The conflicts that drive Season 2 of Halt and Catch Fire

Still going strong on Season 2 of the AMC/Netflix series Halt and Catch Fire, the dramatic and imaginative examination of the formative years of the PC revolution and the establishment of the Internet - not really so long ago in time (the first 2 years of the series cover roughly 1983-85) but a million years away in regard to technology. The creators (the Christophers Cantwell and Rogers) do a great job capturing the look and the mood of the era: everything from period details in the rundown offices of the early gamers and programmers to the country clubs, bars, and corporate HQs of the dominant industries of the old order. The first 2 seasons are set in Dallas, and part of the drama involves the upstarts edging out the old order - an electronics company, a gas and oil conglomerate - with their new ideas: personal computers you could buy at a store and plug in and play, online gaming, online communities (a radical idea that many of the gamers and other early adopters resisted), shared electronic space (ie the Internet), instant communication (ie email), and, in an ominous conclusion to season 2, hacking and viruses and antivirus software. The season ends w/ all of the principals headed for the Bay Area, a necessary transition if the series is truly to track the rise of the new industry, though handled rather awkwardly in the narrative (all of the main characters hopping on the same airplane like a class trip). What propels the series of course is the character creation and development: each of the main characters (a garage-based electronics whiz, a rogue programmer, and business whiz, a super salesman, a good ole' boy who can mix w/ the suits) is both driven by the need to succeed and prosper and hindered by serious character flaws, for the most part an ineradicable urge toward mortification and self-destruction. As they move toward Season 3, the stakes - the possible riches and the potential for spectacular failure - get even higher (we end w/ a skyline view of SF by night, seen from the empty floor on an office tower, soon to be a new corporate hq).