As tech moguls rule, ‘Halt and Catch Fire’ reminds us of Texas’ hidden tech history
CHRON
Halt follows Joe MacMillan (played by delightful Houston native Lee Pace), a former IBM executive who joins Dallas-based software company Cardiff Electric, a fictionalized analogue to Texas Instruments.
Joe, believing that a personal computing revolution is about to break out, enlists engineer Gordon Clark (Dallas-native and Hall of Fame “that guy” actor Scoot McNairy) and punk-rock coder Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis) to reverse engineer the just-released IBM PC. In his endeavor to chase the next big thing, Joe enlists the reluctant help of Cardiff executive John Bosworth, a good ‘ole boy played by the wonderful Toby Huss, who surprisingly isn’t a Texan.
When Halt came out, it immediately drew comparisons to Mad Men, and not without reason. In its first season, Joe is essentially a bisexual Don Draper without any of Don Draper’s tortured, insane backstory. (So similar are the characters that the TV critic Emily St. James referred to Joe as “Tron Draper” in her review of the pilot.)
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