User Reviews

I just finished re-watching the series. I enjoyed my second time through, and I found the last episode satisfying. I didn't remember the ending, which tells me that watching their journey over 4 seasons was more important than what happens at the end. I often feel this way watching reality TV competition shows. I can't usually remember the winner a few months later, but I remember a singer I really liked or a performance that I still can't get out of my head.

Kids and growing up were major themes for this series. Cameron's game Pilgrim turns out to be all about finding your way back to your childhood. I loved how Cameron's reward in the game was to start your path over again. The second time you might see what choices and opportunities you couldn't see the first time.

I was hoping Cameron would decide to stay, and I thought there was foreshadowing for this. When Hailey got upset with more people leaving her, I thought there was a good chance that Cameron would stick around. I loved the scene with Donna and Cameron talking all the way through their new Phoenix company. They could see everything that would happen from startup to dissolution. Yet, Donna at the end leaves logic behind and goes with her heart. She comes up with an amazing idea that breathes life back into both of them. Cameron suggests earlier that working together was more important than the idea, but then after both of them talk through the logic of what would happen, it seemed unlikely. Cameron was ready to hit the road to Florida. But Donna lights up as she sees something in the diner. An idea sparks a fire. Her passion for this new idea was all it took to throw away the logic and go for it! She runs out to Cameron, and they start the game over with each other. I loved this. To me, this was just like the reward in the game Pilgrim. They got to start over with a new perspective. Perhaps this time, with their memories from the first time through, they will be able to beat the logic and find a new path.

I can see Cameron sticking around and helping Hailey navigate through her teen years. Cameron won't have kids of her own, and Donna will love the help. Donna foreshadowed this in a previous episode when she suggested Cameron could be an instant parent to a 17 year old.

Joe also had a pretty positive ending. He learned that he loved working with kids like Hailey, and he ends up being a humanities teacher!

The tech history resonates with me, because I lived it. I won't go into the details, but the history attracted me to the series. But the characters kept me watching. I may not remember this ending episode a few years from now, but I'll remember Cameron's Pilgrim game. I'll remember Donna telling Cameron that she played her game all the way through to the end, and that Cameron made the game for people like Donna. It's not all about violence and shooting and killing. It's about the journey, the people and the community. OK, I'll shut up now. Thanks for reading!

After 4 seasons, it's easy to forget the show ends as it begun, with Joe in a room full of students asking a question. But in the pilot, he's cocky, impulsive, immature, and hungry. 10 years later, he's 10 years wiser, and he's managed to fit a lot of living and a lot of wisdom into those 10 years. (Even the cars he's driving at the beginning and the end are similar; everything in between was a sports utility vehicle.) You know that when he tells the students he wants to ask them a question this time, it's going to be a very different question, and for very different reasons. Now Joe wants to share his wisdom with young people, whereas in the beginning, he just wanted to recruit people to become a tycoon. I found all of the characters in the show to be compelling, but Joe had the best storyline and Lee stood out as the most interesting actor. This was a remarkable show.

I was reading the first review of this last year of the series and want to balance it out. This is about the episodes leading up to the finale. Usually, a pretty bow is less than satisfying to a series. You feel like they just wrapped up loose ends (and in an inelegant way) or provided a cheap happy ending. This episode doesn't do that. You feel content as the characters where they are but you recognize that their lives are continuing to move forward. The problem is that since they're butting up against modern times, that simply isn't possible with HACF continuing to be a retro series to see what happens.

This wasn't just a technology show. It was "the thing that gets you to the thing". That the technology is about what people do with it. Not just with the technology itself, but how those who develop it impact their own lives. Joe matures during the season from a confused, neurotic genius to someone more at peace. He wanted a child with Cameron and failed but found an adoptive bond with the Clarks' daughter, Hailey. Gordon, a regular Joe (pardon the pun), has seen this business help ruin his marriage but he rebounds to become a strong, wholesome man. This is all in episodes leading up to this finale. But the finale helps put this all into such wonderful perspective. I cried at the last scene because of its powerful reminder that even as all this technology they developed and played with together: The Giant laptop, ham radios, chat rooms, it's all about the people in your life. They are the "thing" that the technology is about getting to.

What made this series so stunning is that despite it being a girl power theme and portraying women in STEM, it doesn't shy away from some of the difficulties that creates. Gordon and Joe ended the series happy. Yes, Gordon died but he was going to do that anyway. His success he pursued made him complete as we see in previous episodes where he's miserable that his original PC project failed. Joe also wanted to make his mark and did. After the Giant was built, they just spun their wheels and repeated different projects and realized that they had "made it" all along. They've "made it". They have the thing. You'll know where Joe's thing is after watching the finale.

As I said, it would be easy to just give a happy ending to everyone but either due to it wanting to be a drama or perhaps just honest writing, the women have a harder time. Donna remains single and mending bridges with her daughters. Cameron is upset that her relationship with Joe is over and has no new prospects on the horizon. Hailey is sort-of gay but in love with the masculine figures of her father Gordon and Joe (teenage boys with pimples just can't compete with such strong father figures). Sure, these gals can program in C and fix a down hard drive but can they get the thing that their thing is getting them to? Do they even know what is the thing they want? Joe struggles with it during the whole show and this finale helps to put to rest that maybe he's found the thing. Gordon found it and died. It's a wonderful philosophical insight that goes beyond retro fun chuckling at 33Kbs dial up connections and "in line graphics" browsers. (Although a lot of that technology is still fun today. Give me retro games anyday).

Yes, HACF was wonderful in that we got to experience the retro period of the 80's where amazing technology was born. I still marvel at it. But it also has a human story and that's wrapped up in this finale. Much like with the Sopranos, I suggest you don't watch this finale before watching any other episodes. It's so much more gratifying to watch the whole series including some of the "slower" episodes. These are real characters I could recognize in the industry (which I'm in.) This series does honor to them and to the modern political issues discussed without pulling ideological punches. So many people struggle to get their "thing" without realizing it's not what they want. This show's finale makes you wonder about your own "thing". And that is why I was so touched at the last moments of it.

Enjoy.

I think HACF was at it's best when it was deeply involved in the lore of computer history, I loved guessing which real people and real technology through the ages inspired the show's characters, their actions and the hardware/software/concepts they dreamed up. The supporting cast was all excellent (except maybe Mackenzie Davis who I find to have a fairly limited range - angry or confused are her two main expressions) but the real star of the show for me, and what made it quite unique, was the technology and the genuinely educational way it was revealed.

I for one am quite well-versed in computer history but the Mutiny storyline taught me a few things I didn't know about the early, pre-web internet, which I appreciate. Unfortunately in seasons 3 and 4 the stories began to put the technology on level or often behind the character melodrama, which as I said was generally well-acted but not particularly interesting. By the final episode I must say I was quite bored with it all and Gordon's death was milked for all it was worth over too many episodes, almost as if it was written in there just to fill time with the extra melodrama that ensued 'till the end of the season.