Halted & Caught Fire
I have a confession to make. It’s sort of a weird one. Despite it being one of my favorite shows of all time, I refuse to watch the end of Halt and Catch Fire.
Yes, the show ended its run on AMC over two years ago. And yes, there have been ample opportunities to watch the remaining episodes in those past two years as the show has been on Netflix. But once I finished season 3, I decided I was going to ration out season 4 — the final season — to make it last as long as possible. That’s how much I adore the show.¹ I just don’t want it to end.
And so I’m going to the extreme of not watching the final episodes to ensure that it doesn’t end, at least in my head. There is always at least one more episode still to watch, you see.
Yes, this is a little crazy. And even more so because I don’t do this with any other show. And there are many, many, many shows I love. Especially in the “golden age” of television in which we all currently find ourselves. But there’s something about Halt and Catch Fire that makes me want to keep it there, never fully watched, in stasis.²
Some days I find myself longing to watch an episode. And I’ll debate it. I’ll linger on an episode tile on Netflix. Study the image they’ve expertly curated so as best to entice me to click-to-play. And sometimes I even do it. It has to be some sort of special occasion.³ Or some sort of special mood. A few times I have done it just to watch the short opening bit through the truly excellent opening credits. Seriously, has there ever been a better, more simple, more concise opening? I think not. The segues are always perfect. That music.
Perhaps I’m holding out hope that one day the show will be miraculously reborn in some form — again, see: golden age of television. A cinematic treatment seems a long shot, at best. But stranger things have happened…
Until then, there it sits in my Netflix queue. Always present. The show tile always searing holes in my retinas. I want to click ‘play’. But I also don’t.
¹ And here’s where I’ll admit that I was initially hesitant to watch the show. Despite someone pushing me pretty hard to do so — knowing that I would love it given my love of Mad Men. Jim was right, I was wrong. Very wrong.
² I suspect part of it has to do with just how brief the show was, relatively speaking. Four seasons seems like the ultimate tease for a great show: enough to get you hooked, but not enough to leave you satisfied (and thankfully certainly not enough to overstay its welcome).
³ And I may or may not have written this very post as an excuse to burn one more of my remaining episodes…
