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Comment by sph | Hacker News Reader

I don't get why it's so praised. Everybody says it's about the rise of computing, and all I got was a shoehorned romance story with computers in the background.

Just like all those sci-fi shows where the sci-fi is only a background to family drama.

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I lived that era and personally had many of the experiences of the characters over the decades, so as I watched, I compared the show to my own experiences.

So for me the love/romance aspect was just the network television layer I had to peer through, in order to find the marrow of the meal, so to speak.

That said, it did have a fast attack, a moderate decay, but then a fast release, in terms of 'interest envelope', for me personally. I enjoyed the good bits while they lasted, and tolerated the soap opera in case there were dregs, all the way to the end...

All good stories are about the characters. Genre-first gets old quick.

This is why a lot of my favorite shows/movie series are ones only a few episodes long, but which really give a good feel for the world they take place in.

Bladerunner and HBO's Chernobyl are two of my favorites that fit this.

Even companies that create computers are still run by people, and the relationships of those people are just as impactful as the business decisions.

I mean, for something you consider to be the background, it takes up a hell of a lot of the foreground.

And the romance was more character drama about people making extremely irresponsible choices.

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