Halt and Catch Fire: California Stars

"Kali"

Directed by Craig Zisk
Written by Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers

"Heaven Is a Place"

Directed by Phil Abraham
Written by Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers

It's finally here! After the delays the final piece on Season Two is here! As always, spoilers for the first two seasons of Halt and Catch Fire. Also, a content warning for discussion of a character contemplating suicide.

What do you do when everything falls apart?

If that has never happened to you, congratulations on being the exception and not the rule. For the rest of us, it's not a great feeling, is it? The world you thought you lived in, the life you had built, sits in pieces at your feet. And yet, it goes on.

This is what happened to Donna (Kerry Bishé) and Cameron (Mackenzie Davis), as they faced down the situation after WestNet kicked them off of their network in favor of the in-house knock-off. What do you do when you're about to lose everything, a team of programmers look to you for their continued livelihood, and you live in Texas?

You go to the shooting range.

"Hear us out. You ain't gonna regret it." - John "Bos" Bosworth, "Kali"

The situation: Mutiny didn't have a network, only had six thousand dollars on hand, and they were in danger of missing payroll again. Whatever Joe did or didn't do, he wasn't Cameron's priority, and Donna agreed. Asking the programmers to forgo another paycheck was out of the question, as it'd likely break the team for good.

There was no way Mutiny could secure additional funding at that time. After all, they'd been shown the door when they had looked for VC funding earlier in the year when the company was healthy. No investor would take a chance on a company that didn't have a network, even if Community was starting to take off.

What Mutiny had was Extract and Defend. As much as it hurt her to do it, Cameron knew it was the only card they had to play. They began contacting all of the game development companies to see if any of them would bite. But first, Cameron took down Tom's tennis ball still stuck to the wall and replaced it with a target from the shooting range.

Tom heard the bad news from the team before he confirmed it with Cameron. Without even talking to him, Cameron had decided to sell the game they had both come up with and had worked on together. What's more, Cameron decided she had to break up with Tom. Not because she didn't love him. But because she felt how happy he made her led to her getting complacent. Tom didn't agree:

Happiness is not some side effect. It's kind of the whole point.

After striking out with most of the bigger firms, Mutiny got a call from a new one called Funtime. Donna, Cameron, and Bos (Toby Huss) all went to the meeting, where they were directed to a small office with Amy (Katie Parker) the programmer and Bryce (Eric Santiago). It was clear Amy's job was to show some interest, but not too much, and balk at the price to drive Mutiny to accept a lower fee.

But then Mutiny got lucky. The phone rang, Amy answered it, and immediately began speaking in Japanese. Bos read what was going on and got to work. He excused himself and walked out to the big room, where it was clear Bryce was briefing the higher ups (Cuyle Carvin and Allen Wilcox) on the situation. They were sitting at a table in front of a map of the United States, divided by sales regions. He noticed that Funtime's headquarters was in Redmond, WA, and surmised that the company was angling to give Nintendo, another company headquartered there, a library of games developed in the United States. Suddenly the leverage had shifted. Mutiny came away with a check for $50,000, enough to make payroll and find a new network provider. Mutiny pulled another day out of their ass yet again.

But though he had just triumphed, Bos was done. He had gone to interview with the company his son James (Ross Phillips) had suggested, and they offered him a job as a manager. It was a good, stable job. And Bos wanted to try stability again. Eating three meals a day out of a toaster was a lot of fun, but it wasn't exactly dignified for a fifty-five-year-old who hoped to be a grandfather soon. Cameron didn't want to see him go, but he left all the same.

Later, while talking over the details of handing over Extract and Defend with Amy, Cameron discovered Tom had connected Funtime with Mutiny. Despite the pain of his game being sold, he had made it happen. Amy also let it slip that Tom was planning to go out on his own. After this, Cameron ran out to catch Tom as he left her life:

You'll come back. You'll wake up tomorrow morning, and you'll ride your stupid bike back here and I'll make coffee and you'll pour your raisin bran and we'll come up with something new. Wait. I couldn't have done any of this without you.

Tom replied:

No, Cameron. You did this all by yourself.

He rode away into the night.

"Go straight home, Gordon. Clean yourself up." - Joe MacMillan, "Kali"

Throughout the long, dark night at Mutiny, Gordon was in jail. He didn't call Donna to get a ride home. Instead, he called Joe, who he woke up from a post MDMA slumber. As Joe dropped him off at his van, they exchanged pleasantries that doubled as pleas to do the sensible thing. Joe told Gordon to go home, while Gordon told Joe to get on that plane to California, and put Cardiff and Westgroup and Cameron and the whole damn mess behind him to have a good life with Sara. They said goodbye.

Gordon did not go home. Instead, he went downtown to look up JGL Computers. There he parked in a garage and knocked on the door. A security guard (David Silverman) answered and said that the company had gone out of business recently. Mystery solved.

But a new mystery emerged, as Gordon could not find his car. He looked and looked and looked and never found it. A maintenance man (Al Mitchell) found him in a restricted area and gave him a potential area to look when Gordon gave a floor name that didn't exist. It didn't help. Eventually Gordon walked into a stairwell, tripped, and fell down the stairs. He had broken his ankle, and the stairwell looked like it was not well traveled.

Dehydrated, confused, and in a whole lot of pain, Gordon knew he couldn't stay put. He crawled up the stairs, finally catching a lucky break as the maintenance man was driving by as he emerged. Just before the truck pulled away, he banged on its side. An ambulance was called, and they wheeled Gordon out on a gurney. Along the way, they went by he finally found his van.

In the ambulance, the threat to his life now lessened, Gordon was able to feel what had just happened. The confusion, the anger, the pain. He sobbed.

Donna joined him in the hospital, reunited for the first time since he had shown up mumbling about JGL and Stan at the Mutiny picnic the day before. Dr. Semel (R. Keith Harris) asked if he could talk to Donna. Whatever just happened to Gordon was not because of the CTE worsening. Instead, it was psychological. He asked Donna if Gordon had ever exhibited manic behavior before. Gordon would not be going home that night, and he needed help.

"Get on that damn plane. Put all of this behind you." - Gordon Clark, "Kali"

After dropping Gordon off at his van, Joe went back to his apartment to finish packing with Sara (Aleksa Palladino) for their move to California. They were interrupted by Jacob (James Cromwell), who came bearing a gift. And to talk to Joe in private.

Outside away from Sara, they argued over WestNet. Jacob reminded Joe that he had wanted to buy Mutiny and hinted that Joe might have had something to do with Cameron turning the offer down. Joe saved him the trouble of playing games and admitted it out right. Whatever real chance Joe and Jacob had at a working relationship was now finished. But they could still depart cordially, for Sara's benefit, and to calm the shareholders, who were descending upon Dallas for their annual meeting. Jacob offered to let Joe give the keynote address at the meeting before he left. It would give him a chance to network, and he could leave Westgroup as friends with Jacob. Joe replied:

We're not friends, we're family. We'll see each other at Christmas every other year. We'll nod to each other across the room, and after about 45 minutes of fake chit chat and eggnog, I'll make an excuse. 'We have to be somewhere. I'm so sorry.' And when my children ask me who that tall gray stranger in the window is, I'll remind them, 'That's your grandpa.'.

Jacob just said, "I'll see you there."

However, after talking it over with Sara, Joe decided to take up Jacob's offer. He would give one of his usual Joe MacMillan presentations, then depart for California a victor. He even got the added benefit of being able to tell Jessie (Skylar Astin) to screw off as he prepared. Jessie meekly complied but first let him know a "reporter" was here to see him. It was Cameron.

They went down in the basement office next to the mainframe room to talk. There Cameron didn't yell, or cry, or even seem all that angry. Instead, she was friendly and let Joe know she was still interested in him. She reminded him that going to California was her idea, and then she said:

Instead of chasing what each of us wanted, separately and obsessively we just held on to each other instead? I know you didn't copy our interface. I know it wasn't your fault. I didn't want you to leave without hearing that. And...I must be totally mental, because part of me doesn't want you to go away at all.

Cameron kissed Joe, and for a second, he seemed to go along with it. But he broke it off. Cameron handed Joe a disk, saying it was what Mutiny could have been. She left, and Joe looked at the disk on a computer that was connected to WestNet. What he saw was an entirely different design, something that reflected the rebel nature of Mutiny. And in the middle of the homepage, it said

For Joe. Always. -C

Joe started his presentation as expected, extolling the virtues of a network that spanned the globe, and how that could inspire people to connect and create. And then he stopped, and told the truth:

This all began with a very talented young programmer named Cameron Howe. She saw the future and she got there first. I didn't build this. I don't own it, and neither does anyone here. If we skate past that, we're doing violence to the one thing, maybe the only sacred thing in our business-- innovation. Cameron couldn't be here today, but her genius is all around us. And will be, I suspect, for years to come.

There was virtually no applause as he sat back down next to Sara, who had looked absolutely heartbroken throughout it all.

Jessie continued his presentation. One of the higher ups sitting on the dais noticed the screen of his computer, which was using WestNet, started flickering. At first there was confusion as to what was going on, but then it became clear that the computers all across the room, and anywhere a computer was using WestNet, was affected. And then the familiar tell of Sonaris showed up on every screen. The code was searching through every computer's directory structure and removing files. Joe just sat and stared. Nobody was gonna believe he didn't do it, not after that speech.

Of course, he hadn't done it, not intentionally at least. Across town as this chaos erupted, Cameron was incredibly calm, taking a blanket out onto the grass and lying down. Later on, she would take down the target from her wall.

She had got him.

Meanwhile, back at the now empty apartment, Sara and Joe fought over what had happened. It was clear that Sara thought Joe had sabotaged WestNet. Even worse, she assumed he had sabotaged it for Cameron. She was done with Joe, and had this to say:

All this time I thought that you were a victim of your genius, some sidetracked prophet...and that I was your second chance. But you're not, are you Joe? You're an accident. You're something that happens to people who deserve better.

Joe replied that he was not an accident. That he deserved better, and he deserved her. To that Sarah harmlessly hit him repeatedly on his hard, well-maintained chest and then said:

I just wish that you knew what this felt like. That you could just see your face when you say her name. Say it, Joe. Say Cameron. [Joe is silent] God, you're lost.

Sara left Joe alone with his thoughts in the empty apartment.

"If you want to drive a submarine, you gotta join the Navy." - Donna Clark, "Heaven Is a Place"

The dark days of the WestNet crisis was behind Mutiny. Their funding issue was solved, and they had a new network with Telenet (with an "e"). They were working on Mutiny 2.0, which included avatars that could walk around to talk to each other. And they were even expanding to Houston. Yo-Yo (Cooper Andrews) was back, but Tom and Bos were still gone. Things had changed, but for once that seemed to be for the better.

And then they got the fax that Telenet was raising their rates. Cameron was angry at this, complaining about how as long as they didn't control their own network, they were always at the mercy of a Telenet, a Westgroup, or a Joe MacMillan. Donna agreed but accepted that was the game they had to play. But Cameron wanted to see if she could find another solution.

She found a potential one in an old mainframe sitting in Daly City, California. Sure, it cost virtually the entire operating budget of Mutiny and their projected revenue for the rest of the year. But it was also missing important components and ridiculously out of date. It was a bad deal even before shipping costs were factored in. Donna made it clear this wasn't the solution, and Cameron agreed. But she wasn't gonna give up yet.

"I am blown away. I've never met a legitimate psychopath before." - Timothy Bondham, "Heaven Is a Place"

Mutiny may have been doing well, but WestNet wasn't. After the shareholder meeting debacle, a lot of data had been lost, and the company had suffered a black eye. As much as the board blamed Joe for what happened, they didn't think criminal proceedings were a good call either. Instead, they demanded a scapegoat. Jacob Wheeler's tenure atop Westgroup was now over.

Joe found this out while looking at a magazine cover in a law office conference room*. He was there to sign the divorce papers. He had hoped to talk to Sara, but she had already come in to sign the papers earlier. Sara was completely out of the Joe MacMillan business.

On the way back home, Joe took his hands off the wheel of his SUV, closed his eyes, and put his foot on the gas. For a few seconds he was just gonna let it happen. A car honked at him, and he came out of it, putting his hands back on the wheel, opening his eyes, and slowing down. Joe wasn't going anywhere, for now.

He tried to salvage something, anything that could get him moving forward. Surprisingly, Timothy Bondham (Robert C. Trevelier), the VC who had turned Mutiny down, wanted to meet with him. Joe mustered as much will as he could and gave them an idea for a network that used local phone numbers to connect to a network spread across the world to cut down on long distance fees for users to access networks outside of their hometown.

Bondham wasn't interested. Not in the idea, or in doing any business with Joe. He just wanted some gossip about what had happened at the Westgroup shareholders meeting, and to see the man who had the gall to do what everyone assumed he did. He called Joe a psychopath. Joe, hurt by this, walked out.

"No. Because they're on the damn kitchen counter." - Gordon Clark, "Heaven Is a Place"

As part of his attempt at getting help after the JGL Computers mess, Gordon was going to a stress management group. However, he really didn't take it seriously. He mocked the value of the role-playing the therapist asked him to do about his stress he felt when he couldn't find his glasses one day. For a moment it almost seemed like he was gonna take it seriously, but then he came out of it, as Donna looked on through the window in the door.

With Gordon effectively out of commission, Donna was trying to take care of him, as well as Joanie (Morgan Hinkleman) and Haley (Alana Cavanaugh), and still keep her busy schedule with Mutiny. It was a lot, and sadly, the girls tended to get the short end of the stick. After her waffle was half-frozen, and Donna didn't seem to care, Joanie threw it back at her. In the ensuing argument, Joanie let it slip about the fight between Henry and Gordon in California. When Donna asked for more information, Joanie stormed off. Haley just sat and stared, frozen at what happened.

With no job, and no expectations that he should take care of the girls, Gordon didn't have a lot to do. He decided to put on some music and get out the train sets he had bought when he was still working at Cardiff. When Joe walked up, he was embarrassed, assuming Joe would have thought he was just the looney guy playing with his trains.

Joe didn't care what Gordon was doing. He was there to give him the PROM from the computer they had reverse engineered that had started this all. Joe had held onto it as a sort of good luck charm. But he was done with it now, so he hoped Gordon could find some luck with it.

Gordon sensed something wasn't right with Joe and offered to help him fix things with Westgroup, mentioning that he had been playing around with rewriting Sonaris to reverse the code that had caused so much damage. Maybe Joe could still fix his relationship with Sara? Joe ignored all of that, said goodbye, and walked away.

"Well, it sounds like to me we're keeping things from each other." - Gordon Clark, "Heaven Is a Place"

It didn't start as a fight.

Gordon was sitting on the bed, reading the cover story about Jacob Wheeler being fired from WestGroup after the WestNet debacle. Amongst the details, Sonaris was mentioned by name. Gordon remarked to Donna, who had just entered the master bathroom to get ready for bed, about how he had always wanted to make history, albeit not in that way.

Donna wanted to talk about anything else, so she asked Gordon about his medicine. But after calling her Nurse Ratched**, Gordon turned to talking about Joe. He mentioned how Joe had given him the PROM chip and that he was worried about him. He then brought it around to his main point:

All because of what Cameron did to him. Doesn't that disgust you, even just a little bit?

Donna, unseen to Gordon as she was still changing into pajamas in the bathroom, tried to dodge the question:

You know, I don't think it's a good idea for you to get so worked up like this. You know what the doctor said.

Gordon ignored her and continued pressing.

Gordon: She destroyed his entire life, and for what, because he tried to help her?

At this point Donna walked into the bedroom, continuing her bedtime routine as she began to argue with Gordon.

Well, it sounds like you're just going with Joe's version of events, then.

Gordon continued on, sure of his point of view:

Because I think he's telling the truth.

At this point Donna deployed a powerful weapon: the truth about Gordon and Joe's less than rosy past.

Do you remember what kind of partner he is? When you were in business with him last year, all the things that you accused him of?

Gordon didn't have a good answer for that, so he just said:

But this is different.

Sensing an opening, Donna, who was still getting ready for bed, turned up the heat on her attack:

Why? Why is it different now? Now suddenly when I experience the exact same thing you do, Joe is a nice guy? Why is he the victim?

Gordon, for whatever reason, didn't pick up the tone in his wife's voice that said, "back off", continued:

Joe might not be the most trustworthy person in the world, but what Cameron did to him is the most--

Donna interrupted and dropped the first bomb of the evening:

We did it. Giving him the virus--it was our idea, Cameron's and mine.

Gordon, stunned at what Donna just told him, replied:

You knew he was leaving Westgroup. I told you that.

Donna, knowing this was true, just said:

Yeah.

Gordon continued:

Why would he have anything to do with WestNet? He already had one foot in California.

Donna continued:

The truth is, it doesn't matter.

Gordon, who was by now confused by Donna, replied:

What do you mean it--

Donna who had seemed to show a bit of contrition at what the move had cost Joe, now returned to her defensive posture:

He's toxic. You know that as well as I do.

Gordon, surprised, just said "What?" In response, Donna continued with her point:

Last month when you were so worried that someone was stealing your idea, well, that actually happened to me. It wasn't just in my head.

Gordon, surprised Donna had the capacity for a killer move like that, replied:

Who are you? It's like I don't even know you anymore. I mean, this entire year--

Sensing an opening to expand this argument beyond Joe and Mutiny, Donna charged ahead:

Who am I? You kept a serious illness from me for nearly two months. Frankly, I don't know how honest you're being with yourself about it considering how out of control you've been.

Stung by that last bit, Gordon got defensive and said:

I am doing my best to deal with this, okay?

Donna, skeptical of her husband, just said:

Oh, yeah.

Gordon started listing off what he was doing to take his illness seriously:

I'm taking the pills, I'm going to group. I'm doing the--

Donna played her next card:

Which you think is a joke.

Gordon, not sure what she was talking about, just replied "What?" Donna continued:

I saw you there making fun of it. You were not even trying.

Now it was Gordon's turn to be indignant. He replied:

So you're spying on me in therapy? Unbelievable, Donna.

Donna grew more hurt than angry, and said:

Yeah, because you keep things from me.

Gordon, now yelling, said:

Well, it sounds like to me we're keeping things from each other.

And at that, Donna deployed her trump card, the one she picked up inadvertently from Joanie that morning:

Well, while we're on the topic of secrets...I would like to know what happened in California. Joanie told me that you and Henry got in a shouting match that was apparently so bad you had to take the girls to a motel. Why would you not tell me that?

Backed into a corner, Gordon couldn't lie and couldn't avoid what was next. He did the only thing he could do. He told the truth.

Because, Donna, I had an affair!

Whatever Donna thought he was gonna say, it wasn't this, and all she could say to it was "What?" as her voice broke and she began to whimper. All in now, Gordon said:

It was one night, it was meaningless. It was absolutely stupid. Do I regret it? Every minute of every day. When I found out I was sick, I looked around for my marriage, and it wasn't there. You weren't there. Maybe--maybe this has been broken for a long time, and we're the only ones who don't know it.

At that moment, it became clear to Donna first, and then Gordon, that they weren't the only parties to this latest argument. Standing in the doorway to the bedroom was Joanie.

"I think life is giving us a sign here." - Cameron Howe, "Heaven Is a Place"

Sometime just after 6:00 am the next morning, Cameron tried to make coffee, but the machine was broken. Was she up really early, or really late? Whatever it was, she was the only one around and awake. Except for Donna, who was sitting at her desk already, watching the rain fall outside as she cried.

Cameron said, "You're here early."

To that Donna replied

I don't know that Gordon and I love each other anymore. And I dont know...I don't know if we can fix it. And I don't even know if I wanna fix it.

Cameron, a twenty-three-year-old who had never been married, didn't know what to say. She said something anyway:

I don't know what it's like--um, marriage. Being married, it's--I don't know, I won't pretend to understand. What you and Gordon have, or don't, um, I mean, that's something only you two can figure out.

Cameron sat her empty coffee cup on Donna's desk, and continued:

I do know that once in a while, you know, life can give us a sign...point us to a different place, make good things come out of bad. If it weren't for Cardiff Electric, there would've never been a Mutiny, and....you know, if it weren't for Gordon Clark, I would've never met you. Listen, I don't want to add to your misery here, but the coffeemaker is broken, so. I think we should move to California.

Here it is.

Right here, the point where the story pivots. The story of Donna and Cameron, Gordon and Joe, and yes, Bos, for sure. But my story as well.

Through seven full pieces, and most of this one, I've used a pretty standard structure. Ask a question at the top, then go through sections cordoned off by a quote from the series as a header. It was neat, and tidy, and got the job done. And I'm sick of it.

We've reached the point where Halt and Catch Fire stops being just a show I enjoy watching and thinking about and becomes my favorite series of all time. I want this to mean a lot when I write about it. To me, and to you.

I don't know how I'm gonna do it, to be honest. I just know that I am feeling my way forward, doing what comes to me and writing in that way, rather than continuing on the safe path just because its reliable and good enough.

This might fail. It might be bad and not make any sense to anyone but me at the moment I write, but it will be mine. And that matters to me.

Anyways enough of that, let's continue talking about Cameron's big idea.

In one sense, it's clear she cares dearly for Donna, and wants the best for her. But she also is using this point of crisis in Donna's life to push her crazy ass idea. For as much as I like to talk about Cameron "The Creator" she's a hell of a lot like Joe, in that she's not afraid to take opportunity of a situation.

Donna, for her part wasn't quite sold yet. But Cameron kept pushing, selling it as a fresh start for them both. Donna didn't say yes, but she didn't say no either.

Somewhere across town, Gordon knocked on Joe's door. Joe was still with us, albeit in an apartment devoid of everything but a mattress, some electronics, and a collapsible chair. Gordon had been busy, and he gave Joe the result: a disk labeled Tabula Rasa. Gordon had taken Sonaris, retooled it, and made it a program to kill copies of Sonaris, and protect the computer from subsequent attacks. He gave it to Joe to make right with Westgroup and Sara. Even though it was too late for that, Gordon still gave him the gift. Gordon left, unsure of if his marriage was done as well. Joe, for the first time all episode, looked like he had an idea. Hooray?

Somewhere else across town, Bos was at a lunch with the execs at his new company. Cigars and alcohol are all plenty, as was the bullshit. He's back in his element, telling stories, making his way up the corporate ladder, and taking his son along with him. He was back on stable ground once more.

And he was miserable.

Back on the Mutiny side of town, Donna still hadn't decided to get on that dirty diesel sub to Daly City with Cameron. Gordon stormed in, to the consternation of the Mutiny team. He had hoped she was with Donna. She wasn't.

Where was Joanie?

Back at home, Haley stood at the back window, staring at something. They tried Donna's parents, looked up and down the street. Joanie was nowhere to be found. Haley continued to stare at something in the back yard. Donna and Gordon were starting to get worried, the obvious answers quickly running out. Haley stood there at the window, saying nothing but clearly seeing something. Where did nine-year-old Joanie go?

Her parents not getting the damned hint, Haley finally said she saw something in the window of the playhouse in the back yard. Joanie had lit the family's camping lamp as she sat in the playhouse.

The poor girl thought her parents were fighting the night before because she had told the secret about California. Which of course she did? She saw them fighting about what happened in California, the logic was unassailable to her. Donna and Gordon did their best to make sure she knew this wasn't her doing and sent her inside to pick out the pizza for dinner with Haley. It was time for Gordon and Donna to talk like adults in the child's playhouse.

Gordon braced himself, assuming Donna was about to ask for a divorce.

Here it was, the big moment when the Clark marriage would end, displayed for us all to see. The big moment of Season Two, as a marriage ended, and Donna left Gordon to pick up the pieces as she moved with the girls to her parents. Maybe then Gordon and Joe would team up, two divorced guys with a lot of time on their hands, maybe they could do something with it? That would be nice, right? Joe and Gordon working as a team once again? The Builder and the Igniter, stepping it up in 1985 and building something else until they succeed and it all falls apart, or they fail and something else happens. Just two guys conquering the world, like the pirates of old. Perhaps they might be pirates of Silicon Vall...

Oh wait, Donna asked Gordon to use most of the rest of their money to buy the mainframe in Daly City?

And they were moving there to fix it up together?

Gordon would accept a job offer from Cameron?

Oh, okay, we can do that as well. Cool.

Gordon wasn't sure it was cool:

You really think that moving to California is gonna fix everything?

If Donna thought it would for sure, she did a good job hiding it:

I don't know. But it's the best thing I could come up with. And I do know that if we stay here, we are not gonna make it.

You know who didn't get the memo about not being a dang pirate? Joe MacMillan. He walked right back into Timothy Bondham's office, and before Bondham knew it, he had popped Sonaris into the disk drive. For just a while, Joe looked like he had committed a serious crime, wreaking havoc on the VC's network. But then Joe brought out Tabula Rasa, and just like that he demonstrated its effectiveness. Joe had walked in and shown how powerful an antivirus program could be.

This was not the "do the right thing" Joe we had grown to know. It wasn't even the "I'm not Don Draper, I swear" Joe from season one. This was Bat-Joe, playing the villain because that's what Timothy Bondham wanted him to be. The new Joe had a new way to live:

The real security is trusting no one.

Of course, like every version of Joe, this one was both real and total bullshit. After making the deal with Bondham, Joe called Gordon to cut him in. But Gordon couldn't come out to play, because he had promised Donna he'd work on the family and they were moving to California. Joe didn't care, in fact California made sense for their new venture. Gordon said he couldn't; he had to work for Mutiny now.

Joe never really hated anybody not named Joe MacMillan (Sr. or Jr.). He'd push them and be shitty to them and get angry. But hate was beyond him (because to really hate means being aware of yourself to at least some degree). But the moment he heard Gordon was working for Cameron and Donna, he fucking hated that.

It had been a wild two days. And then a month passed. Time is just like that sometimes. Especially on a TV show.

On her last day as a resident of Texas, Cameron had one last stop to make: Tom. She made the case to him that Mutiny was no longer a game company, but they could still use him, and would he think about using the ticket to California she was giving him? Even if he didn't want to work with her, he could still come and get a free plane ride. Tom told her it wasn't much time to think it over. Cameron replied maybe it was just enough time not to overthink it?

At no point did she say she wanted him to come because she loved him. Although I suppose a free plane ticket with no strings attached might suffice.

At this time, cue up "Heaven" by Talking Heads for the full experience.

Just like that, we're on the plane. It's now nighttime, we can tell because we can see its dark out the windows. There are only so many minutes left in season two, and we don't know for sure who is (or isn't) gonna be on the plane.

We get our first arrivals:

Wonderboy! (J. Elijah Cho)
Arki! (Gabriel Manak)
Dave (Justin Randell Brooke)! OMG!!! Dave, everybody. Dave!
Bodie! (Joshua Hoover)
Carl! (Nick Pupo)

It's 1985 in a show that aired in 2015, so of course we finally get some talk about Back to the Future. Carl won't shut up about how much Lea Thompson wanted to have sex with her son Michael J. Fox, much to Bodie's annoyance. There it was, folks, the big moment for Back to the Future!

Yo-Yo! And Lev (August Emerson)! They're coming too.

Holy shit, y'all! Joanie and Haley! I thought for sure they were staying in Texas. Turned out they had to accompany Mutiny, on account of them being children who needed their parents.

Gordon and Donna smiled as they look at their children, and Gordon thought maybe they might be able to be happy in California. And who knew, maybe there'll be another Clark on the way?

Donna went to the bathroom to sob. Turned out during the night's worth of secrets being revealed, one secret was not included.

Paul Kinsey?!? Who invited you? Get out of here, no one wants you.

Cameron sat watching to see if someone else was gonna show up. She knew time was running out. But she hoped.

A cheer erupted from the programmers. Could it be? It was!

Bos!!! Bos told stability to take a hike, he was hitchin' a ride to the left coast.

He asked Cameron if she was ready for this. Hiding her disappointment that he wasn't Tom as much as she could, she nodded her head yes.

The flight attendant closed the door. Cameron was going to California. Tom was staying in Texas.

The plane wasn't moving yet, though the door was closed. The light out Gordon's window shone brightly behind him. It was gonna be a long flight to San Francisco International. What better time for Gordon to thumb idly through a computer magazine. And then he saw it.

An article about the hot new company about to hit San Francisco and Silicon Valley like a storm: MacMillan Utility. That son-of-a-bitch stole* his idea!

Out in San Francisco, Joe met with a real estate agent and took the lease out on an entire floor of an office building with an excellent view of the center of the city. He stood and looked out over his new arena. The wedding ring was gone from his finger.

As for us, we're halfway through our story, but as I said earlier, it's almost as if things are really just about to begin. I'm looking forward to what's coming up. Whether you have seen where this is going, or are following along for the first time, I hope you're excited as well.

See you two weeks from now in California!****

Footnotes

* Interestingly, as Joe looks at the cover of the fake magazine cover talking about Jacob Wheeler, there's a second magazine cover featuring a story about Steve Jobs getting fired from atop Apple, which had happened back in April of 1985.
** A reference to the character played by Lousie Fletcher in the 1975 Best Picture winning film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
*** The good lawyers representing MacMillan Utility were happy enough to reach through spacetime and the veil between reality and fiction and remind us all that Gordon Clark gave Joe MacMillan Tabula Rasa as a gift with no strings attached and that Joe offered to make Gordon a 50/50 partner in the enterprise.
**** On the show. As far as I know two weeks from now, I'll still be in Philly.

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