Halt and Catch Fire and Humanizing the Void

WordMaster

             You could be forgiven for dismissing Halt and Catch Fire as second-rate Mad Men. You might even be right. After all, the sophomore AMC drama created by Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers is hardly the masterpiece that Matthew Weiner’s acclaimed, seven-season meditation on the American Dream was even in its youth, and its resemblance to the latter borders on suspicious at times.

             To start with, it’s a period piece, though 1980s Texas doesn’t quite have the exotic, jewel-toned glamour of ‘60s Manhattan. Joe MacMillan, the central protagonist played by Lee Pace, is basically a mid-level Don Draper – a debonair, silver-tongued genius tormented by his enigmatic past; he even ends the first season by ditching his job and disappearing into the backcountry, a move not dissimilar to Don’s cross-country odyssey in the last act of Mad Men. At one point, Cameron sums Joe up with the barbed observation: “You’re just a thousand-dollar suit with nothing inside.” Sound familiar?

I mean, come on.

Speaking of Cameron, she’s the Peggy Olson of Halt and Catch Fire, an idealistic young prodigy who the hero takes under his wing; her alternately affectionate and resentful interactions with Joe recall Peggy and Don’s volatile relationship. Donna initially occupies the obligatory neglected wife role, though unlike with Betty Draper, the other characters soon learn to recognize and appreciate her value, and in a pleasantly surprising reversal, the second season has positioned Gordon as a bored house-husband while Donna gets absorbed in her work. Both shows even include amusing side-stories involving typically straitlaced women trying marijuana.

Yet, after a rather uninspired beginning, I found myself thoroughly enjoying Halt and Catch Fire as I binged the first season on Netflix (for me, “binging” means consuming 1-3 episodes a day, which I guess for some people is known as “watching TV”). I couldn’t help but succumb to Lee Pace’s haughty charisma; the dysfunctional, frequently hostile relationships; the pleasure of seeing Donna upend everybody’s expectations, including the audience’s; the coolly retro soundtrack and credits sequence. As much as I love Game of Thrones, there’s something to be said for a show that creates tension out of lost computer files.

In a way, it turned out to be the perfect rebound, filling, however incompletely, the gaping hole left in my TV-viewing heart by Mad Men. For all the aforementioned similarities, I would argue that Halt and Catch Fire is not, in fact, a cheap knockoff of the seminal ad agency drama but a rejoinder, approaching the same problems – how are people shaped by society? Is happiness possible? What is our purpose in life? – from a radically different angle.

Nazis are Terrible People and Other Shocking Revalations

        A part of building a blog is forming an intimacy with the audience, creating a connection that leads to a sense of community, and as the numerous self-help books I’ve read have told me, every relationship is based on trust. So I am going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone else before. Are you ready?

        Okay.

        I love Nazis.

        Ha, psych, no. I’m just fucking with you. But I confessed that I was. Trust! But seriously, guys, fuck Nazis. I know I’m not getting into controversial territory here by telling you that Nazis were murderous fuckheads, but I do fancy myself somewhat of an amateur Holocaust historian, and I have years of study to tell me just how murderously fuckheady Nazis are with a great deal more statistics and exact numbers than the layperson.

        Now, Sarah, you might say, isn’t it a little disingenuous to claim that you are well-versed in the Holocaust when the truth is you were interested in it when you were 12 and only got back into the subject when you saw X-Men: First Class and decided you wanted to make your 10,000 word Charles/Erik fic more realistic? To which I’d say, run-on. Also, how the fuck did you know that? Jesus Christ, our readers are clairvoyant.

        And FYI, that fic was awesome. Respect.

        So why are you bringing Nazis up at all? you might ask meekly, rightfully slapped down by my stern yet compassionate manner.

        Because Nazis are great for writers. Let’s have a small history rant to explain why.

        While you could make the case that Nazis and the Holocaust do not represent the worst thing humanity has ever done, you’d be a piss-poor judge of history to keep it out of the top five. Nazis did not stumble across Treblinka or Chelmno already fully operational. They did not have a few thousand canisters of Zyklon B hanging around that they needed to get rid of. Nazi Germany was not passively evil. Nazis innovated. Nazis set about solving the “problem” of the Jews and other undesirables methodically and cleverly. They chugged away at the problem, experimenting with gas trucks and shooting squads and carbon dioxide pumped into crowded rooms. And when they needed workers for the war effort, they killed through exhaustion, working their prisoners in the harshest, cruelest conditions imaginable because if their workers died that was all the better and there were more where they came from. Camps like Auschwitz were not an anomaly in the Nazi state; they were the culmination of everything the Nazis strove for.

        Which brings me to my two points: One, if someone were to suggest legislation that proposed exhuming all known Nazis for the sole purpose of skullfucking their skeleton, I’d be first in line with a strap-on. And second, Nazis are the greatest enemies a hero could ever hope to have. Alongside robots, zombies, and other emotionless creatures bent on killing (you know, monsters), Nazis are one of the only groups in fiction that heroes can kill with complete impunity. Kill a henchman and there will always be some asshole (i.e. me) who will slow clap and go, “Way to go, hero. That guy probably had a family. He probably took the only job he could get in this economy. Maybe he didn’t even know what the villain’s giant laser was for. Did you know if he did? You didn’t ask. You could have, but you decided to make a pun first before you set him on fire with your wristwatch flamethrower. Bravo, sociopath.”

         But make that henchman a Nazi? “WOOO! STOMP ON HIS BALLS WHILE HE BURNS!!!!!”

        Case in point: Indiana Jones? Fights Nazis! The Empire? Space Nazis! The Daleks? Stupid looking robot Nazis! They are so guilt free to kill you have to wonder why the Doctor just won’t do it again and stop whining about it. Wolfenstein? You murder every single man, woman, and child of the Third Reich in that game. Hellboy? Shit, son, we got magic occult super Nazis to fight. Captain America? Fuck yeah, Cap, punch Hitler in the face again!

        And so on and so forth. As much as violence against Nazis makes me happy, I think you see my point. It’s hard for a bleeding heart like me to cheer on the wanton slaughter of a fellow human being. But slap a swastika on that motherfucker and let’s bring out the popcorn.

        Wait. Actually, readers, I don’t know. Isn’t this complete disregard for one type of person just what the Nazis were guilty of? The lesson we need to take from the Holocaust is how very easy it is to let evil have sway over you. And lord knows the Allies committed atrocities in the war. Hell, they knew about the concentration camps and did nothing. People do terrible things in war, and that’s not an excuse but maybe it’s an explanation. If I harbor hate towards the Nazis, am I any better than them?

        Yes. Yes I am. But in the broader sense, maybe I should chill.

         Reader, let’s go back to that henchman we killed before. We said he had a family. Nazis have family! With children in the Hitler Youth! But I used to eat dirt. We do a lot of things before we learn that they’re fucking terrible ideas. So kids, we like kids. Kids don’t want to lose their dads, we don’t want kids to lose their dad, so even if the guy is a Nazi, it’s sad that the kid lost his father. Boom! Sympathy! Now when Indiana Jones shoots a Nazi bastard in the face, we imagine little Hans at home waiting for a Dad that will never come home. Awesome! We’ve ruined that action scene!

         I remember reading in one of my numerous Nazi books that even Adolf Eichmann, an SS-Obersturmbannführer (a rank that translates roughly to “Nazi shitfucker who dealt with the logistics of killing millions”) cared deeply about his family, saying goodbye to them before he fled to Argentina. Here, I have the book (Hunting Evil by Guy Walters, page 10, so we can be above board on all of this) right here. Let me double check that quote.

         “Eichmann later recalled how in turn he took his wife Vera and three sons into his arms. ‘I clung to them with a fervor that is only possibly in such circumstances,’ he would write. ‘The smallest was only three years old. Just three—and I was seeing him for the last time.’”

          Aw, that’s sweet. I’m sure the rest of the quote will in no way invalidate that.

          “‘I knew that the finest gift a German father can bequeath his son is the gift of discipline. And so I beat him.’” Ha ha ha! It’s funny because he’s a terrible human being in all the ways a person can be. God bless Nazis. And by “God bless”, I mean “skull fuck”.