Halt and Catch Fire AMC’s new series airs tonight with an all new Tuesday, August 23 , season 3 premiere called “Valley of the Heart’s Delight; One Way or Another,” and we have your weekly Halt and Catch Fire recap below. On tonight’s episode, in the third-season premiere, Donna, (Kerry Bishe) and Cameron (Mackenzie Rio Davis) explore their options to expand beyond chat.
On the last episode, in the Season 2 finale, Gordon aids Joe as the Clark family descends into crisis. Meanwhile, Cameron envisions a new future for Mutiny that may not include everyone.
On tonight’s episode as per the AMC synopsis, “in the third-season premiere, Donna, and Cameron explore their options to expand beyond chat. Meanwhile, Gordon settles in at Mutiny; and Joe launches his latest product; also while Cameron and Donna struggle to find venture capital, Joe hires a key coder, leaving the rest of the team at a loss.”
You aren’t going to want to miss any of the unfolding action tonight in our Halt and Catch Fire recap. We’ll be recapping the season 3 premiere right here for you at 9pm. In the meantime, while waiting for our Halt and Catch Fire, hit up the comments and tell us what you’re expecting from Halt and Catch Fire.
Tonight’s episode begins now – Refresh Page often to get the most current updates!
It was 1986 and against all odds Mutiny was still standing. The company that Cameron and Donna had joined together to create was still up online and now even had its own working mainframe. However, that same mainframe had a few glitches everyone now and then. So Donna’s husband Gordon ended up getting roped in as maintenance and it’s been his job to make sure that everything was running smoothly. Even though no one really respected him for the amount of work he put in and that second chance he was supposed to have with his wife never panned out.
Donna and Gordon had moved out west because they both agreed that they wanted to start over. Their marriage had had some rough patches in the past and so they had both agreed that their move would also be a new beginning for their family. Yet, Gordon and Donna’s marriage hadn’t gotten their fresh start because they were now instead facing new challenges. Cameron for instance, was living with them so there was never time when they felt like they could live work at the workplace what with her and Donna constantly strategizing over breakfast. And, unfortunately, the kids were hating the move as well.
Though it was hard on Gordon to demoted to the background while his wife took all the glory, the move and everything that came with it was especially difficult on their daughters. The girls weren’t that young anymore so they didn’t see the move as an adventure and they had pretty hard time trying to find in at a new school much less trying to make new friends. So the oldest girl Joanie had gotten into a fight with another girl at school and the principle demanded to sit down with both parents. Which didn’t bother Gordon however it was inconvenient for Donna.
Donna and Cameron had had a meeting that day. So it had actually taken Donna some time to remember that her daughter should come first although the meeting with the principle and the other girl’s mother didn’t appeared to be that bad. Donna and Gordon had met Jennifer’s mother Diane and the two women had sort of had a moment. Diane was this confident woman that was seemingly proud of raising a daughter that was strong. But that doesn’t mean that Diane blamed Joanie for the fight because she recognized that her daughter Jennifer has been having a hard time since Diane filed for divorce for her husband.
So Diane was what an unapologetic version of Donna would look like though Donna wasn’t exactly the same woman she was back in Season 1. Donna had come into her own a bit and slowly she was making herself. Even over Cameron. Cameron had apparently done something quite shady when no one was looking. Unfortunately, it appears that she created backdoor loophole in the Mutiny program so that she or another experienced hacker could spy on private chats. Yet, Donna who didn’t know that Cameron had purposely done it, had asked Cameron to seal up the holes after Ryan had informed the ladies about it.
Ryan was a techie at Mutiny and he had found Cameron’s gaping holes in the program. So he had brought it to Donna and Cameron’s attention because he swore he had a plan to fix it, but that it would require more complicated programing. However, Cameron had quickly shut him down when he was making his pitch and she had gone on to spy on private chats all despite asking John Bosworth to give a Ryan a raise. Ryan hadn’t asked for raise and so that raise which had come out of the blue had been her way of trying to keep Ryan happily quiet. And funnily enough her plan didn’t work.
Ryan had been thrown by the raise that he naturally suspicious of. So he had chosen to focus on something else. Ryan had found out that Joe MacMillan was going to launch his new antivirus program that was supposed to be the private consumer so he had gone to that event and had watched Joe in action. It seems that after Joe had finished making millions by selling what was technically Gordon’s idea to companies around the world, Joe now wanted to remember the little guy and offer the many people at home his latest program for free.
Of course the crowds eat that up because there was multimillionaire offering them a program for free yet Joe wasn’t to be trusted and Gordon was still smarting over what happened between them. Gordon had also broken the ice with some of the guys at Mutiny. So they had comfortable enough to ask him about his lawsuit. Gordon was suing Joe over the antivirus program and so he told them how he came to mistakenly over the program to a man he thought he could trust. He said that Joe was at the low point in his life and that he was just trying to help a friend by showing him something that he hoped would get Joe interested in the world again when Joe went behind his back to hawk the program to investors.
But while it was easy for many to underestimate Joe, Gordon warned them not to. He said Joe could truly be a dangerous man and that they should always remain on guard around. So Gordon had tried to tell the guys at Mutiny that Joe could worm his way into their lives without their knowing however he didn’t think he needed to warn John or that John could be susceptible. John had gotten a call from John who had surprisingly congratulated him on the birth of his first grandchild though John had no idea how Joe knew about that or how he knew the baby was a boy. And therefore John was a little confused himself because he didn’t know why Joe had taken such an interest in his family.
Joe was just that mysterious! He was charming and extremely giving one second and in the next he was prepared to burn everything down around him. Yet, Ryan was interested in Joe and so he had planned a way to meet him in person. Ryan had waylaid Joe after Joe was finishing surfing and he had tried to impress the other man with the fact that he worked at Mutiny and could dismantle its code within a day though Joe hadn’t been all that interested in him. Joe had driven off and had ignored what Ryan had told him though it had been unfortunate timing that Ryan was bragging about the many holes in Mutiny while both Cameron and Donna were shopping for more investors.
Donna and Cameron had come up with a trade aspect for Mutiny where people could meet and agree to swap items they didn’t want for something they did. So the ladies believed they could take Mutiny to new heights and they didn’t need anyone to badmouthing them behind their backs. Though, Ryan was quickly becoming a disgruntled employee at Mutiny right under their noses and he was taking out all of his frustrations on anyone he could. Which included his own coworkers because he had nearly gotten into a fight with John when he had implied the other man wasn’t as smart as the rest of them were.
That was part of Ryan’s problem though. Ryan believed he was the smartest person at Mutiny so it had offended him when Cameron and Donna ignored what he suggested and that Joe didn’t even have time for him. So Ryan’s attitude towards John was basically his way of finding a smaller fish than himself to pick on, but Gordon had noticed his behavior and had quickly stepped in before John could actually do some damage to the techie. Gordon had told John that he knows how to speak to guys like Ryan and that he would probably have an easier time to get Ryan to focus on their mission rather than petty grievances.
So Gordon had later taken Ryan aside in order to find out what was the at the core of his behavior. But he had been surprised by what Ryan told him. Gordon hadn’t known that Ryan found flaws in the Mutiny program and so he hadn’t quite grasp how angry Ryan was for not being taken seriously yet there had been nothing that Gordon could say that would change Ryan’s mind about Mutiny because Ryan had still gone back to Joe’s and had tried to get a job elsewhere. Ryan had hacked Joe’s computer system and had set up a meeting for himself with Joe in which he explained that he wanted to be like Gordon. Someone that Joe lifts up from obscurity and who has the entire life changed by what Joe could do.
Ryan also said that Joe was brilliant at he was does and that he personally could sense that something was coming that he wanted to be a part of. Although, Joe’s conversation with Ryan while enlightening hadn’t made him think about hiring Ryan. It had instead made him think about hiring Gordon. So Joe had again blindsided everyone when he later walked in on Gordon as the other man was giving his deposition in his lawsuit against him and he had made Gordon an offer. Joe had told Gordon that he was willing to sign away half of the company as long as Gordon came to work with him running that very same company, so that it could be like the old days, however Gordon said no. Gordon said that he didn’t want to work Joe and Joe ended up walking off as if his feelings had been hurt.
However, Ryan had still been looking for the opportunity to become something more than just a middleman and Gordon who didn’t know about the whole Joe thing had thought he could help Ryan. Gordon was thinking about going back into business for himself and creating something. So he had gone over some ideas with Ryan and the two men had talked about developing those ideas. Even though it was bound to take them away from Mutiny and the obligations they had there. And so Gordon was already working things out in his head when he found out what Cameron did at Joanie’s birthday party.
Gordon found out that Cameron had bribed Joanie into inviting Jennifer to her birthday party. The two girls still hated each, but Cameron had wanted a second chance at pitching to Jennifer’s mother Diane who worked at an investing company and had also told Mutiny no in their first meeting. So Cameron had used the little girl’s party to find out why Diane had told them no and it turns out there was another company called SWAPMeet that was a year ahead of Mutiny. SWAPMeet had the necessary program and they had an eighteenth moth head start. Yet, the ladies had looked up the rival company and had found out that SWAPMeet was mostly for sports memorabilia so they went back to Diane with an entirely different offer.
Donna and Cameron had told Diane that they weren’t interested in competing with SWAPMeet and that now they wanted to buy the company. That had the necessary software and would ultimately cost less than the ladies coming up with the software themselves. So Donna and Cameron were getting excited about buying out another company when seemingly out of nowhere (at least for them), they were betrayed. Ryan had heard back from Joe and had quickly told Gordon that he was leaving Mutiny to go work for Joe.
THE END!
