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Comment by Apocryphon | Hacker News Reader

It's definitely a prestige melodrama which makes it maudlin. One could recommend HBO's Silicon Valley as an antidote, but that's a comedy with cynical bittersweet tones. Perhaps one day someone will make a tech industry drama that's light and optimistic.

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Its not just that, the series feels disingenuous. Like nothing can go right for the main characters, ever. Whenever they achieve something, they have to be knocked down. Never once in the series did anyone have a moment of happiness which is not punished. Like, as soon as you get your exit money, BAM brain problems! Successfully convert a idle mainframe into a time share business, NOPE it will be stolen from you.

I feel like they are conflating sadness with grit and unnecessarily concentrating only on the sad/difficult parts. As a counter example, look at breaking bad or better call saul. Breaking Bad is perhaps the most successful prestige show since Sopranos (I think it might be even more successful if only looked at commercially). But the show has fun with its universe. Even The Wire, which is a show about everything that can go wrong with the city has moment which feel human and are not sad/difficult.

Yeah, I'm definitely not a fan of the ways they put them through the wringer- Gordon's health issues were a particular excessive twist of the knife. Interestingly enough, that description sort of describes Silicon Valley's trajectory for its protagonists as well. Could it just be that showrunners don't know what to do with their characters once they find success, especially in the potentially extremely lucrative world of tech?

Amusingly enough, I remember this 2015 article comparing the two, as well as Douglas Coupland’s novel Microserfs, when both shows were still on their early seasons:

https://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/silicon-valley-ha...

I think you have something there, but I don't think its about knowing what to do its about being interested in telling that story. I feel like it takes a lot of skill to write a story about a wealthy/successful person and prevent the audience from going "boo-hooo, poor you in your mansion". But its not like it can't be done, in fact I would have to plug both Breaking Bad and The Wire here. Both the shows go beyond the point where the initial characters achieved success in what they wanted to do. Both shows did it by expanding their universe of characters and topics. BB added more dangerous men Heisenberg can go against and The Wire started looking at the same problem from several angles (political, financial, etc). The last season even shows what a successful drug lord does.

I don't like silicon valley either, and its precisely the same issue. They are laser focused on some characters and thus suffer from it.

Better Call Saul does exactly the same thing as you describe though. That show is relentless in knocking Saul down despite all his efforts to better his fortunes. But sometimes that's how life is.

>Better Call Saul does exactly the same thing as you describe though.

Breaking Bad does as well. What goes right for Walt? He loses everything. Maybe I'm missing something.

Its not about the end. Its about the journey. The way its done in HACF seems brutal. Like I can't smile at any given moment. [EDIT: in Breaking Bad] the mishaps do not feel immediate, don't feel like a punishment. There are real moments of victory, which are expanded and deliberated upon. In Halt and catch fire I feel like the makers are afraid of their characters being happier than a day.

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