In focusing the season arc on a tech startup run by two women, Halt plumbed largely unexplored dramatic territory for TV. The duo’s arguments and managerial clashes were resolved without the grunting testosterone of the first season.

What’s more, the show didn’t patronize Cameron’s struggle to define her company as more than an act of rebellion, or Donna’s resistance to becoming den mother to Mutiny’s nerdy employees. By focusing the season arc on a tech startup run by two women, Halt plumbed largely unexplored dramatic territory for TV, following Donna and Cameron’s efforts to avoid being pigeonholed in a male-dominated industry (that, in time, would only become even more male). The second season focused on Mutiny, the online game company Cameron runs out of a ramshackle house in Austin, Texas, with a bunch of grody young coders and Donna, a mother-of-two struggling to balance her passion for the job with her crumbling marriage. Each of AMC’s big new dramas arrives under the shadow of the network’s departed behemoths-a burden for Halt and Catch Fire, which needed time to find its characters’ voices amid the complex story that creators Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. When those shows launched, AMC found itself in the top tier of cable TV, but with them gone, it only had ratings monster The Walking Dead available as a viable lead-in for a new series. Halt and Catch Fire arrived on AMC last year, facing its network’s strong track record and the high expectations that came with Breaking Bad wrapping up its run and Mad Men preparing up to do the same. The new setting and shift in protagonists turned out to be exactly what the show needed: It executed the fastest turnaround (in terms of critical acclaim) since Parks & Recreation’s much-mocked first season led into its wildly praised second in 2009. Season two wisely hit the soft reboot button and focused on Cameron starting an online video-game company in 1985 with Gordon’s wife Donna (Kerry Bishé), while Joe and Gordon receded to the background to pick up the pieces of their own failures.

The story trudged along in early episodes and then tried to cram in the rest of the plot toward the end: Joe and company tasted success with their prototype PC before having to throw their innovations out the window to fit into an IBM-dominated market. Along the way, Joe recruited, fell for, and broke up with the rebellious programmer Cameron. It followed an ideas man, Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace), and an engineer, Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy), as they created a revolutionary personal computer (based on the story of Texas PC company Compaq) in the early ’80s. Its ratings are underwhelming, and it got a slow start with audiences last year with a first season that tried to do too much, too quickly. Season 2 of Halt and Catch Fire airs Sunday, May 31 at 10/9c on AMC.Whether Halt and Catch Fire will return after this critically hailed second season remains a toss-up. Rogers and executive produced by showrunner Jonathan Lisco ( Southland), Gran Via Productions’ Mark Johnson ( Breaking Bad, Rectify, Diner, Rain Man) and Melissa Bernstein ( Breaking Bad, Rectify). The series is created by Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. The series features a talented cast including Lee Pace ( Pushing Daisies, Guardians of the Galaxy), Scoot McNairy ( Argo), Mackenzie Davis ( Smashed), Kerry Bishé ( Argo, Red State) and Toby Huss ( Cowboys & Aliens). Setting The Fire: Research And Technology.Halt and Catch Fire thrives on the spirit of innovation and explores what it's like to stand at the forefront of something world-changing and work towards it, no matter the risk.īonus features on Halt and Catch Fire: The Complete First Season include:

MacMillan enlists the help of Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy), a once great engineer who dreams of creating a revolutionary product while trying to manage his initially unsupportive wife Donna Clark (Kerry Bishé), and Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis), a volatile prodigy who puts her future in jeopardy to join MacMillan's rogue PC project. In this fictional drama, a former IBM executive, Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace) plans to reverse engineer the flagship product of his former employer and forces his current company, Cardiff Electric, into the personal computer race. Halt and Catch Fire: The Complete First Season is set roughly one year after IBM all but corners the market with the release of its first major product – the IBM PC. The 3-disc set includes all 10 episodes from Season 1, plus bonus featurettes about the making of the series. Halt and Catch Fire: The Complete First Season is now available on DVD and on Blu-ray from Anchor Bay Entertainment.

Amc halt and catch fire