AMC’s brand new series Halt and Catch Fire airs with a new episode tonight, this episode is called “Close to the Metal” and on tonight’s episode a crisis threatens the future of the BIOS and requires all hands on deck to save the machine.
On the last episode Gordon and Cameron ended up hitting a bump in the road as they struggled together to make Joe’s vision become a reality, while at the same time Joe and Bosworth looked for help from the capital to see if they’d fund the making of the new machine. Did you watch the last episode? If you missed it we have a full and detailed recap, right for you.
On tonight’s episode a problem occurs and causes the BIOS to take a turn to the worse putting its future in jeopardy. In order to save the BIOS everyone is needed to come together and help, will they be able to do it?
Tonight’s Halt and Catch Fire’s episode is going to be a great show, and you won’t want to miss it. So be sure to tune in for our live coverage of Halt and Catch Fire— tonight at 10 PM EST! While you wait for our recap, hit the comments and let us know how excited you are about this new series, Halt and Catch Fire.
RECAP:
Cameron is working hard when Joe comes in. She says she knew it would be fast and says she’ll be done in two days. She asks him to leave so she can work. He does and calls a team meeting. He tells them that they hit a milestone. He talks about the Doherty Threshold. He says if you give the computer a command and it answers you back in less than ½ a second, you will stay glued to that machine and says your productivity will soar. The benchmark for the sweet spot is 400 milliseconds. He says their new PC clocked in at 396 milloseconds. They applaud.
He says it will be faster than any other PC on the market and will be addictive. He calls Debbie over with a stack of messages from potential retailers and says a reporter is coming to do a story on them tomorrow. He says they’re cooking with gas and holds up the IBM code book. He throws it in the trash and pours lighter fluid on it. He lights it and it goes up in flames and he says that’s cooking the books.
John is not pleased with him. Gordon tries to get his daughter dressed. She fusses and Donna chimes in to make her behave. He tells Donna they should start smoking pot again. She tells him that he has to pick up the girls today. She says she can’t and has a report that’s due. Her parents are away and the sitter has chicken pox. He asks her to come home right after and says that he has to go back to the office.
One kid comes and says the other threw her toothbrush in a toilet with peepee. Donna tells Gordon to handle it. He does then walks outside and sees his angry neighbor that he fired standing on the lawn in his robe. He cranks his car and drives off as the guy yells at him not to work too hard. Cameron works with her music blaring. Joe stands outside her space looking at all the trash she’s accumulated.
Joe comes upstairs and finds Debbie unjamming the copier. He says he needs her help. He says the right type of article can be a game changer. He says the wrong image can make things fall apart. He says the problem is Cameron and says her work station is an embarrassing pigsty. He says they have to get it cleaned up and tells the cleaning crew to hurry.
Debbie says she’ll never let them in here again. He asks if she lives nearby and asks her to take her to her place, put her in the shower, get a bra on her and to wash and do her hair. Debbie says she’ll do her best. John goes to see Nathan and then says he needs to get back but Nathan says he thought Joe had everything in hand. Nathan asks why Lou Lou won’t return his calls.
He says he doesn’t care if she won’t invest but it’s her silence that’s odd. John says Joe said awful things to her and Nathan says that kind of thing doesn’t bother her. Nathan asks whose really running things and John says he is. Nathan says there is talk that Joe is running away with things and that’s going to make both of them look like idiots. He tells John he can go.
Nathan gives the nod and they put down the ailing horse they were watching. John hears the gunshot and takes it as a sign. Joe talks to the reporter and the guy says he’s not an engineer and sounds canned. Joe says he’s the product manager and the reporter says everyone says they have that threshold in the test phases. He says he’s there on a favor from a friend of a friend.
Joe asks Ron not to leave. He asks him to meet the people and get the underdog angle. Cameron is down in her area, music blaring looking rough still and is having a problem. She checks her cables. Joe explains that Cameron is 22, a girl and brilliant. Cameron is in a panic because all her code is gone. She’s freaking out and Gordon and the other guys try to help. She spots a power surge and Gordon asks where the back up floppies are.
They reboot and try the floppies. She’s in tears and whimpering. The discs have been degaussed. Cameron realizes that the vacuum cleaner shorted them out and Gordon says that her discs were up against her speakers where her music was blasting and ruined them. He blows up at her. They see Ron there and Gordon asks who he is and he says he’s the reporter from Wall Street Quarterly. Everyone is horrified.
Gordon speeds to the school and is late. Their teacher called Donna and he says he’s having a day. She says she’s going to miss another deadline and he says the stakes are higher at his job. She yells at him and asks what he knows about the kids. She says she makes his world possible and says to take them and they’ll talk at home later. He says he can’t take the kids and says he needs her to come to work with him.
Ron is waiting because he’s intrigued by the story. Joe says he should come back next week. Ron says he was never going to write a word about them because they have no shot. He says then the universe gave him a story about a company that burned to a crisp in IBM’s shadow. He’s thrilled to write about their demise. He says he’s not leaving until he gets all the gory story.
Joe threatens him and Ron says if he leaves, he’ll write what he’s got which is bad. Joe says it’s just a bump and Ron says he’ll want him around to see the flip side. Joe rants when he sees Donna is his data retrieval specialist. Gordon tells his girls to calm down and Joe says the reporter won’t leave. He says her bosses at TI will be angry and she says he just doesn’t want anyone thinking he needs help.
Joe says not to use her real name and to says she works at Cardiff. Cameron pouts on the floor. Donna comes in with questions about other backup locations. She asks about a list of files and she says no. She says when you’re in the flow creating, you don’t stop for backup. Cameron asks if she has any idea what she’s lost. Donna says she’s got a degree from Berkeley and tells Cameron she’s a mess and needs to get her act together.
Donna says she slept with the boss to get there and now she knows why she had to. Cameron says she’ll still sleeping with him and Donna says she must not think much of herself. Cameron tells her to go to hell and she heads up to the roof to hyperventilate leaving Donna there alone. Donna explains how to move it and spin it by hand. She explains how to do it to retrieve it one byte at a time.
Donna says if the FAT is intact, she can reassemble it by deduction. The guys tell Gordon she’s smarter than he is and he says he knew that the moment he met her. Joe finds Cameron on the roof and asks if she’s okay. He brought her some food. He leaves the sandwich and walks away. Donna and the guys work on it and they finesse it carefully under Donna’s direction.
The kids come in and says they’re hungry. The woman watching them has to go and Donna pulls food out of her purse. They fuss and Gordon tells them that kids in Africa are starving. Cameron says she can take them and Gordon says no but then Donna says she can have them. She hands over her purse of food and Cameron says they’ll be fine and takes them.
Gordon and Donna work and she says the FAT is mostly intact. He’s relieved. He says watching her work reminds him of that night in CS-50 when everybody had left the lab and she forced herself on him. He says it took five days to fix the computers they broke. He says it was romantic urgency and she says she remembers. Gordon says he’s sorry and they kiss. They hold each other for a moment then she says to leave her alone so she can work.
Cameron plays with the kids and they try breath spray she took from a desk and then she tickles them. They tell her that she’s fun and not trash. She asks who said that and one says their dad told her mom that she was white trash. She says they were joking and Cameron asks how they know and she says because they were laughing.
She shows them how to light the alcohol ridden breath spray with a lighter then tells them to go find their parents. She’s clearly hurt. Cameron roots through Donna’s purse and pulls out her wallet. She grabs her bag and goes. She takes Donna’s car keys and car and pulls up to their house. She sits across the street and then opens the garage with the opener that’s in the car.
She goes inside and grabs a shovel. She starts to smash up Gordon’s stuff but then sees some spray paint and goes inside the house with it.
Ron is still there and John says he thought he told him to leave. He asks how the BIOS recovery is going. Ron says the engineers won’t talk to him either. Ron says this must be rough on him – 22 years there and then this. He asks if he’s feeling any guilt letting an IBM slickster hijack it from him. John says to check his facts and says no one is going to care what he writes.
He says he’ll wrap his fish in it but tells him to be careful because if they build this PC, everyone will want in and he’ll be outside with his little pecker hanging in the wind. He tells him to get out of his office before he punches him in the face. Gordon comes in and says he thinks they got it. Cameron walks around the house shaking the spray can.
She hears a man cursing and a gun cock. It’s the neighbor Brian in his robe and he asks if they fired her too. He tells her not to worry and says he only shoots bad guys. He says she’s there for payback and justice and asks what she’s going to write. He tells her to go ahead because they’re both such hypocrites. He says Gordon and Joe will never make a PC to rival the big boys. He says he won’t tell.
Donna tells the group they’ve got it and says they’ve got 93% back. Ron asks who she is and he calls her Susan Fairchild and says she’s a debugger. The other engineers tell the story about how they fixed it although what they tell is how Donna saved it. Donna listens in a doorway as all the credit is given away. She sees her daughters curled up asleep and then notices the vacuum cleaner in the corner.
She leafs through the stack of discs and then pulls the sticker off of one. There’s something underneath it. Donna comes in to chew Joe out for faking the whole crisis. He engineered it. She says he got her out of the room and created the power surge and then swapped out Cameron’s back up discs. He pulls the real discs out and she asks if he did all this to create publicity.
He says Ron wasn’t going to write anything but now he’s invested and will. Donna asks if Cameron is just collateral damage and he says that she’s just learned to be more careful. Joe tells Donna if she’s smart she won’t tell anyone, not even Gordon and says he knows that she is. Cameron is walking in when Gordon and the kids are walking out.
He snaps at Cameron and Donna turns and goes after her. She tells her that she scared the girls. Cameron says she had to leave and says sorry. Donna says she recovered 96% of her code. Cameron apologizes for what she said and Donna says she spilled a coke on her motherboard in school and hadn’t backed up in weeks.
She tells Cameron that she’s never coded like that and says it’s like a piece of music. She tells Cameron she should go home get something to eat and rest but Cameron says she wants to rebuild the other 4%.
Joe gets pulled over by the cops. He puts down his window and waits calmly. He asks if he was going a little fast and the cop asks for his license and registration. He reaches for it and they say he was going for a gun and drag him out of the car and then one says he tried to hit him and they beat him with a night stick.
Donna comes in and tells Gordon the kids are going to be a mess tomorrow. He tells her she was amazing but she’s annoyed that she gave her mother’s maiden name as her name and asks if he sees her as her mother. He says they need to get to bed but she sits to talk. She tells him that Joe set up the whole debacle to get the reporter to write the story. She says the BIOS was never lost and says this is the man they’ve hitched their wagons to.
Gordon asks how he could do it and she says he only toldher when she confronted him. She says he wasted her whole day. He looks annoyed then asks if it worked and if the reporter is going to write the story. She’s disgusted.
Joe sits beaten in the police station. John shows up and greets the cops by name. They chat familiarly and Joe looks up at him and groans. He stands up shakily and walks past John on the way to the door. He’s bleeding from the nose and clearly not happy.
Next Donna comes to see Hunt and says she’s working on the report. He says he didn’t want to see her about that one but the last one she turned in. He says it was full of errors and she made him look like a fool in front of Mark. He tells her she’s on probation and says if her work doesn’t improve, there may be action taken. She stares in shock.
Gordon fixes juice as Joe comes in and he asks what happened to him. He says he got careless and fell. Joe makes coffee and Gordon says it was a close call yesterday and if it hadn’t been for Donna who knows where they would be. Joe says nothing. Gordon grabs a donut and goes to his office.
Cameron works and then stops to back up what she’s doing. She carefully slides the disc into a sleeve and puts it gingerly aside. She opens up the sandwich Joe brought her, sniffs it and takes a bite.
