Halt and Catch Fire: "Giant" Review

Full spoilers for the episode to follow.

Coming off the high of the last few episodes, it was pretty hard to watch Halt and Catch Fire swing its pendulum in the direction of Gordon’s overwrought and melodramatic decent into madness and brush over the more interesting aspects of the story. “Giant” attempts to show the severity of Gordon’s madness as a result of the PC project and Joe’s manipulation of it, but instead it just comes off as cliché and heavy-handed.

“Giant” finds Joe bringing on talented designer and old flame Simon to take a crack at Cardiff’s PC casing, simultaneously enraging Gordon at the prospect of having to redesign the insides (again) and Cameron for interrupting the recently blossomed romance between she and Joe. It’s easy to buy the motivation for Gordon’s anger; we’ve seen him get challenged at every turn and grow increasingly frustrated. Though it’s believable, it’s also problematic. Gordon isn’t up for the challenge. He’s obviously brilliant but appears to be a quitter. It’s Donna that’s his rock, and with her out of town in this episode, Gordon collapses under his own weight.

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