Here’s why not: Halt and Catch Fire has labored mightily to make us believe that’s not all there is to Joe. 'Halt and Catch Fire' Recap: Abort, Retry, Fail? Just ask Gordon, whose encounter with an electrocution victim a few episodes back sent him on a similar journey. That’s a question-your-choices moment if ever there was one. While she can see the faces of her two daughters, who are presumably the subjects of the pictures in the frame, the camera’s placement ensures that we can’t – a subtle but chilling reminder that if things had gone another way that night, Donna would never have seen them again either. Watch Donna’s face when she and Gordon finally return home late that night: arm broken and nerves frayed, she stares at a double photo frame on an end table. Is that where their road really leads?īut you don’t even need to turn to the event’s symbolic resonance. The end result? Getting tossed out of the car in the middle of the road by an armed man while her husband watches helplessly from a distance. Donna departs one symbol of Gordon’s success (the party) in another symbol of Gordon’s success (the Porsche). Perhaps the carjacking that provided the episode’s single most dramatic moment is the key. As Donna puts it in code later in the episode, when Gordon presents her with the engagement-slash-decoder ring he promised her nine years back, “I darf you very gerp.”

The two of them have decided that their fight about Donna’s borderline infidelity and Gordon’s job-related neglect was about real issues – ones that pale in comparison to the even realer love and respect they share. They walk off to bed, Gordon stomping and swinging in faux-fury. “I’m still very mad at you,” he replies, pointing at her, and surrendering. “Get in there!” she demands, directing Gordon to the bedroom she insists she’ll be sharing with him tonight. Finally, Gordon attempts to settle in on the couch where he’s been sleeping – but Donna has had enough. Dishes are washed, beers are drunk, TV is watched, all joylessly, silently. The final Halt and Catch Fire of Season One begins with the show’s single most likeable sequence: Things are tense in the Clark household, where Gordon and Donna have evidently not recovered from the COMDEX debacle.

Halt and catch fire episode 1