5) Halt and Catch Fire (Season 2)
Not many kept up with AMC’s 80’s-set computer drama series Halt and Catch Fire last summer, referencing frustrating characters and unbearably inconsistent pacing as its big flaws. An unfortunate turn of events then, when season two of the show premiered back in May and became one of the best things to obsess over this summer. Showrunners Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers jumped the series forward a year and a half, stripped the basics of the show down to two competing storylines, and thrust last year’s runners-up Cameron (Mackenzie Davis) and Donna (Kerry Bishé) into the leading roles.
All of the change-ups lent the show’s sophomore season a scrappy, underdog energy that mainly detailed the rise-and-fall-and-rise-and-you-get-it of Cameron and Donna’s gaming company Mutiny. Joe (Lee Pace) essentially became a side character in his own series, and Gordon (Scoot McNairy) was reduced to tinkering in his garage with flailing attempts to start his own company, and occasionally doing cocaine. A swapping of gender roles in a 1985-set show would have been enough to write home about, but add on top the inner-departmental dramas bursting out of Mutiny’s ramshackle office/living quarters and a dollop of dramatic irony thanks to the oncoming advances in video games hiding around the corner and you have the best adult cable drama of the summer that isn’t called Mr. Robot.
