Halt and Catch Fire: The Way In

June 15, 2015 8:03 AM - Season 2, Episode 3

Gordon goes medieval on a Jolt can, Mutiny welcomes a new employee before something threatens the whole existence of the company, Joe grows restless in his new job and Boz struggles to find his place in the world.

As Gordon keeps orbiting Mutiny with an idea to map users more accurately, Donna keeps considering the social aspect of the network. Joe holds a dinner party, but both his new fiancee and his old friends find themselves confused by Joes' behaviour. Cameron and Mutiny might be cornering themselves in a creative rut, but nothing will matter unless they overcome a massive security fault.

posted by lmfsilva (6 comments total)

So, thoughts.

This seemed a turn back to old Joe, not so much the man of mystery but the reckless visionary. I wonder what is he planning to do with the mainframe. Giving server time to Mutiny? Some sort of remote, 24/7 datacenter project with Gordon (now that he's cut from Mutiny)?

I find it hard to believe Gordon's program would wreck the whole network. Put users in a endless loop and preventing them from using the service? Sure. But Destroying their own data? I think there has to be something else in there.

Gordon and Donna's surprise at Joe's invitation and speculation about Sara's look. Also, mysteriously, my interest in tall, dark mannequins with delusions of grandeur has dwindled. Ooooooooh!
And "Academia? You make it sound like a nut you're allergic to."

Boz realized his family doesn't need him anymore, although they don't want him away either. According to the next week in nerd men bit, I think he's coming back to the family that actually needs him - Catherine and Mutiny. And in this episode it became finally clear she's over her own head - Gordon's reveal that Donna has been secretly paying bills, the complete lack of structure that is eating up the company, the lack of ideas (although Jiggles isn't worse than some ideas for the Atari 2600). Boz tells everyone what to do, Donna deals with the tech side of the company while exploring the social side of the network and Cameron can go back to being the programming genius that built Mutiny in the first place.

What's up with Gordon inability to open a can and then unplug his computers? early signs of ALS or MD?

Finally: was anyone expecting a crucial plot point being revealed in the reversed text on next week... ? Think again.
posted by lmfsilva at 9:01 AM on June 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Toby Huss is an impressive actor.
posted by drezdn at 9:05 AM on June 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

LOAD "SONARIS.EXE"

Load from tape (,4,1)?
Load from disk (,8,1)?

So close yet so far.
posted by scalefree at 11:16 AM on June 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Every exit is an entrance.
posted by robcorr at 7:39 PM on June 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Gordon's program had the same effect as the Tres Comas bottle did in Silicon Vslley a few episodes ago. Writers like to make their computer networks vulnerable to catastrophe.
posted by cardboard at 3:43 AM on June 16, 2015 [1 favorite]

The program is almost certainly an accidental Worm. He's trying to map all of the users on the network, so a self replicating program that explores the user graph and reports back is a natural thing to try. Unfortunately, he's only just learning C++, so probably screwed up some memory addresses. The programs then missed the existing installations, and self replicated uncontrollably. A very similar problem brought the early internet to a halt for a few weeks in 1989!
posted by kaibutsu at 10:14 AM on February 11, 2021 [1 favorite]