Funny / Halt and Catch Fire

Season 1

• Forced to put up with Cardiff's in-house lawyer watching over her shoulder, Cameron waits until he falls asleep, then draws a penis on his face.
• After Cameron abandons Joe's "clean room", she has on the terminal's screen: "IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THE BITCH FELL OFF."
• After a dentist's appointment, Donna and Joanie decide to stop in and visit Gordon at work. While using the bathroom, they run into Cameron, whose upper torso is clad only in a sports bra, and who happens to be applying deodorant. When Cameron starts brushing her teeth in the bathroom sink, Joanie cheerfully reminds her to brush the back teeth.
• At a mall department store, Cameron tries on several ladies' business outfits. She struggles to get the clothes on, and when she does, she has several "I don't want to be seen in this" reactions. However, this later becomes Harsher in Hindsight, after Cameron's aversion to feminine clothing is revealed to stem from the abuse she suffered as a child by her alcoholic Stage Mom.
• At the end of the second episode, Cameron and Gordon are arguing in the parking lot when Joe suddenly drives up and announces that the PC clone should have a handle, as though it's a revelation from God. Gordon looks at him as if he's lost his damned mind.
• In "High Plains Hardware", Donna's mother Susan shows her a novelty pet headstone from her father's latest catalog.
  Donna: (after unboxing the headstone) "Bowser"? It's not exactly a bird's name.
  Susan: (scoffs) Poor thing's dead by now. I expect you can call it whatever you like. (tinny music plays from the headstone)
  Donna: Is that Chopin's "Funeral March"?
  Susan: The Japanese never sleep. Look here. It's our back pager this month. Your father thinks we'll move half a million.
• Cameron is pissed off at Gordon and Donna so she breaks into their house to vandalize it with spray paint. She is interrupted by their neighbor who shows up with a shotgun to fend off the burglar (this is Texas after all). The neighbor, Brian, is the engineer that Gordon previously fired and he recognizes Cameron. He assumes that Cameron is there because Gordon fired her as well so he puts away his shotgun and tells her to go nuts with the spray can. She becomes sufficiently weirded out to decide not to go through with her vandalism, which leads to a Heartwarming Moment as Donna praises her work on the new BIOS.
• All the programmers are playing Colossal Cave on their work computers and John Bosworth calls them into his office. He demands that they tell him how to get his character out of that cave.
• After finding out that Gordon's been telling her programmers that she only got her job by sleeping with Joe, Cameron gets back at him by kissing him full on the lips in front of their coworkers and loudly announcing that "last night was fantastic", much to the amusement of their coworkers.
• When Joe comes over the Clark household, Haley crawls up to his leg and hugs it. Joe just stands there and grins.
• Gordon nonchalantly tells Donna that he got milk after he stole the Giant prototype.
• Gordon comes up with a plan to go to COMDEX and sell the Giant. Step one: Steal the Giant. Step two: Recruit Cameron, and then Joe, and go to Vegas. When he talks to Cameron, though, she's already too scared of going to jail (for helping Bosworth hack a bank) to go along. Gordon says he'll just have to go to COMDEX and explain the operating system himself. She scoffs at this, but he says, "Well, let me make sure I got it. Okay, 'It's better than MS-DOS because it does things like ask you how your day's going, and corrects you if you make a command wrong.' Oh, wait, I know what I'll say. 'It's like having your mother inside your computer.' How's that?" Cue a look of pure disgust from Cameron, and a Gilligan Cut to the two of them outside Joe's place.
• At COMDEX, after getting the Giant up and running, Gordon and Donna type a series of increasingly risque messages to one another over it.
  Gordon: Haven't done that since our honeymoon.
  Donna: Oh, I haven't done that since college.
• Back from COMDEX, Donna can't keep a straight face around Gordon's antics. NOT helped by the fact that he acts exactly like a petulant kid when she has him go into their bedroom.
• When Cardiff Electric gets its first shipment of Giants, Gordon is singing "Ride Of The Valkyries" while walking into the main work area. Eventually, the entire office staff sings along with Gordon until he opens the first shipment. When Gordon opens the big box, he tosses packing peanuts everywhere and triumphantly hoists a boxed Giant over his head.
  Gordon: The Giant awakens!!!
• Cameron and the phone repair guy:
  Phone guy: (examines wrecked phone) Wow. Sheesh, what happened here?
  Cameron: I don't know. Maybe it fell?
  Phone guy: (skeptical) Across the room?
  Cameron: Maybe it was ringing too much.
• Gordon and Donna, apparently having made up, discuss the Porsche he has obtained in light of his newfound income and wealth:
  Gordon: I financed it. They were practically giving them away. What do you think?
  Donna: I think it's about the gaudiest exorbitance that I've ever seen. [beat] And everyone's gonna be looking at us when we drive in it.
• Later...
  Gordon: I'm gonna turn [Cameron] in to the feds for hacking with Bosworth unless Joe leaves Cardiff.
  Donna: Isn't that a little bit evil?

Season 2

• The intentionally bad commercial for the Giant Pro looks like it could be a Tim & Eric sketch. However, to be fair, many computer and technology ads of the period, both in print and on television, were rather ridiculous, including IBM's own Charlie Chaplin-esque "Tramp" campaign.
• As Cameron and Donna steal two brand new in-box XTs after dumping the knock offs from the fence they bought them from, Donna mockingly asks the fence if he wants her number.
• Bosworth walking into Mutiny like an old prison lag and trolling the employees.
  Bosworth: (stands up) God dang, are you guys buying any of that?!
• Joe's new job at his girlfriend Sara Wheeler's father's oil company in data entry. His new boss explains that it's a special privilege to use the microfiche machine.
• Gordon's Mutiny username: "Sexybeard".
• When Donna admits to Cameron that they are getting their data from Joe, Cameron calmly and politely asks Donna for a minute alone. As soon as Donna leaves Cameron starts screaming and throwing things around.
• A frazzled Donna tells Cameron Yo-Yo sent three XTs flying when he tripped over a power cord and the sheer mound of pizza boxes nearby broke their fall.
• While posing for Mutiny's group picture, Bodie slides in drunk and half-naked. Even the bickering Donna and Cameron can't resist cracking a smile. Bosworth then suggests that particular picture be used for Mutiny's magazine ad.
• Donna recites messages printed out either from in-game chats or from the forums on the Mutiny BBS:
  Donna: Listen to this: "Your understanding of U.S.-Soviet relations is as shortsighted as a lemur with cataracts." They call it a "flame war."
• Joe finding out that the mainframes in the oil company aren't even running 24/7.
• The FPS-like scenes with Cameron playing dart tag at Mutiny.
• Lev flirts with another user on Community; however, it turns out to be a guy. This is subverted as Lev is fully aware of this. The humor comes from the others coming to the realization that he is gay and their awkward acceptance of it. Made even funnier by a Real Life Supreme Court ruling a couple of days before the episode aired that legalized gay marriage across the U.S. On the other hand, it turns into Harsher in Hindsight a few episodes later when the guy turns out to be a group of homophobes who beat him up.
• This exchange between Donna and Lev from Episode 5 "Extract and Defend":
  Lev: So, what's going on with Cameron?
  Donna: Do you remember Joe MacMillan?
  Lev: Sure, Admiral Eyebrows.
  Donna: What?
  Lev: That's what we called him. You didn't call him that?
  Donna: No, but I will now.
• Mutiny has decided to host a meet and greet for their users:
  Donna: This is gonna be so much fun.
  Cameron: Ugh, it's gonna be like a hundred awkward first dates at once. God, who are these people? We don't even know.

Season 3

• At Mutiny's "Independence Day" party, Bosworth is singing Frank Sinatra to entertain the crowd.
• At school, Joanie gets into trouble for getting into a fight with another girl. Cameron asks if she won, which Donna doesn't take lightly.
• At Joanie's birthday party, Bosworth brings a robot butler as a gift. It fails rather spectacularly.
• After getting the funding to buy out Swap Meet, Donna accidentally kicks open a bathroom stall in excitement, revealing that there's another woman in there.
• Cameron is looking at renting a small house:
  Agent: [props up window with brick, brushes hands off] You see? It is just so charming. It has all the original molding.
  Cameron: And all the original mold.
• The real estate agent thinks Cameron and Donna are a couple. Donna wants to roll with it in the hope of getting a better deal, but Cameron demurs that Donna is not her type.
• "And that, gentlemen, is how you jerk off a dinosaur!"
• Gordon gets frustrated over how to handle the tension between the Mutiny coders and the SwapMeet coders, and Cameron facetiously tells him to take them out back and shoot them. Gordon takes the two groups of coders to an arcade to play laser tag. Gordon acts like a Large Ham during the game, which results in him getting banned from playing again.
• In "And She Was", Cameron and Gordon team up to beat Super Mario Bros.. The real kicker is the surprised and delighted expressions on their faces when they discover the warp pipes.
• In "The Threshold":
  • Tom moves to Cameron's new house and suggests that he should carry Cam over the threshold as a post-wedding tradition but it doesn't end well, rather walking with Cam through the door.
  • The Mutiny crew throws Cam and her new husband Tom Rendon a party to celebrate their quickie wedding, Bodie asks why he wasn't invited and Yo-Yo asks Cam if she and Tom eloped because she's pregnant, Cam snarkily replies if she looks like she's pregnant.
• When Joe comes by Cameron's house during Halloween:
  Cameron: It's a very tall child dressed as Joe MacMillan.
  Joe: Batman was sold out.
• Gordon awkwardly asking Joe if he and Ryan were a couple.
• At COMDEX '90, Joe and Cameron find the same two guys who tried to sell their OccasionMaster printer in 1983, using the same inept sales pitch to market their new printer, the SPrinter. Joe and Cameron troll the two guys during their presentation, particularly ridiculing the name, and Cameron swipes a bunch of their promotional lighters.
• Gordon's dating video.

Season 4

• At Gordon's lavish 40th birthday party, he hired the Blue Man Group to perform, and he participates in a "human painting".
• During Joe and Cameron's phone call, they discuss the premise of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in detail.
• In order to apologize to the Rover team for driving them so hard, Donna invites them to her place for dinner. As she's greeting the team, she insists on trying to kiss the team's sole woman on the cheek. The latter looks utterly horrified.
• In "Tonya and Nancy":
  • Katie Herman describes in detail how she organizes her brother's heavy metal CD collection based on genre, sub-genre, and the degree to which the album or band in question fits in its genre.
  • In that same episode, Tanya tells Bos that her name has been permanently ruined because of Jeff Gillooly.
• "Who Needs A Guy"
  • Cameron has an adorably stunned reaction after Bos calls saying he needs her at City Hall only to find out that he and Diane are eloping.
  • Later, Donna surprises Diane with a wedding gift and asks Diane if she's pregnant, considering that she eloped.
• "Goodwill"
  • The episode has a brief moment of levity when Joe and Haley steal a bag of stuff from a Goodwill center.
  • When Joe cajoles Haley to play her cassette tape in the truck's stereo, assuring her that he's not too old to appreciate teen music, it turns out to be Barnes & Barnes's "Fish Heads." Joe's expression slowly curdles into bafflement, and he takes a covert glance at Haley as if worried about her sanity.
  • There's also the moment when Cameron tells Joanie to stop being such a dick, while acknowledging that she herself is the Queen Bitch Dick.
  • Gordon's mutton-chop sideburns in the flashback to the 1970s are a wonder to behold.
• "Search"
  • At dinner, the gang talks about the weirdest thing they ate, Joe claims he had eaten porpoise testes.
  Joe: I ate those fishy balls!
  • Cameron falls into the pool during Donna's event for women in tech.
  • While touring the former Mutiny building, Donna tells Cameron that Carl's making a living in porn, Cameron has a stunned reaction and assumes that, due to Carl's Porn Stache, he's the star of the films.