It’s easy to look at AMC’s “Halt and Catch Fire” going into its fourth and final season as a completely different show than the one that premiered in 2015.
The drama series about technology gurus in the early days of the 1980s computer boom initially told a story about two colleagues — Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace) and Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy) — who were engaged in a Steve Jobs vs. Steve Wozniak style relationship. Working to create an IBM competitor, the two clashed on producing hardware and how to market the products.
Season 2, however, presented a dramatic shift. Joe and Gordon were relegated to supporting characters as Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis) and Donna Clark (Kerry Bishé) began to lead. The two women started Mutiny, an early online gaming company. Over the course of this and Season 2, the show became less about the business of making technology, and more about why we do it. It became less of a period piece, and more of a way to present parallels with today’s technology.
“Is the technology we create bringing us together or driving us further apart?” co-showrunner Christopher Cantwell asked in an interview with TheWrap. “We examine that in our five characters’ relationships with each other. It’s definitely like looking at them with a macro lens in terms of today.”
Cantwell, along with Christopher C. Rogers (the two Chrises, as I like to call them), were brand new to TV when they pitched the show that would ultimately become “Halt and Catch Fire” to AMC. They met when they were both “dream-deferred writers,” Rogers explained. Despite this lack of experience, one of the first things they learned was to be flexible.
“In approaching the show, which was our first foray into television at all, we had to keep an open mind and listen to what the show was telling us,” Cantwell said.
So even throughout Season 1, the show was going through a transition. People in the writers’ room found themselves talking about Cameron and Donna instead of Joe and Gordon, which led to them getting more screen time in Season 2. They looked at somebody like Joe, a mysterious person who wanted to have all the answers but didn’t, and tweaked him into what they called a “two-strike hitter” — somebody who pretended to have all the answers. Gordon, who was the misunderstood genius who couldn’t connect with anybody, learned to engage in relationships, becoming the heart of the teams he was a part of.
“They’re challenging all those things we set up in the story and constantly upending them. That seemed to be where the fun was,” Cantwell explained.
Of course, the cast and crew was on board. It also wasn’t totally off base for a show that’s about invention and change, so that made the adjustments easy for the audience to swallow.
“It was true of the cast and it was true of what they brought to the performances and with the themes of reinvention and rebuilding that we brought to the show from the very beginning,” Cantwell continued.
So much changed just from the pilot that “Halt and Catch Fire” almost became a different show and critics noticed. The original response was that the show was trying, unintentionally or not, to be like AMC’s other hit “Mad Men.” Writers also found the Jobs/Wozniak dynamic to be played out, especially in early episodes where the focus was on building hardware. However, with Season 2, and even towards the end of Season 1, the reception became more positive.
That criticism changed how the two Chrises worked. While Season 1 was already complete by the time the show began airing, the response influenced Season 2 and beyond.
“You make something and you put it out in the world for the first time and you want it to be a hit, you want everyone to love it and it was hard when it wasn’t immediately embraced,” Rogers said. “But in a way I think it was one of the teachers we could’ve had at that point in our career. I think it sent us into a ‘we have nothing to lose’ mentality. We were going to play our music, we were going to tell the story we wanted to tell and kind of block out all the feedback that was coming from outside. That really enabled us to find the rhythm of the show that we were able to settle into.”
Originally, the duo worked with Jonathan Lisco, who acted as showrunner. However, after he stepped down following Season 2, the Chrises were thrust into new “terrifying” territory. However, at this point, they had settled into their writing style and what they wanted out of the show, so it was a matter of just sitting down and creating Season 3. This season presented another huge change for audiences. Instead of setting the show in Texas, where it had been for two seasons, it was moved to Silicon Valley.
This transition not only introduced a new modern-day parallel, but introduced new conflicts for the characters as they moved from small-town, lowkey life into the middle of the technological revolution.
“We felt something beautiful,” Rogers recalled. “We really doubled down on the room dynamics and trying to creating a culture where people felt power to do their best work, on really getting good feedback with the actors.”
Season 4, however, presented the biggest change since the beginning, picking up seven years after the Season 3 finale. The showrunners said that this allows the show’s final season to explore all of the transitions that have come before it, whether it’s personal or professional.
“They spent three seasons of trying to guess the future, of trying to create a future that other people don’t see, and we put them squarely into this future they created, so they can look around going ‘what have we wrought,’” Rogers said.”It’s also a chance for our characters to look back at the journey they’ve been on. They have a lot of scars and wounds and hopefully a little wisdom to see if they can revisit the things they couldn’t get right in the first season.”
It also brings them out of the 1980s and into the 90s, where the internet and Silicon Valley are on the precipice of becoming what it is today. That in itself will create a whole new environment for the characters.
Overall, going into the final season, Rogers and Cantwell feel like they’re at the height of their powers. While it was AMC’s decision to end the show — and give the creators one more season to wrap everything up — they said it was for the best.
“Forty hours was enough time to tell this story without it getting stale, without repeating ourselves and without it going into decline,” Rogers said, adding that the two were “finally comfortable this year” after four seasons of constant change, adaptation and creative stress.
So maybe in Season 4, after 10 years of a journey, maybe the characters will be comfortable too.