YMMV / Halt and Catch Fire

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Gordon giving Joe Tabula Rasa, the counter-program for Sonaris: was it a gift from Gordon to Joe, because Gordon felt some responsibility for Joe's misfortunes, or did Joe actually steal Gordon's idea?
  • Donna seems to understand Mutiny's underlying issues, and doesn't really contradict Cameron when she talks about the decline in user experience. Was her push for the Mutiny IPO because she thought it was a good opportunity for the company to get funding to address the issues, or did she just want to gain personal prestige before what she saw as an inevitable collapse?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: In "Close to the Metal", the engineers exclaim that Cameron's BIOS had surpassed the "Doherty Threshold", where a system response time less than 400 milliseconds was considered addicting to the end-user. The "Doherty Threshold" may sound made-up; however, the concept is taken from "The Economic Value of Rapid Response Time", an IBM case study published in November 1982, written by Walter J. Doherty and Ahrvind J. Thadani.
• Continuity Lock-Out: Like many AMC original series, to fully understand what's going on, one has to start at "I/O".
• Cult Classic: The show has a devoted following, but with its niche subject matter, it never drew the same numbers like AMC's previous efforts such as Mad Men and Breaking Bad.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Donna Clark started out as Gordon's miserable wife, though she quickly came into her own and became the show's Deuteragonist alongside Cameron in Season 2. However, her actions in Seasons 3 and 4 push her into Base-Breaking Character status.
  • While Bosworth is the least focused on character among the main cast, he is considered a fan favorite for his Good Ol' Boy personality.
  • In season 4, Haley Clark developed a fandom almost overnight once her character became developed.
• Follow the Leader: With its period setting in a high-profile industry, brooding protagonist with a mysterious past and penchant for inspirational monologues, and female Determinator co-lead, the show was clearly inspired by Mad Men, which prompted many jokes about the initial episodes being about cloning a PC.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Cameron actually really lucked out that Atari took a pass on her game, given their imminent collapse with the failure of the Jaguar.
  • Anyone familiar with the Morris worm will know where things are going when Gordon starts excitedly talking about writing a program to map the true size of Mutiny's network.
  • Viewers with modern experience of social media will probably spot the major problems Mutiny develops regarding monetization, privacy, and user experience.
  • In the first season Bos talks excitedly about the Southern Methodist University Mustangs football team...a team infamous among college football fans for financial scandals in this era.
• Growing the Beard:
  • The general and critical consensus is that the show hit its stride in the second season, among other improvements the script becomes less forced and character development is a lot more natural when not in the Cardiff Electric pressure cooker. This is understood to the point that it's not uncommon to see recommendations for new viewers to start with season two.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In the episode "The Threshold", during Cameron's belated wedding reception after Donna and everyone else votes to have Mutiny in the IPO, Cameron furiously rips into Donna about her marriage collapsing as a result of Donna working all hours to which Donna points out to Cameron that she's a newlywed and is in no position to judge her about her marriage failing, fast forward two episodes later, Donna is now divorced from Gordon.
  • In the third-season finale, Cameron accuses Donna of treating other people like they're disposable once they no longer serve a purpose to her.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Yo-yo's Backgammon game is rejected because its size and color makes it more appropriate for a cartridge game. In "Kali", Cameron sells the game "Extract and Defend" to a company making games for the soon-to-be-released Nintendo Entertainment System.
  • Season 3 opens with a scene where Bosworth sings a Frank Sinatra song. In Feud: Bette and Joan, Toby Huss plays Frank Sinatra.
  • In season 3's "Rules of Honorable Play", while Donna and Cameron are looking at a new house for Cameron, the realtor makes an insinuated remark speculating that Donna and Cameron are lesbians, fast forward a month later guess what Mackenzie Davis plays on Black Mirror?
  • In Season 2's "Play With Friends", while Cameron and Tom are in bed they talk about renting the then-new The Terminator movie and recite lines from the movie in Russian and German accents, in March 2018 it was revealed that Mackenzie Davis would star in Terminator: Dark Fate.
• Ho Yay: Donna seems like she might like women, too. Her dynamic with Cameron feels almost like she's married to her, and she seems a bit more flustered than expected at seeing another woman changing in a washroom and in other interactions with female colleagues. It's also implied that she Experimented in College when she and Gordon jokingly type dirty messages into Cameron's Giant OS.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Ryan is not subtle or diplomatic, but the reaction to his pretty reasonable concerns seems to show a lot of groupthink and hostility in Mutiny's team of programmers and apathy from Donna and Cameron.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • In Season 2, Joe tries so hard to right the wrongs he did; however, when he tells the people he previously hurt the truth, no one believes him.
  • Gordon is a self-centered Jerkass, but in season 2, he finds out he has brain damage which he ultimately dies from.
• Like Brother and Sister: Cameron apparently has this dynamic with Gordon and to a lesser extent with Ryan Ray.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Westgroup crossed it in "Limbo" after they cloned Mutiny and hijacked their customer base.
  • From Cameron's view, Donna crossed it in "Yerba Buena", when Cameron finds out the truth about Diane's decision to allow her to fire the SwapMeet founders.
  • Cameron's trust in Donna is definitively severed in "The Threshold" when the latter wants to move forward with Mutiny's IPO, while the former wanted to wait and improve, Gordon notes that it's a route of no return.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • In "FUD", Joe turns on nearly every stereo at full blast in a hi-fi audio store, creating an auditory nightmare.
  • In "Landfall", Gordon finds a dead body near a downed power line. In the following episode, Gordon has a nightmare where he's the one lying on the ground dead, and his screaming scares his daughters.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Carol Kane appears in the final episode as a fortune teller who barely tries to pretend it's not a sham.
  • Simon Church, Joe's ex-boyfriend and the designer of the Giant's case, has a large impact for under five minutes of screen time.
• Screwed by the Network: When it comes to physical releases of the show, only Season 1 and 2 are available to purchase, while Season 3 and 4 have not been released physically, nor of any pending complete series release being announced. The only way to seen the complete series is through streaming services.
• Spiritual Successor: The series seems to be one to Mad Men, due to its period setting and the main character being a Tall, Dark, and Handsome slick-talking narcissist with a Dark and Troubled Past.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Gordon's wake and funeral take place offscreen in "Goodwill." This would have been a great opportunity to have some of the old Cardiff/Mutiny code monkeys like Yo-Yo, Lev, and Bodie make cameos in Season 4. Instead, they don't appear at all in the show's final season.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Ratings for the first season were abysmal, and the fact that the three main characters were stressed to the hilt and/or complete assholes for the first 8 episodes probably had something to do with it.
• The Woobie:
  • John Bosworth. After losing nearly everything, it's hard not to feel sorry for him.
  • Season 2 brings Cameron into this category as there are times when she has lost nearly everything she's worked for.