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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
49
Mixed:
10
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Aug 22, 2017
Season 4 Review:
Halt and Catch Fire succeeds by making its tech narrative not a dry history lesson, but rather a battle of wills between four very flawed, compelling characters, each possessed of the kinds of manic ambition and tendency toward self-destruction that make for the best television drama.
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IndieWireAug 17, 2017
Aug 25, 2017
Season 4 Review:
Halt and Catch Fire has officially shifted into the early 1990s, exploring the days when the internet was still being invented and, in the process, cementing its place as one of the most confident shows on television. ... Like its four protagonists, it is damn good at what it does. If you don’t take the time to appreciate it while it’s still here, you might regret it.
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Aug 15, 2016
Season 3 Review:
Things don't really get moving until the second hour, but Halt's elegantly told tale about four people desperate to play a role in shaping the future remains impressively acted and timely as ever. [19/26 Aug 2016 p.104]
Aug 23, 2016
Season 3 Review:
In episodes that alternate percolating energy with quiet ruminations on loyalty, leadership and the ways in which people lie to themselves and others, the satisfying third season builds up an admirable head of steam and gives the core cast (including the wonderful and previously under-used Toby Huss) and guest star Annabeth Gish smart material to work with.
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Aug 22, 2016
Aug 22, 2016
Season 3 Review:
Aside from the occasional inspired hairstyle and music cue, Halt and Catch Fire’s sense of period detail has never seemed adequately obsessive. Yet I also find that the show has smoothed out enough kinks to become compelling on its own terms, which is often the case with slower shows.
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Aug 22, 2016
Season 3 Review:
The more Halt and Catch Fire continues to lean into the emergence of Cam and Donna as two of the major forces behind the show’s alternate-reality internet revolution, the more interested I am in seeing where it goes. Also, the more it does that, the more this series about the Silicon Valley before HBO’s Silicon Valley feels like must-watch TV, as opposed to just should-watch TV.
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May 28, 2015
Season 2 Review:
AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire, a series about tech entrepreneurs, albeit ones in 1980s Dallas, begins its much-improved second season having undergone a pivot of its own.... The adjustment may sound slight, but as successful pivoters--billionaires on paper, anyway--would surely be happy to explain, the right pivot can make all the difference.
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May 27, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The good news is that Halt and Catch Fire is a triumphant pilot with excellent writing, impressive acting and a noteworthy cinematic visual style. ... But ultimately that means nothing until we see the next episode. And the one after that. And the one after that. So take this early praise with that caveat.
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May 26, 2015
Season 2 Review:
The performances from Lee Pace, Scoot McNairy, Mackenzie Davis, and Ketty Bishe are solid, [but] the characters don't do much, favoring tech jargon over real drama. [29 May/5 Jun 2015, p.100]
May 30, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The drawback to Catch Fire is that we aren't yet interested enough in the backup characters. For now Pace is reason enough to watch this on whatever TV, laptop or mobile screen you prefer in the digital age. [9 Jun 2014, p.33]
May 30, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The premiere flags a bit when we get to the actual business at hand; Pace and McNairy hole up in the latter’s garage, furiously soldering wires and reading off columns of numbers. It’s not the stuff of great drama.... Things pick up as Joe takes a calculated risk by outing their project to the competition, putting his bosses in a no-win position that demands they fund the build.
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May 30, 2014
Season 1 Review:
Halt And Catch Fire has a great cast, a neat title, a solid pilot script from Chris Cantwell and Chris Rogers, and some intriguing direction from Juan José Campanella that turns both the human face and circuit boards into things to be broken down into component parts and understood. But it lacks a suggestion that it will reassemble the parts of better dramas that it has gathered into something uniquely its own, instead of a mostly functional knockoff.
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May 30, 2014
Season 1 Review:
Halt is wise enough to play this out against Gordon’s stress over providing for his family, Joe’s mysterious background and Cameron’s cute pixie haircut. The ad men in “Mad Men” changed a great deal; the people who put a computer in every home changed everything. And that keeps Halt and Catch Fire interesting.
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May 30, 2014
Season 1 Review:
There are still quite a few good reasons to watch this flawed show. The pilot features some clever twists that I won’t ruin here. The dialogue can be highly quotable, in an engrave-this-mantra-on-your-iPad way. (“Computers aren’t the thing–they’re the thing that gets us to the thing!”) And McNairy is fantastic, simmering with quiet intensity that suggests that there’s much more to Gordon than we’re privy to in the pilot.
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Jun 23, 2014
Season 1 Review:
With little exception, MacMillan is the sole character given scenes that seek to bring out his antic inner life, the most memorable of which being his meltdown in an electronics store, where he tries to find a hold of his ambition in a torrent of comingled rhythms emanating from various speakers.
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May 29, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The plot takes a few satisfyingly clever twists, some of them possibly even fact-based. The period touches seem well-observed, and the acting is fine throughout--with Pace a standout for the way he allows anger and doubt to be just barely visible below a calm, confident shell. Yet too often the writing lets the actors down.
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May 29, 2015
Season 2 Review:
As with the first season, the actors all do their best, and the loving but challenging relationship between Donna and Gordon remains the show's most appealing, layered element. But Halt and Catch Fire still lacks a point of view that would make this trip back to the '80s feel relevant.
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May 30, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The problem is, once you get past the initial shock of a fresh premise and start watching the pilot, the show starts to seem more formulaic, with stock characters (mostly female, alas) and what sounds like placeholder dialogue that was supposed to filled in with good stuff later but wasn't.
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