With season 1’s “let’s build the next great machine!” arc finished, I wasn’t too sure where the bulk of season 2 would go. The obvious being that Joe was kicked out of the club, ostracized by his own actions, right back where he started. Gordon would play around with his payout while Cameron and Donna would be busy getting Mutiny off the ground.

Now with season 2 finished, it’s clear that our quad didn’t learn much as they made many of the same mistakes. Joe manages to bounce back pretty quickly, selling himself and his out of the box thinking like a true master. Too bad he is his own worst enemy. Even when he does right, his track record means no one trusts him anyway. Joe’s life is an animated gif of an explosion spreading out and resetting over and over.

Gordon can’t stay still for long and decides to build his own PC again. Keep it small, do what he does best and engineer the crap out of it and do direct sales to start. It’s all he really knows how to do. A major illness knocks him for a loop, which makes his business hit the skids before it every really gets off the ground.

Donna and Cameron make a good team, with Donna being the business woman and Cameron being the fire in the furnace for the fledgling Mutiny. The online upstart that has bigger plans than it may ever be able to handle. They manage to get through every crisis, but a piece is lost each time.

Halt and Catch Fire is about the four legs of the table: Joe, Gordon, Donna, and Cameron. When a leg (or two) gets kicked out, the whole thing teeters. Their work back at Cardiff Electric will be with them until the day the die.

Cameron struggles with Joe the entire season, despite him hardly being there. They were rarely in the same scenes together, but their actions were often influenced by each other whether they realized it or not. Cameron gets to the end this year be reassured to never trust Joe (again).

Gordon was a walking accident all season. With Donna working with Cameron so much, their past roles were reversed with Gordon more or less floundering around and hiding things. Their rocky marriage has been mentioned quite a bit from the start of the show, but Gordon’s most recent actions were Joe caliber implosions. A lot of it was due to his brain disease, but the rest he had to take responsibility for (which Donna more or less forced him to do).

I found a lot to like this season and it all came together in the season finale. Gordon’s erratic behavior and the head it reached with Donna. I loved the ultimatum she gave him at the end for them to move forward in a positive way. She’s a smart woman, simply bailing on him would’ve be too easy. The kicker of Gordon discovering Joe’s theft should light an epic fire under him. Keeping his family together is one thing, but this is going to push him to help Donna and Cameron absolutely bury him. Because of the payout from Cardiff, Gordon got out of working with Joe relatively unscathed. That left him open to help out Joe when he asked (while still being shady about it, but Gordon still rolled with it). The last move from Joe is a straight up personal attack, I can’t see Gordon ever forgiving him.

That was just one break-up of the season too. Cameron couldn’t hold it together with Tom (big mistake) but retaliation on him in episode 9 was great. She kinda rolled over in season 1, but not this time. Joe’s marriage was a major flameout (surprise!) which seemed like the end of him. He always manages to rally though, like any good parasite. Slash and burn and move on is Joe MacMillan’s M.O.

Looking forward to Season 3 where we move to California to see if both Mutiny and Joe can fly out of the ashes again and manage to stay air born with the promise of networked computing.