I just tried to watch this show because someone told me its the next best tech show after Silicon Valley, and the second season is by far some of the worst storytelling and acting I've ever seen on a screen, I don't think I'll be finishing the show. I really don't understand why people are so into it.
The first season is pretty taut, then the follow-up seasons suffer from every character being at the center of every big thing in tech for narrative purposes, which is to its detriment imo.
This is my opinion too. I loved the first season, but after that it felt silly making the same people invent basically everything in the computer world.
However it seems most people liked it the other way around.
It's "Ready Player One" for people who think SV is the most important thing in the world. It's very shallow and mostly just shoutouts to early computing history trivia.
It was engrossing as all hell, but it's one of the only shows I ever finished while really not liking it.
It feels so fake, and tries to keep your attention with gimmicks and artificial drama. When things are working out, characters sabotage things purposely to add drama back, as if it can't possibly be dramatic to succeed. The show basically ends up being a group of 4 or 5 assholes being assholes to each other for no reason.
No actually, 4 individuals are not solely responsible for 20 years of early computing history and making that so is absurd and kills my suspension of disbelief.
But it's short and self contained and there's enough character stuff to see that it's still worth experiencing.
I don't know how people say it's like "Soul of a New Machine" by Tracey Kidder. I read that book and there's just nothing comparable in the show. Soul of a new machine was a wonderful journey that was full of real people and real experiences, and maybe the first season of HaCF was like the McDonalds version of that.
Yeah, I don't get it either. I made it through the first season which was okay, but I couldn't get myself to finish the second one, it was just bad.
It is supposed to improve towards the end, but that is just too much to endure.
