You really feel it. Even when we know he's a manipulative sonuvabitch. It's mesmerizing. You have to admire his ability to spin shit into gold. The man has vision.

There's a sequence around S01E07 that I'm looking forward to reaching again, in which Joe is out on the front lawn with Donna's daughters during a hurricane and it's FEELS like magic. His performance feels earnest, and hypnotizing, and genuinely magical as he puts on a show for these young girls in the rain.

There's something intangible and hard to describe about the series. The writers have a way of making it transcend it's core drama and feel very different from just about any other show I can recall. Somehow it feels like pure creative expression that manages to defy outside expectations and tell a story that feels true to life and convey the ambitions of creative people who are fighting to make something beautiful.

Your assessment of movie magic is only partially correct. Obviously, a character has to be convincing by himself but the heavy lifting of the illusion is done by the peer characters acting as if they believe the role he plays.

"The king is always played by the others"

Not sure who is to credit for this quote but in my opinion it is one of the most important insights to understand how movies work and also why movie characters are never relevant role models.

He's also fantastic in Apple TV's Foundation and it's been really impressive seeing his range put on display there.

I haven't yet seen season 3 and beyond, but it's clear the OP blogger agrees:

> The best thing the show’s writers ever did was realize that Joe wasn’t the most interesting character.

Like, Lee is a good actor for sure, he was just given a poorly story crafted role.

I remember seeing this discussed around the show The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, which is about a midcentury NYC divorcee getting into the world of stand up comedy. Overall it works and is a funny and enjoyable show, but there's definitely some of the standup routines depicted on-screen that are not actually as funny as the baked-in audience laughs might indicate. Because yeah... you can't really fake delivering good standup, even with a whole writer's room preparing the jokes and all the editing magic in the world, you still have to actually stand there and tell them in a funny way. That part can't be faked.

An absolute legendary performance.

also something about him with a good engineer

reminds me of me and my boss, i hope lol

Season 2 is roughly about BBSs and Compuserve, and still in Texas.

Season 3 is about the early commercial Internet, same characters, SFBA.

Season 4 is about the Yahoo era of the Internet and about venture capital, also SFBA.

I've only watched the first season and really don't see the link to Soul of a New Machine.

Counterpart was great but structure made it hard for to watch knowing it'd been cancelled.

Scavengers Reign was great; I couldn't get into Common Side Effects.

Evil is exactly the Catholic X-Files, which is an amazing concept, but by the end of the 2nd season it is all the way off the rails and hurtling into a canyon.

Given your list, you might dig Lodge 49, which is somewhere in the intersection of HACF, Evil, The Big Lebowski.

For those curious, start by watching the 8 minute short which originated it all. If it hooks you, you’ll love the show.

https://vimeo.com/179779722

But be aware the show wasn’t renewed for a second season. Not enough people knew about it.

https://youtu.be/FFK7RHYdWCc?si=w8R0eO6W3uGgXt3R

Given the agreement in taste so far, here’s a couple to try if you haven’t:

- Sweet Vicious — marred by getting cancelled after one season, but a fun season anyway. College sexual assault survivor becomes an anti-rapist vigilante. It’s, uh… more light-hearted than the premise sounds?

- Review with Forrest MacNeil — A guy has a review show where he attempts to review… life. Takes viewer requests for what specifically to review in each episode. He takes his job very seriously. Avoid seeing episode counts if at all possible. Trust me on that part. Doesn’t ruin it if you do see them, but being blind to that does improve it.

Another that I’m not sure counts as under-watched as it’s more recent, but I rarely see it discussed in the wild: Dickinson, a magical realism biographical show about the poet, that mixes in humor and some modern pop culture (think: A Knight’s Tale).

I would suggest also Devs just for the visuals and Tales from the Loop for the most peaceful TV show I've ever seen

- Black Earth Rising

- Pine Gap

Please tell us about it! I always thought it's more of a 50-50 (it's an American series anyway), but I was only a kid back then, so I would be very interested to hear your complaints!

I had the same feeling but the opposite outcome with Silicon Valley. Growing up in Palo Alto, it took me a while to figure out if I was enjoying this show because it was genuinely funny or if it was just because it hit the absurdity of the time and place so well.

I was a child during the early parts of that era, and so for that part I got most from reading books and seeing the public announcements, but I started my first company during the era depicted towards the end - an ISP - and I feel they got that balance roughly right.

But, sure, there were annoying deviation that is obvious to those of us who know how things happened. I don't think that was avoidable.

Right down to obscure LucasArts first online game.

You need to do yourself a favor and drop whatever you think you know and re-binge.

I like literally love it, not ironically, it makes it more like a stage play.

Feel like the flaws are what makes it special. I don't want Kubrick for a tv show about BBS'

The feeling you're experiencing has a name: it's called "cringe". I can't watch Frasier for more than about half an episode because of it. Or I Love Lucy... same problem. But Seinfeld, which has plenty of the same humour mechanic, always seems to manage to stay just below the threshold for me.

Halt and Catch Fire is really, really good. Please trust us. Give it another shot. Skip forward a bit when you feel the need to. Skip the first episode entirely and just read a synopsis if you need to.

Silicon Valley, the insanity that it’s both a comedy and true to life

For some, it's very meaningful. That character is bisexual, not gay, and it's pretty authentic representation. The reason why it's not so focused on is because people like this, especially at that time, often don't care much for labels. That scene you mention is with a closeted man. This is not unheard of. You may not have had this experience personally, but does that mean it didn't happen? The campy part? Okay. The show wasn't perfect. It did get canceled, after all. But it worries me that you singled this particular thing out because this is obviously a political topic, and you missed the fact that the scene did demonstrate some things about the character, like his recklessness, impulsiveness and opportunism.

He complicated something that could've been simpler, and he did this because he had a hard time separating his personal thoughts and feelings from his work. This is a theme that plays out a lot in his interactions, and I wonder if your understandable discomfort and lack of familiarity with the other aspects of the scene colored your perception here.

Doesn't that refer to a lot of pop culture? I can remember the 1980s and my memories of that period rarely bear much resemblance to the TV/films I see nowadays set in that period. I don't think it's just my personal experience. It goes deeper than that because many of the writers can't remember it well, or at all. That said I think the author of "Ready Player One" could remember the 1980s, just not my 1980s.

There's only four seasons and they're all solid.

In the same way that the beginning of Parks and Rec feels like they were setting out to make a version of The Office before it really became its own thing, the first season of HaCF felt like "what if we had a Don Draper type but instead it was Texas in the 80s?"

I liked the storytelling in it, but, like I said earlier, it's pretty Six Feet Under-ish, in that as it progresses it is less and less about the original concept of the show and more about the relationships between characters built up over years of episodes. Whether that's a good or bad thing for you depends in part on how much fan service you want; it's why I find Mr. Robot completely unwatchable.

But the other seasons were great in their own ways too. Random PC revolution personalities showing up in dotcom startups was both disjointed and inspired.

https://www.ratingraph.com/tv-shows/halt-and-catch-fire-rati...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJN2JN3_N_4

Seasons 2 through 4 were vastly more interesting. We've seen Joel a hundred times. Donna and Cameron and Gordon felt less worn, and Donna and Cameron's relationship vastly more interesting than Gordon (the skeptic) and Joel (the believer!) in Season 1.

If you prefer "great men" stuff, I can see preferring Season 1.

But it's not exactly a story you can't watch elsewhere.