Halt And Catch Fire Season 3 Review

If similar in set-up to last year (Mutiny plans a big launch, Gordon orbits it tentatively, Joe broods from a distance), Halt and Catch Fire benefits from an off-kilter balance of expectation and unpredictability. Structure-wise, the show is your basic, building block of dramatic ups and downs with a major issue flagging the hour (Mutiny needs a trading interface! Mutiny should just buy a company with a trading interface! Mutiny and its new hires hate each other!), but it zigs when you think it’ll zag on an impressive number of occasions.

This year, a lot of that comes from new character Diane (Annabeth Gish), who is a partner at Mutiny’s new VC firm, not to awkwardly mention the mother of a girl who got beaten up by Donna’s rebellious offspring Joanie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones). Thankfully, Halt and Catch Fire doesn’t pull a Homeland or anything, and that’s the extent of the prepubescent drama. Gish does impressive work as the standoffish investor, but it’s her flourishing relationship with a Mutiny vet that further twists the already questionable boundaries on the show. Dayal, as the awkward, stammering addition to Mutiny, also makes a memorable impression, especially once you realize that his initial introduction (stumbling his way through a presentation to Cam and Donna) hides a deeper, myopic drive that doesn’t exactly fly with Mutiny’s come one, come all community.

It’s Joe that gets a gut-punch turn later in the season that’s both justifiable, given his actions as far back as season 1, and tragic. Otherwise, his plot in season 3 is largely stagnant. Without a direct relation to Mutiny in the first five episodes, besides a few scenes between he and Cameron/Gordon/Bosworth, the work he becomes entrenched in over at MacMillan Utility feels far less exciting than Mutiny’s daily five-alarm fires. This is especially considering that his company is established, running, and he’s got a coterie of right-hand men, including Ken (Matthew Lillard), who mostly jokes around and drinks with prospective clients to smooth out any awkward situations. Lillard doesn’t have much to do, but he plays up the Ken Cosgrove-shoutout role with a youthful energy, and easily makes the perfect pairing against Joe’s new namaste-fueled lifestyle.

At the center of Halt and Catch Fire‘s glaring positives are Bishé and Davis, just as they were last year, oozing chemistry and confidence and believably butting heads surrounding the minutiae of Mutiny’s day-to-day drama. Davis strains the charm out of Cameron, even when she begins to make wholly questionable decisions fueled by a trip back home to Texas, and Bishé’s laid-back badass Donna still makes a realistically believable counterpoint to Cameron’s poor business acumen.

Still a bit on the sidelines after season 1, McNairy nevertheless feels vital to a show that could have otherwise dumped him – and his health scare storyline – a long time ago. But you’ll care about him, his coughing fits, and those mysterious journal entries, and it especially helps that with his thick ‘stache and horned rimmed tortoise shell glasses, of all the cast he feels the most cringe-inducing, purely ’80s cheese (in a good way).

That’s not to say Halt and Catch Fire doesn’t succumb to that cheese occasionally, like in Bosworth’s overly soapy family drama, or an overdone laser tag sequence in episode 4 that legitimately ends with a jump-cam still-shot, which I – to be honest – couldn’t help but smile at. The show is best when its nose is to the grind, though, and that’s mostly how season 3 keeps things going, even when foundational arguments bubbling over all season simply fade out over a little Talking Heads. “Good is the enemy of great,” Joe decrees in the middle of the season, somehow managing to avoid feeling like the AMC version of Galvin Belson. Although slightly pious, he’s right, and Halt and Catch Fire – despite its frayed edges and a few humdrum subplots – has taken that mantra to heart this year, approaching a status that reaches, and frequently surpasses, greatness.