I liked the VC guy’s brutal (and accurate) assessment of their chances: “Only 10% of America has a computer, and only 15% of them have a modem. And you work only on Commodores.” Yep, well it is 1985.
One of the things I like best about the show is that it’s about real pioneers, which is to say the uncelebrated, modestly successful people who moved the frontier acre by acre, homestead by homestead. At that instant, BBSs were the frontier. Normally pop culture has time only for the outsized successes, the Jobs and the Fords and the Edisons, or the magnificent and tragic near-misses, the Farnsworths and the Teslas.
I’m enjoying this season about as much as last season.
Purely by accident I came upon this little bit of trivia. The computer from last season the Cardiff Giant is the same name as one of the most famous hoaxesin US history, put on my none other than P.T. Barnum.
So do we give the writers credit for knowing this? Cardiff sounded liked perfectly good name for computer company and the Giant a fine name for souped up computer.
Hmm, for some reason I’m not recognizing most of the songs they play. I mean there was the Tears for Fears song a few episodes back and that’s it. Are they playing real stuff from the period or just 80’s-sounding stuff?
It’s all real period stuff (that i’ve noticed), but most of it is stuff that never got anywhere near the charts, at least in the US. During the BBQ they played some more standard college-radio alt-rock of the era like the Clash and “Chamber of Hellos” by Wire Train.
I’m 4 episodes into the second season and so far I’m not enjoying it nearly as much as the first season. Season one seemed like it had far more tech integrated into the story, and in turn the tech created drama to go along with the human drama between the characters. Season two so far just seems like a whole lot of human drama as we watch Joe humbled (and screwed by Cardiff, how the hell was that even legal?) but possibly redeemed in his newfound love for Sara and looking to make a new name for himself at her father’s company. We see Donna and Gordon’s roles reversed, and Gordon’s struggle to find purpose in his new post-Cardiff existence. Cameron struggles to maintain her “fuck the establishment” philosophy as it becomes more and more obvious that a little bit of establishment is a necessary evil if you want to run a successful business venture. And Boz, poor Boz.
The tech takes a back seat to all this in season two. While it has been fun to watch Mutiny struggle through growing pains (I smile every time they talk games or I hear the modem handshakes, thoughts of GENIE and CompuServe running through my head) and seeing Donna invent the BBS, but it’s too muted compared to last season. Perhaps it will improve now that Joe has a line on how to drastically improve things at the oil company. I know I’ve been in IT way too long when I was watching the scene where Joe walks into the datacenter to get ready to fire the boss guy, and my first thought was “why aren’t the servers running?”, then of course they kicked on at 9:00AM and the exact same thought occurs to Joe as I watch. That made me smile.
It wasn’t legal, but as Nathan (?) Cardiff pointed out in the meeting when he screwed Joe, he could out lawyer him and drag the whole thing out forever, including Joe’s torching of the PCs. So Joe, being a “different Joe”, walked away.
As for this season, I quite liked it. I don’t want to spoil things for you, Slainte, so I’ll just say that I liked Joe’s arc a lot, and how it ends, and I think the characters really come into their own. I suspect we’ve seen the last of the show, but it ends on a note that I’m comfortable with in terms of finality. We can get more into spoiler territory shortly once you’re all caught up!
Oh, and I don’t think Donna “invent[s] the BBS”, since the show frequently mentions other, competing online services. She’s just creating the Mutiny version of it.
