Praising the fearless women of Halt and Catch Fire

Unlike the real-life Silicon Valley, AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire gives women plenty of opportunity to thrive. Here’s why we love Cameron Howe and Donna Clark.

Halt and Catch Fire crossed a threshold in its most recent episode. Before, season 4 had been a slow burn, watching the characters tentatively dance around trouble and each other. However, “A Connection Is Made” pushed several conflicts to their tipping points. Gordon took Haley off the Comet team, alienating both his daughter and Joe in the process. Bosworth revealed his financial woes to Diane. Diane demanded that Donna relinquish Rover. And Donna and Cameron finally reconciled.

Well, sort of. The conversation lasts less than two minutes and involves mostly pleasantries and strained smiles. Right when they seem on the verge of real intimacy, the pair gets interrupted; the connection is lost. Still, it offers a welcome, if painful, reminder that Donna and Cameron remain the heart of the series, even though they rarely appear in the same scene anymore.

That was not always the case. In its freshman season, Halt and Catch Fire focused on Cameron and Joe, using their volatile relationship to explore the concept of artificial intelligence. For the most part, it was enjoyable; despite the “if Don and Peggy from Mad Men were in a relationship” vibe, I found myself growing attached to the Joe/Cameron romance (come on, Lee Pace and Mackenzie Davis have amazing chemistry). But it’s no coincidence that the show found its groove in its second year, when it shifted its attention to the women. It vaulted from enjoyable to truly special.

So, with the end approaching (the series finale airs on Oct. 21), here is a tribute to Cameron Howe, Donna Clark, and their extraordinarily complex relationship.

Leaving clichés behind

At first, both characters seemed fairly one-dimensional. Cameron was the brilliant yet rebellious hacker, her tomboyish personality accentuated by her crude pixie cut, cruder fashion sense, and affinity for punk rock. Donna was the uptight, neglected wife who quietly regretted giving up her career to manage a family. They served as foils for the male characters; Cameron tempered Joe’s callousness with her idealism, while Donna tempered Gordon’s ambition with her pragmatism.

Yet, as the season progressed, they began to feel less like outlines of people and more like actual people. Cameron shed her sullen demeanor, and it became clear that her vulnerability stemmed not from naïveté, but from empathy. She wasn’t drawn to Joe because she was blind to his faults, but because she saw past them, to the kindred spirit underneath; she understood his desire to mold the world in his vision because she shared it. Later, the show delved deeper into Cameron’s turbulent childhood and her resulting anxiety, but it refrained from reducing her to the product of vague traumas. Her messiness was too messy to be explained away.

Meanwhile, after a somewhat frustrating plotline involving near-infidelity, Donna escaped from Gordon’s shadow. She revived her career, revealing a ruthless streak that matched — perhaps even surpassed — Joe’s. Importantly, her professional success didn’t lead to the destruction of her marriage and family; when the Clarks eventually divorced, it was for subtler reasons. Whereas other prestige drama wives wallow in repression and discontentment, Donna is powerful in her own right. And she gets to have fun. Her introduction in the season 4 premiere is downright awe-inspiring.

Beyond empowerment

Most shows would frame Cameron and Donna’s partnership as a “feminist” narrative of women beating men at their game. Fortunately, Halt and Catch Fire is smarter than that.

For starters, they recognize the sexism entrenched in the tech industry, even if they don’t fixate on it. When Cameron and Donna talk to investors and clients, they frequently encounter men that respond to their earnest proposals with patronizing smiles and dismissive, disparaging remarks. Even with their own employees, they have to struggle to earn the authority that Joe, Gordon, and Bosworth simply assume. Mutiny’s acquisition of SwapMeet in season 3 turned disastrous for a number of reasons, but one suspects that Doug and Craig might have been more willing to oblige Cameron’s fickle demands if she looked more like them.

Those other reasons are just as interesting, though. What ultimately makes the dynamic between Cameron and Donna so electrifying is its instability. For every moment of solidarity, there’s one of tension. Rest assured, Halt and Catch Fire eschews the kind of petty, melodramatic bickering that often defines conflict between women on television. Instead, Cameron and Donna clash over ideas — priorities, tactics, goals. They try their best to work things out, to bridge the fundamental disparity between their personalities — until they cross the bridge one too many times and it all collapses.

And if they are petty or melodramatic at times, well, they’re only human. As emotionally brutal as Halt and Catch Fire can be (see the finale of season 3), it never feels cruel. On the contrary, it overflows with compassion, inviting viewers to understand each character’s perspective. The actors, particularly Davis and Kerry Bishé, have a knack for finding fragility in strength and vice versa. You can’t help but root for these people.

Their relationships with men evolve too

If you told me at the beginning of season 2 that Gordon and Donna would divorce, I would have revolted. Outside of sitcoms, TV has so few believably (let alone happily) married couples; can’t we keep this one? But in the end, showrunners Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers executed the plot point so deftly that I can’t complain. They even made burying it in a time jump seem like a good idea, sparing us the gory details that tend to bog down divorce stories. There are no tears, no screaming matches, no legal proceedings, no kids forced to choose between their parents. (Welcome, Joni and Haley Clark, to the elite Club of Non-Obnoxious Fictional Teenage Girls!) Maybe, after subjecting us to the Mutiny debacle, they decided to take mercy.

Similarly, two seasons of power shifts (and one long phone call) have led Cameron and Joe to a tentative truce. The toxicity of their original fling is gone, replaced by the ordinary resignation of two people in limbo together. Where do they fit into each other’s futures? Do they belong at all? In “A Connection Is Made”, Joe introduced a surprising new dilemma: he wants to have kids, but Cameron doesn’t. First of all, thank you, Halt and Catch Fire, for not making your female character who says she doesn’t want kids suddenly change her mind because she is with the right man now or whatever. This also cleverly subverts the man = creator/woman = mother binary that has pervaded fiction at least since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. For once, the man looks to leave a legacy in the form of children, while the woman seeks fulfillment in work.

What a wonderful show. Like its characters, it has come so far. I’m going to miss it.

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Halt and Catch Fire airs Saturdays at 10 p.m. EST on AMC.