What should I watch if I loved Mad Men?

"Do you have any idea what it's like to work close to the metal?"

To be "close to the metal" is to work intimately with a machine. A coder creates code, she slaves for days in a dark basement, hunched over the keyboard, eyes blurring from the strain of the green light on the screen. Black Flag and Kate Bush blare on her speakers. She sweats, she has not showered in days, she's angry and focused. She is approaching innovation's horizon. The computer. A hulking mass of mid-80s innovation. Business shall be more efficient! Households shall become more entertaining!

But I digress.

When AMC decided to give Mad Men an expiration date (May 2015), someone, somewhere in a suit had the inkling of an idea. "We need a replacement." This decision could have gone one of a few ways:

It could have resulted in a period piece that overplayed the sexual politics that brilliantly helped define Mad Men in later seasons. This probably would have chalked things up to tropeful levels that we would have all decided to turn off after maybe two episodes. (See: Pan Am, NBC's failed attempt at workplace politics in the 1960s devoid of the Freudian underpinnings that Mad Men secretly fed its audiences week after week.)

This idea could have also resulted in a ham-fisted attempt to capture a similar, yet different decade. It could have even resulted in a Parisian-set Roger Sterling spin-off. I do not know that to be fact--that is just wishful thinking.

Instead, two Christophers (Cantwell and C. Rogers) had something a bit different in mind.

If you loved Mad Men, then Halt & Catch Fire is your new love.

The time: 1983

The place: Silicon Prairie, Texas

The mission: The great space (bar) race

Text graces our screen, green MSDOS type...

"HALT AND CATCH FIRE (HCF):

An early computer command that sent the machine into a race condition, forcing all instructions to compete for superiority at once.

Control of the computer could not be regained. _"

An armadillo crosses the road, a Porsche runs it over. A man, Joe Macmillan--clad in a designer suit, cold to the touch--lowers his sunglasses and checks the car fender. That is how it all begins.

When we meet our four main characters, they are either quiet, steely-eyed, or incredibly defensive. Joe, the entrepreneur. Gordon, the builder. Cameron, the coder. Donna, the unsung builder. At the end of the day, defensive, quiet or cold, they are beginning in the same place. Obsessed with innovation, the forefront of tech.

Over four complete seasons (though under- watched, it was not canceled before they could complete the story), HCF breaks down our main characters from wide-eyed, ambitious creators to humans who want just one thing: Connection. Or, as Joe puts it in the pilot...

At its core, HCF is a show about failure, about reinvention. It is a dark, grimy 1980s allegory about the intersection of ambition and karma.

No matter what these characters attempt, no matter who beats them to the punch, they move on. They go after the next thing and constantly get closer to the aforementioned thing.

"That's great and all, Andrew, but is it good?"

I will answer your question with a question: Would great do? Let us break it down.

The soundtrack? 🔥

The acting? 🔥

The motherf***ing writing? 🔥

The overall story? 🔥

Every character has a complete and full arc, some tragic, some triumphant. Every female has complete agency and come up against 1980s workplace sexism without the histrionics of most workplace dramas. Every choice is compelling, every mission immerses you.

Best of all, at 40 total episodes, it is fast. Nothing lingers too long. Nothing feels forced.

How did I ever discover this show in the first place?

Hollywood, 2014. A billboard catches my eye. Glitch art forms around four characters with a tagline, "The Battle for CTRL Begins." At that moment, it of course piqued my interest immediately. A lifelong computer nerd (my mother used to build them for fun in the 90s), I could sense this was one of those rare occurrences when someone created something just for you.

See, billboards still work!

I was drawn in by the usage of music and an evolving color palette that starts with steely blue in the first season and slowly, over the course of the next 3 seasons, morphs into amber. Everything evolved as the characters and story evolved.

Like Paul Thomas Anderson said the first time he ever saw Philip Seymour Hoffman act: "This man is for me and I am for him."

It also helped I was a big Pushing Daisies fan and lo and behold, the main character here (our 1980s Don Draper, so to speak) was played by Lee Pace. I was Cinderella, this show was my glass slipper, he was my prince.

Just be warned...

This is not The Goldbergs's 1980s, or even Valley Girl's. This is Gary Numan's 1980s. The 1980s woven of a tapestry of excess and self-discovery. A 1980s defined by cold calculation, computer-like in its way. A 1980s the show works to dismantle almost immediately.

It isn't shiny, but it's fun. It isn't happy, but it wants to be.

XTC's "Complicated Game" dominates the pilot. "Are Friends Electric?" by Tubeway Army plays as our coder, Cameron, works herself to the bone trying to perfect the inner life of their computer project. No one "got the beat" here.

This is the deep cut 1980s, the one I have always advocated for even as my friends laughed it off, saying "The music sucked!" That's because all they knew of the 80s was Madonna and Debbie Harry's embarrassing rapping on "Rapture."

Like Mad Men, there is an authenticity here that is unmatched by most, if not all, other shows or movies set in the same era.

Okay, enough babbling.

Honestly, you don't even have to have enjoyed Mad Men to love this, but the progression from that to this makes total sense.

Do you love good music? Great fashion? Incredible storylines? Fully realized characters and arcs?

HALT & CATCH FIRE is the show for you.

Oh, and by the way, it's all on Netflix currently and, most likely, AMC+ (if not now, then soon, I'd imagine.)

BONUS:

A couple of seasons revolve around life at an early internet gaming start-up, so if you fall in love with HCF, then you should really watch Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet, a behind-the-scenes look at an MMO RPG company from the people behind It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. There is a mid-season episode that is very evocative of HCF in the best ways and sets the startling tone for the rest of the first season.