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Comment by beart | Hacker News Reader

I've heard many great things but have not been able to make it past the classroom scene in the first episode. I love both of the actors in other media, but I find the dialogue in these opening scenes makes me feel..embarrassed? I have similar feelings about other shows and movies at times where I just have to turn them off because of the way the characters are behaving. I think it just ties directly into some anxiety I have.

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Consider just fast-forwarding past a scene you can't handle. Like many shows, it takes a few episodes before the actors truly understand their characters.

The feeling you're experiencing has a name: it's called "cringe". I can't watch Frasier for more than about half an episode because of it. Or I Love Lucy... same problem. But Seinfeld, which has plenty of the same humour mechanic, always seems to manage to stay just below the threshold for me.

Halt and Catch Fire is really, really good. Please trust us. Give it another shot. Skip forward a bit when you feel the need to. Skip the first episode entirely and just read a synopsis if you need to.

Idk man, the entire second season gives me that feeling of embarrassment, I couldn't finish the show. The first season was alright, but honestly the second season is some of the cheesiest/worst storytelling/acting I've ever seen.

Interesting how this thread has people saying they love the acting and people saying they hate it. I can't say as I found the acting itself to be amazing outside of a few scenes, but I never found it cringe enough to not want to see more. It'd be cool to understand more about what triggers this differently for different folks.

A related thing I find difficult to watch is when characters are in impending danger too often. Breaking Bad, for instance, was a bit hard for me to get into because of the continual tension and risk of everything going sideways. I managed to watch it anyway and am glad of it, but definitely found Better Call Saul to be a more pleasurable watch.

It might be more of an issue with the story telling than the actors performance themselves. For instance the changes in Joe and Gordon's characters was confusing. Gordon goes from being shy nerd to reckless coke addict, like huh.. Joe kinda becomes a new age softy. The hacker house vibes were off, a bunch of 20-30 year old playing tag and having nerf gun wars.. okay, I guess. Its just very hard to suspend belief and get into the story. As someone else mentioned, it gives off Hackers vibes. It feels like the writers weren't really familiar early tech and were just going off what they thought it would be like.

I used to have big Nerf wars in an open plan office about a decade ago... it was real

We're in the minority, but I'm with you. It felt like in the first season, the tech and era took center stage to the point it was accurate enough to be an enjoyable element of the show. After that, they just wanted to rush and touch on different eras and the tech and eras were no longer the center stage. However, the stories were too cringey and couldn't carry it. And I'm just not a fan of Lee Pace. His deliver is one-dimensional.

You and others are both right: the first season is better in the "tech authenticity" dimension but worse as a script (literary dimension); with seasons 2+3 it's the other way round.

Had the exact same reaction to that exact scene. Just couldn't get past it. It wasn't as bad as when I tried to watch Big Bang Theory (which multiple people assured me that I'd love), but it was in that ballpark.

Cringe but persist. TV only has so much time to set stuff up. Think of those parts as a "tribute" to cheesy 80s movies.

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