotional, and comedic. Ja
Read more