#I do think how Lee acts in the start of s3 is a reflection of how Mo and to an extent seans deaths had affected him. we know that a lot of

[roger-paladino]

making that WF video was like. reminding me how much and how deeply Mo cared for Lee it hurts soo so so bad

[sweetsunrayssr]

Joe’s shrines and relics

Meta-analysis of Joe’s arc throughout the seasons of Halt and Catch Fire, as far as 4x06, and thus a warning for spoilers. Also, this is a long one, because Joe Macmillan is after all a complicated guy.

JOE’S START-UP SHRINE – THE BASEMENT

Where Gordon’s shrine was always an almost sacred location to him before meeting Joe and it became a shrine when the right person did an all nighter in his garage, Joe did not have a pre-determined location. Joe just feels he wants to work with someone when he meets that person. The person comes before the location. And he will seek them out anywhere, wherever they are. He wants to work with Gordon since he saw him at Comdex 81 and he wants to work with Cameron when meeting her at his lecture in Austin Tech. He seeks and needs people who have a conviction and dare to oppose him. After all, we know Joe – dog with a bone. Gordon and Cameron both do that, but in different ways. Gordon grounds him, Cameron inspires him. Gordon can say “Enough! What you want right now is not realistic at this point in time.” Cameron says, “What you want right now is not enough. We can do so much more.” So, he has chemistry with both of them, but only the chemistry he has with Cameron is inspirational and sexual. Because of the background story we have about Simon, it is not sex that inspires him, but rather inspiration that turns him on.

The basement setting as a shrine begins to be established for Joe within the first ten minutes of the series: he meets with Cameron in a bar to scout her professional potential, has a peek-a-boo argument with her, gets drunk and before long he has sex with her in the bar’s basement. Basement screams instinctual, primal, uncontrollable, and subconscious. The connection created and sought here by Joe and sought after in later seasons in this location comes forth from a primal subconscious need, often masked by rationalizations, rather than a deliberate conscious process.

Just to clarify how primal this first sexual encounter with Cameron was, I’ll remind you of the mating of cats: lunges, luring, cornering, mounting, and painful barbed finish for the female who lashes out and screams at the tomcat. That is pretty much how Lee Pace and Mackenzie Davis acted it to me. Later once hired, Cameron decides to work on the BIOS in the basement instead of her designated cleared out cleaning room. It is in this basement that she initiates and establishes a sexual incubating pattern: whenever Cameron is mentally and mathematically stuck on a problem, having sex with Joe gets her unstuck, lifts her mentally into having a higher overview. And they celebrate their anticipated success for Comdex 83 in the basement (before Bos gets arrested).

THE SOUL IN THE MACHINE

While Season 1 may establish the basement as a future shrine for Joe, he initially had no shrine at all. Instead he naturally holds on to relics: the bat his father gave him, the PROM chip Gordon and him reversed. This makes a lot of sense for a man who has uprooted himself and traveled Europe and the US. You can’t carry buildings from place to place, but you can carry the relics.

The GIANT is a relic he ends up burning, and is pretty much a product the series pushes as an analogy to Joe. The very first glimpse we have of him is machine like, in his car and road killing an armadillo. He starts out looking like an IBM clone salesman and both Cam and Bos refer to him as this, while his initial product idea is an IBM clone.

Then in 1x06 Landfall, Cam wants both the machine and Joe to have a soul. The IBM clone (Joe and the computer) are boring to her: an empty 1000$ suit and an empty box that may be fast and look sexy, but is not something she can interact with, not of flesh and blood, or fall in love with. Naming and speaking (truth) is a meta-dialogue element ever since that tends to be a callback to this episode. It’s what would make the Giant and Joe “unique” and a “visionary”. It’s the first time that Cameron pitches her own innovative vision and idea, and she does this using her own relic – the doll.

Note: a cinematic trick occurs in this scene. Joe lies reclined, while Cam stands. The camera uses a frog perspective from Joe to Cameron as he watches her pitch talk about the OS, mesmerized. The camera has a bird perspective from Cameron to Joe as she tries to convince him. However, when he tells her that he is sure of what he can sell without her OS at Comdex and how her OS promises him none of that, the camera angle shifts back to horizontal on both of them. It’s as if the room tilts behind them back to normal. It’s difficult to show this with stills with the camera on Joe as the background looks almost so similar, but if you ever re-watch 1x06 look out for it happening (At present I’m working on a 7 year old laptop that overheats when rendering movie clips). But I can show the sequence with stills as the camera is on Mackenzie. It implies that Cameron literally tilts the room for Joe when she speaks.

At Comdex, after Gordon removed Cameron’s OS and she leaves Joe, his sales pitch at the booth reflects the same transference between machine and characters. He spurns “unique”. It’s “not your friend, but your employee”. “If you want to chase rainbows and tilt the room? Walk outside.” Simon referred to Cameron as Miss Rainbow Bright and a tilting of the room is what the cameras did in the 1x06 scene.

The Comdex 83 episode finishes with Joe ending up in the Apple suite rattled and shocked that “it speaks” after it says “My name is Macintosh”, in almost direct analogy to the moment when Cam’s OS interacted with Joe.

The S1 finale starts out with Joe being blown away by the Superbowl Commercial by Apple in 1984, with the model who looks so much like Cameron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I

Joe realizes that Cameron is the muse he needs and he’s willing to follow her wherever she wants to go. Except his muse rejects him as soulless, an echo who recites her own ideas back to her. Worse, she figuratively shoves him of a metaphorical stargazing roof to land on a fence, condemning him to healing from her damning words for close to two more years.

When he then stares at the finished Giant, Joe can only see it as the empty machine that Cameron condemned it to be. And then Gordon gives Joe credit: “The Cardiff Giant is an incarnation of everything you are. Shows the reach and power of your vision and the very best of your abilities as a leader.”  While Gordon means this as a compliment, Joe despises the Giant and so when he burns the shipment, he’s actually trying to destroy the idea of him as an empty machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIf_7rtGNrQ

Joe verifies this subconscious intent of the immolation scene in 2x01 when he tells Sarah’s friends that initially he believed he was not content with the end product, but in truth loathed himself.

So, aside from a basement as a shrine to reconnect with Cameron, a giant machine making noise becomes the subconscious relic of Cameron’s voice. She is like a ghost in the machine. And this all sets the stage for us to understand that Joe subconsciously thinks of Cameron in S2 and S3 when he’s in a basement and makes choices to have her back in his life somehow, even when he believes otherwise.  

SEASON 2 – SURROGATE SARAH

As I mentioned with Gordon’s Garage shrine, season 2 is overall the surrogate season – most characters seek to replace a specific bond with someone else. Sarah is the surrogate lover for Joe to soothe the rejection by Cameron at the end of S1. Almost from the very beginning that Sarah is introduced to us, she’s jarringly supportive, and while certainly Joe believes himself in love and sincere, a part of it is just plain awkward. “10 miles!” “I can tell”. “I was Andy Kaufman.” “Oh, I was big bird. I guess that makes us quite the couple.” CRINGE!

Compare that to S4 Joe on the telephone with Cameron, or in the trailer in 4x06 where he feels free to allow for a bit of sarcasm and smugness combined with overflowing sweetness, with Haley or when his friends of Comet are at his house to watch the skating Olympics. S2 Joe with Sarah may be a better Joe, but it is less authentic than he believes at the time.

Before Donna gets to say it, you already think, “What’s he doing with her?” Gordon predicted correctly that Joe’s fiancé would be more of a Joan Baez type: not as aggressive as Cameron. Sarah asks him during his proposal whether the reason he loves her is because she’s the first person to forgive him. And yes, that pretty much sums it up basically, even if Joe cannot admit that to himself even. Sarah says the things he truly wants Cameron to believe of him: he’s not an echo, he has a soul, and can love, not a bad guy, he’s redeemable, etc.

We are given a few pointers in dialogue though that Joe likely sought her out at the observatory, because he remembers her as “challenging”:

They knew each other from college, from a rhetoric course, and she used to win those rhetorics.

Joe himself tells her father he loves her because she’s skeptical

Joe says that in their college days he couldn’t keep up with her

Even if we as viewers don’t see it at the time, Joe has an image of her as a woman who can stand up to him. Which makes sense: if he does not believe that of Sarah, then her support and forgiveness would be without value. She has to have some strength of personality to be Cameron’s surrogate. And while she may lack Cameron’s fierceness, she proves to be quite assertive without ever looking back, once she has all the evidence that she is not a second chance, but a second choice. Anyway, that her forgiveness is not enough is already hinted at with Joe playing Tank Battle against Cameron as an anonymous user, while Sarah sleeps, the night he asked Sarah to marry him.

MAINFRAME IN THE BASEMENT

Joe starts working at Westgroup as a grunt in data-entry in the basement with outdated equipment and colleagues that are even more passive and bored-out than Gordon was in S1. They have however a brand new giant mainframe. And when he has enough of his non-innovative surroundings, Joe seeks his solace with the mainframe, buzzing and whirring around him at the start of 2x03. It’s the only machine that’s alive, more alive than his colleagues. He leans against it, almost as if he needs to feel its humming vibe.

It could be said that in his subconscious, he’s seeking Cameron’s ghost in the machine. Certainly storywise, the mainframe heralds Joe moving into Cameron’s personal life. But I’d go further and say that in that setting Cameron is ever present in his subconscious mind. When he arrives at work the next day after his dinner with Gordon and Donna, that ended with them saying goodbye because something was up at Mutiny, he calls for a meeting in the mainframe room and is present as the machine wakes up. When he cryptically says “The way in,” he might consciously mean tech via time-sharing, but Joe simply wouldn’t have gotten that particular idea without its subtextual ties to Cameron, who’s running an online company. He is so not surprised when Gordon demands Mutiny to be Joe’s pilot project for a discount. Nor does he even protest against it. And he uses his typical S1 posturing, which is but a mask: indifference, annoying Gordon.

Once Cameron’s Mutiny is connected to his mainframe, it’s no coincidence at all that Joe’s sex life with Sarah turns hot. It is all the more suspicious, since later, after he’s actually married, Sarah remarks down at the Westgroup basement, “This place really turns you on.” “You have no idea,” he says cryptically, the exact same thing he says to Cam when she’s about to give him her Kali kiss. Who’s actually on his mind is already made clear in the club when under the influence of XTC he says to Sarah, “I’m not an echo!”

KALI AND SAINT SARAH

Joe’s intentions are sincere (like the wine), but not until 2x07 does he become honest with himself. But before that, once his benevolent act for Mutiny gets into the open and possibly heads for disaster, the more he postures and begins to manipulate like S1 Joe, fully willing to exorcise Mutiny, and thus Cameron’s ghost, of the mainframe.

And yes, he does grow to care sincerely for Sarah, after he witnesses Jacob Wheeler lecturing her in 2x07. That is the pivotal moment where he can begin to let go of Cameron and talk of her as his past ideal partner, as well as praise and defend Cameron’s work and vision, even if it would cost him. That’s when he starts to do the right thing for the right reasons - because he truly believes it is the right thing, instead of proving to either Cameron or Sarah that he’s a decent human being. That the healing scene between Cameron and Joe occurs in a hospital is symbolically apt. Note also that this is one of the many scenes including a reflection. Between Cameron and Joe the reflection scenes usually occur during true and tender confessions, as well as a moment that will karmically return to them in some form. The reflection in this scene also suggests the unspoken truth that a part of him will always love her or remain with her.

In that sense his goodbye to Westgroup’s basement with Sarah is his sexual goodbye to Cameron and the basement shrine. If Westnet hadn’t occurred, messing with his effort to leave Cameron in peace and with a sincere impression of him, if Cameron hadn’t exorcised Westgroup and Joe with Sonaris, he would have likely moved on and eventually have grown to love Sarah more than he still loved Cameron. Love can grow to be true via many paths.

But Westnet did happen, and Cameron did kiss him and made him desire her in Westgroup’s basement, even if he stopped it. While Cam’s intent was to exorcise him from her life with her own goodbye kiss, she simultaneously reclaimed the basement to haunt him.

The whole Sonaris trap she sets would be called creating a karmic bond in esoteric circles. Since the episode 2x09 is called Kali, a Hindu goddess, we do have references to the religion where karmic thinking is a cornerstone. That Cameron enacts the destructions of demons as Kali is depicted by her lying in the garden like a force of nature. And how she herself is bound to Joe because of this and not actually free from karma is reflected by Tom leaving her at the end of the episode. Her plan backfires in her personal life.

Incidental or not, I would also like to remark on a version of Kali that was brought into Europe during the Middle Ages by the Romani: Saint Sarah, or otherwise known as Sarah-la-Kali (Sarah the Black). And the character Sarah in Halt and Catch Fire is almost saintly patient, but whatever wounds she healed with Joe after S1, she tears right open again in the same episode called Kali. She finishes the destruction that Cameron unleashes. This would fit the surrogate role.

SHIVA ON HIS MOUNTAIN TOP

If Cameron is Kali to Joe, then he himself could be said to be analogues to Shiva (Kali’s consort). This is a paradoxical Hindu deity who is known as destroyer as well as a pacific benefactor, who can be cruel and wild but also kind and tranquil. His second paradox is that he is both an ascetic yogi/guru sitting self-absorbed on a mountain and family man with children (which in Hindu culture tends to be mutually exclusive, except for Shiva). His third paradox is that Shiva is half-male and half-female spiritually. Bi-sexual, so to speak.

There are various iconographic depictions of Shiva: dances to destroy, lying reclined while Kali stands to give him energy to create, and as a meditating yogi far removed from the world high on a mountaintop, or with his wife Parvati and two children (Parvati = Kali, but the benevolent avatar). One of his attributes are ashes, representing burning things to the ground in order to set the soul free for evolution.

Ok, that all sounds very cool, and I amassed the above information when I checked out Kali who’s Shiva’s shakti or muse. And yes, that all sounds pretty much like Joe, but is that a coincidence or is there Shiva imagery worked into the series. Well, we do have the Yogi image for Joe in S3.

Joe is introduced to us as a Tech guru like Steve Jobs, in a top office floor of a skyscraper overlooking SF Bay (as does his apartment). We have several references and images that not only put Joe like Shiva high in the sky, but in an Asian context, often with mountain imagery in the background or drawn behind him.

So, did the writers and directors include Shiva imagery for Joe in S3? I’d say absolutely. What does all of this have to do with basements and mainframes? Just like Gordon stays away from the garage in S3 as he refuses to work together with Joe, Joe seeks to be as far away from the basement shrine for over half of S3, because he wants to be away from Cam and her influence. But not just her. The world and their chatter in general. Another Shiva-Yogi aspect is that Shiva isolates himself from the world on his mountain top. Joe is not just featured in top floors surrounded by Asian décor and mountain imagery. He walks around with headphones too, to avoid hearing other people talk. Joe does the same thing what Cam did in S1 with her music, except not in some hole in the ground, but at the top of the mountain.

Sure, he throws parties and has numerous flings, but he wouldn’t call these people friends. One of the first flings we see is Donna’s predicted model with long blonde hair, shoulderpads and Daryl Hannah cheekbones. And in that atmosphere he remains aloof, distant and unaffected, but benevolent, wishing well on people, and giving it away for free. Joe’s flight to the top of the mountain and anti-virus product also symbolize Joe’s self-protection reflex. He only trusts himself and it’s dangerous to be around someone with whom he can be himself. So, he surrounds himself with people he doesn’t feel anything for. He does not want to feel.

Ryan Ray who works at Mutiny manages to get Joe’s attention, enough to be hired, on the condition that Ryan forgets all about the people he worked with at Mutiny. Joe knows he wants to do something new and innovative, but he doesn’t know what. He’s seeking for a rebel and muse, but one he is not sexually attracted to. When he hires Ryan, he hopes he might be a sterile Cam for him basically (a Cam surrogate, just not as personal). But Ryan doesn’t rebel against pricing the 2.0 user version and doesn’t take initiative to work on something the way Cameron would have. So, when Joe comes down of his mountain top to be a student at BASIC programming, he believes Ryan is a kind person, but nothing special.

The first scene where Joe does get of his mountain top, as a student, he hears Cameron talk. He’s stopped right in his tracks and thus for the first time affected. He first decides to avoid her, but eventually waits for her and faces her. He does his zen-master act, thanking her, trying to make some sort of peace, be benevolent to her, even willing to give her Ryan back.

Except, she laughs in his face and tells him that his zen-master act may work on other people, but not on her and she doesn’t believe it. She proves to be right, for he cannot be aloof around her, can’t let her walk away from him without giving a retort and ends up being pissed at her. The face he makes as she strolls of, certainly is not that of a zen-master at all.

She also informed him that Ryan is special and one of the best coders in the bay area. And his meeting with Cameron, away from the mountain, is the spark that makes him decide to have Ryan Ray work with him in his apartment, while he tries to regain his zen state. Which results in a brainstorm session where Ryan mentions Mutiny, and Joe instantly tells him to shut up.

The cinematic shot that follows is Joe requiring silence now, with a hilltop in the background beside his head. And when he shushes Ryan and closes his eyes in a type of meditation, Joe visually becomes one with the mountain top.

At least Ryan shares Cam’s annoying quality of being noisy and not shutting up, and he can’t truly regain his zen state anymore. He still looks and acts the part at the party where he meets Bos and Diane, but his little evilness rears its head and pokes Diane about Cameron (and thus in Cam’s business). Next that same destructive anger makes him blow up the peace attempt with the gay-hating father who decides on state contracts, and then he learns one of his flings is seropositive and he might have contracted HIV himself. Shiva-Joe is about to fall from his mountain.

The idea of the regional network is one of Joe’s true visionary ideas that he arrives at after months of labor, by himself. Ryan did the research on what is present now: ARPANET and NSFNET, and echoes Joe’s words. Cam did not directly inspire him to have that vision and idea. But she did put a crack in his ascetism, enough for him to bring in Cam-like noise and mess (when Ryan arrives at Joe’s apartment after his ex-fling left), and inevitably make him act and react, as well as reconnect with life (invite Ryan to dinner), and break down the forts and citadels (the destruction aspect and legends of Shiva). If he destroyed the GIANT out of self-loathing in S1, Joe intends to destroy the forts from an enlightened idea in S3 instead.

The very next scene, we see Joe again is … yup, in the basement. It’s empty and silent, a blank slate: right now it’s perfect. The enlightenment behind it is visually supported by the light editing. We first get a burst of light, and in that light, slowly the image of Joe and Ryan in Macmillan Utility’s basement forms and sharpens.

This is a rebirth or reincarnation scene. And when Ryan asks whether the room is perfect, Joe clarifies “the idea” is perfect, but the camera singles out Joe. We are looking at a “perfect Joe”, able to connect with the past as he mentions Mitch from his IBM days without any ill feelings, truly at peace with Cameron and himself. He can be in a basement and feel connected to her without anger and desire (there’s no mainframe), and just let her be. He even understands that life won’t be perfect and there will be disappointments ahead of him.

So, we get an image of Yogi-Shiva/Joe not on a mountain, but in the basement, metaphorically reconnecting with the world and his past as the basements is being wired (he actually helps with the wiring) and a mainframe is installed. Simultaneously he accepts the concept and value of an “echo”. Even though Ryan echoed him, with his help, Joe managed to achieve the idea. And Joe further promotes Ryan to be a mini-Joe as a sharp dresser.

NOT HIS MAINFRAME NOR HIS CAMERON

What Joe does not yet know is that there are no rewards for becoming enlightened. Life does not become less painful or less of a struggle. This is perhaps the most beautiful and painful raw aspect of this TV series for Joe’s arc: how true to life it is that most of the time there are no rewards, even if you deserve it, even if you do the right thing, are right about what will happen. And the latter half of S3 exemplify it.

As the idea of the regional network is about to become reality, and still perfect, he arrives back home to find Cameron waiting in his hallway, at his door, in the middle of the night. Kali comes to visit Shiva on his mountain. It’s the perfect materialization of the memory of Cameron coming to his apartment. Of course a part of him hoped she used Gordon as an excuse to come to him in the middle of the night and the inevitable would happen.

But then he looks down and sees the wedding ring on her finger. A part of him just can’t believe it. Whoever her husband is, he could never be someone lasting, just the nearest person you project happiness on. Much earlier in the season, in the brainstorm scene with Ryan, Ryan protests against him wiping the whiteboard clean of a clutter of ideas. Not only does Joe say that “good is the enemy of great”. He also says that if “anything is worth pursuing we’ll remember it tomorrow.” And both these guidelines most likely reflect his feelings about Sarah versus Cameron. Sarah faded away, but Cameron never will.

And yet, he has to let go of Cameron to be someone else’s as well as surrender the mainframe, the basement and the creation of the regional network completely to Gordon. Both during her visit to his mountain, his visit to her home to ask her to help find Ryan and the first scenes at Comdex 90, each time Joe is reminded that he will never get over Cameron. Every meeting he’s confronted with his desire for her, the realization that Tom’s the lucky one and the accompanying pain at the reminder of what he lost when he chose selling a computer that nobody remembers. It doesn’t matter whether there are three years, seven years or ten years between then and back.

Comdex 90 events develop in 3 stages:

First they talk like friends, walking around Comdex 90 and he learns she has gone through some cycles of her own life experience and identity, which he can fully recognize. He reflects it’s amazing how much changes in just a few years, but also how much stays the same. As she rattles away about what is worth seeing at Comdex90, unaware she’s making typical facial expressions, he watches her mesmerized: much of the original Cam is still the same, so are his feelings for her. It hurts and overwhelms (he cryptically admits it in phase 2 when she asks him whether something “caught his eye on the floor”). And yet it was fulfilling to just spend that relaxed time with her – a stolen moment. Joe prepares to say goodbye: “Oh God, it was great to see you and..euhm… this was a lot of fun.” But Cameron grabs his arm and Joe can’t resist that temptation. Basically this whole scene is the moment of regret over the past as well as recognizing what he loved about her in the past, and he’s grateful of every moment he steals in being around her in the present.

In the second scene and phase (the NIM game) it is not just so much the confrontation with memories of the past and seeing the past in the present, but the gob smacking realization that he still wants to pursue her and that this was the true reason why he’s there at all – to find out whether he still has a chance at a future with her. “This is not about Ryan”. Joe realizes this as Cam puts the past in perspective, absolves him of blame, and then tells him that he’s a creator of change, for his great strength is bringing the right people together (Shiva again). In that moment she heals every wound she has hacked into him in the past in retaliation of all his mistakes and her own hurts. Again she invites him to stay, and it sort of becomes a date to him, and he’ll do whatever she wants to do.

The third scene at the Atari party we see them dance together for the first time (they didn’t dance together at Comdex 83): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMobSQ68lk0 Here too we can possibly see a connection to Shiva and Kali-Parvati. Shiva is the Lord of the Dance and dances various dances (tandava) depending on his mood and intent, some destroy, one is joyous. Kali is just an aspect of Parvati, where Parvati becomes fierce and enraged to force change and time. Parvati is the loving, benign form. And her dance Lasya is a happy, graceful one, tempering Shiva’s dance. When Joe goes to get refills, we see Cam still dancing in joy, exclaiming to friendly people she loves them (more Parvati dancing Lasya), but then Donna shows up. Cam’s dance stops and she storms off in wrath (becoming Kali like again), taking Joe with her, who calms her.

Note: The dancing Shiva even has a tie to CERN, the nuclear research center in Geneva, from which Joe got the hypertext manuals in the S3 finale. CERN has a statue of the dancing Shiva, gifted to the research center by India in 2004, for their particle research describes the “cosmic dance” of creation and destruction.

No, they don’t go to the basement, but to the roof of the hotel (top of the mountain). After winning NIM with lighters, the honest admission that he is at Comdex, and her becoming honest to herself about her feelings for him (even if she does not verbally confirms it to him) they end up sharing a night of love and passion on the mountain. And yes, we have hilltops behind them at the roof, with yin-yang color play. From a time-thief he becomes a wife-thief.

In rolls the finale with a project they would all be excited about (except for Tom), where he can’t help but put doubts in Tom’s mind and uses CERN’s hypertext as information to win Cam over and destroy Tom (the Shiva dance remember). It eventually leads to a fight and Joe falling through the floor onto the mainframe in the basement, her actual mainframe, her basement. While a part of me cheered for him making that sardonic dig at Tom about wives not having a vote, the dick measuring also sows the seeds of Cam having to work on the project remotely. On the other hand, he championed her right to choose and deflected Tom’s attention from ordering Cam around like some lord of the middle ages. He seems willing to sacrifice his image and make himself look like the bad guy to deflect any suspicion Tom may have about Cam. In response, Cam champions Joe to Donna.

S3 finale and 4x02 suggest how much Joe has come to terms with Cam’s Kali aspects, both empathically as well as predict when it will rear up, and how he manages to channel and temper it. The moment he sees that Donna showed up at Comdex90, he knows that was the wrong move. His information and night with Cam soften her enough to hear Donna out. Joe is suspicious of the reasons that Cam chose to hold the meeting at the prior Mutiny building once Donna reveals this. Donna couldn’t imagine why, but he freezes and his eyes and face say, “Oh, you’re in trouble Donna. Cam’s going to go Kali on you.” He understands that Cam is conflicted over the www project, unsure of his commitment to her and distrustful of Donna. He tempers Cam again, telling her that Donna is trying while also pleading with her whther there is a chance for them. How much Joe understands and can channel the Kali aspect of Cam is featured again in the telephone convo of S4 when he wrote the press release statement. In sympathy he included the skull reference about Gavin Green (and yes Kali’s attributes are skulls), but he also cheers when she says it’s what she should send, but minus the last bit about skulls. He’s proud she has learned to temper her Kali nature.

Meanwhile Cameron admits in 4x05 that Joe won her heart over the course of events of the last two S3 episodes. It’s nearly Christmas 1990 when they have the www meeting, and she has told Tom in Japan shortly after New Year, in the hope that Tom would leave her.

POST-IT BASEMENT SHRINE

While Joe championed and won Cam’s heart, while he gets to work in her basement that houses her mainframe, and she wants to work on the project, it doesn’t work out for Joe as he hoped. How does that work with that mainframe? Well the mainframe is not operative anymore. It is as silent as Cam increasingly grows over the distance. Without her actually being in the basement, Joe has to wait and wait and wait, and grows bitter. They may have reconnected, but nothing beyond that: they don’t work together, they don’t live together, they don’t sleep together.

One of the sexual connotations in the S4 opener is the mention of 69 downloads, as 69 is a famous mutual satisfying (and sort of yin-yang) sexual position. Add the fact that this number is also mentioned in combination with the key-word “stuck” as in “stuck at 69 downloads” and later “screwing around with post-it notes”. Working with Cameron is merely the route he hopes to use in order have a non-platonic relationship with her. And the post-its imo represent both his “post-sexual frustration” as well as constantly reminding himself that he is right (and she is wrong). As the mainframe and basement gets filled with post-its and Gordon asks Joe to move upstairs, he adamantly refuses to do so, refusing to accept that the browser project and a possibility of a future with Cameron is dead. It is a competition with AOL that makes him take the first step to let go, just as Cameron shows up.

They don’t meet in the basement, but at Gordon’s party, on top of the hill (a small one) overlooking the celebrations. These are mirror circumstances of Comdex 90, except he’s mad at her and the silence grows uncomfortable. Joe leaves and Cam ends up on the couch. Obviously, Gordon’s couch was not where she hoped to end up that night. Along with Hole’s song Doll Parts we get more of the vibe that Cam feels punished by Joe. Not that it was realistic of Cam to hope that Joe would welcome her with open arms, but then again, he sought her out after 7 years before, all smiles, loyalty and support at Comdex 90, knowing she was married. (Sidenote: we see Cam wake up on Gordon’s floor the next morning. In other words, she refused to accept the couch punishment.)

The second meeting takes place in the basement he turned into a post-it note shrine. He only discovers her there as he comes down. As an image, she appears like a materialization of the mainframe and post-its, handing him the finished browser Loadstar, the project he believes was the sole excuse to maintain the connection. As much as he resents her for leaving him hanging alone for three years, he’s also sad (masked as anger) that this means the last tie to her will be severed. She’s about to walk out of his life for good in his mind. Since there won’t be any sex, the next best thing is arguing with her. Even if she offers and asks him what she could do for him, he tells her “nothing. It’s over.” Then she does her inspiration thing, as she moves up the stairs: he’s going to run out of post-its soon. Just 5 minutes and a small remark of identifying the future issue is now enough for Joe to have a new idea of his own.

POST-BASEMENT SHRINE: FAMILY AND HOME

I do not expect to see them in actual basement anymore in S4, not unless they have a completely falling out. But even in that sense they both have outgrown the basement as has their relationship. As a shrine it was never an end-goal for Joe anyway, only the reconnect and restart location. We only saw it having such a crucial role for Joe throughout the seasons, because they were not part of each other’s lives since the end of Comdex 83. Their reconnecting night at Comdex 90 was not a life, just “a night”.

Seeing her leave, possibly for good (in his mind), Joe reconnects with Cameron over the phone. I want to point out the visual we see through the window of Cam’s hotel room: a mountain. The mountain has become a fundamental part of Cam’s personal shrine to reconnect with Joe. A mountain, hotel room and party is the complete shrine for Cameron in relation to Joe. The obvious reason is that a party and hotel room are reminders of how she wished Comdex 83 would have ended, instead of how it truly ended. And the mountain is where she is most likely to meet the most benevolent aspect of Joe. This is an idealization in part – as we see her fall asleep to his forgiving voice, her hand lovingly cupping the speaker and off she drops into dreamland.

From midway S3 (3x06) until early S4 (4x02) we have 4 mountain meetings: twice Cam seeks Joe on the mountain, twice Joe seeks Cam on the mountain. And it only successfully rekindles a love affair when Joe “comes to see her”. That is what Joe ends up doing when Cam mentions the moon, which he cannot see because the hill/mountain blocks his view (aka he’s not on the mountain at his SF home).

Check out both the background of the Pilgrim avatar on Joe’s screen and the painting in the background of the hotel room hallway: the Pilgrim is looking towards a mountain, evoking the “if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the mountain.” And as Joe walks into Cam’s hotel room through the “doorway”, we get to see the painting that hangs at the end of the hallway: a pathway to a mountain, and left of the mountain hangs a light that emanates a completely different light than the other warm yellow hallway lights. It’s blue-white light like the moon. (Moon sickles are attributes of both Shiva and Parvati/Kali)

In 4x05 Donna solves the key clue to Cameron’s game Pilgrim (see previous meta), but the location where the Pilgrim is to climb the flames in the air to get to the higher level is on a hilltop.

Cameron’s moon mention also relates to the content of something that Joe referenced in S2. We learned then that he wrote a letter to Gordon and Cameron. Only Gordon confirmed he read it, and Gordon name drops Shangri-La, a pop culture reference of an untopia in Tibet, where someone could live a prolonged, simple life. Joe asked her whether she received his letter and read it, but she refrains from answering, and Sarah introduces herself. The pop-culture reference goes back to a book “the Lost Horizon” from 1933: a story within a frame-story. And in that book a mountain of 28000 foot towers over Shangri-La. It’s called Karakal, which translates to “blue moon”.

Later, Cameron transforms her mountain shrine into the airstream, a material, grounded love nest that is still cosmic and enlightened, with which she repeats the cycle of Joe “coming to see her”.

Back to Joe’s shrine. As I said the basement is the reboot shrine, and while he has no end-shrine with Gordon, Joe actually has a goal-shrine with Cameron: a family and home. We get the hint for that way back in the S1 storm episode Landfall. Joe plays relaxed with Joanie and Haley and does his memorable storm-destroyer performance with two torches. He’s happy and smiling as Joanie and Haley dry him off afterwards. Then Gordon enters haggardly having survived the storm. Donna races towards him with love and care and worry. Gordon’s two daughters run to their father to cling at his legs. Gordon wants to talk with Joe and eat something, but Joe acts as if he feels an intruder on this happy family reunion scene and departs quickly, but not before seeing a picture of perfect family life: husband and wife and children all together, holding each other, smiling and waving.

As he walks to his car he looks back at Gordon’s house, stares at his own reflection in the car windows (self confrontation) and then drives off to Cameron’s house, asking her if she has anybody she would call if she was caught in a storm. That is the full clue from the very first season that deep down Joe wants to have a family with Cameron, the same episode where Cameron tilts the room for Joe and she talks about falling in love and making him fall in love.

That Joe was not against having children we already know in S2 when he talks of the children he expects and assumes he’ll have with surrogate-Sarah, in response to Jacob Wheeler’s invitation to be the key-note speaker for Westnet. And in the finale of 3x10 we know how much he idealized the picture of the Clark family as he expresses disbelief that Donna and Gordon got divorced, even long after the fact: “That the two of you…”

If we see a mountain through Cam’s hotel room window, we see nothing but cozy, warm homes behind which Joe can imagine perfect idealized family scenes behind the walls. He glances outside of his window for a moment when he asks her whether she’s divorced. He turns his chair and takes in the view of those warm cozy homes from the outside when he asks her whether she’s gonna stay in California. When he mimics and retells the book story of the boy holding the dead pigeon that restores the boy’s faith, Joe himself holds his hands as if he’s holding a baby. In the same shot we see a Buddha or Shiva Yogi and beside it stands the picture of his father and himself (father and son), and thus family.

And of course he mentions his general desire to have a family to her over the phone and inquires whether she wants children. So, this is the shrine he wants to build with Cameron.

How much he wants that really becomes poignant in 4x05 and 4x06: with him wanting her to move in indefinitely in 4x05, the pain flashing over his face when Gordon tells him thoughtlessly he’ll never be a father, and his confession to Bos how having children is a no-go zone with Cameron.

4x06 even visually does a callback to the S1 episode where Joe asks her whether she has anyone to call in a hurricane. Cam wears the same tank top in both episodes. She wears it in 1x06 as she opens the door for him and he stares at it for a moment. In 4x06 she wears it while doing the dishes and Joe watches the rocket video on the cam-corder, remarking that one day Haley is four and building forts and telling jokes at 14 the next.

Cam may have said, “Kids are great! If you could birth to a 14-year old,” but she had a loving smile while stealing a glance at Joe. So, Bos might be right after all, when he tells Joe she might surprise hm. Her being relieved she had no children with Tom (a husband she wanted deep down to leave her) and how much she claims the above for possible fear of Mother Nature deciding her fate makes unclear where she truly stands on a family with Joe. There are plenty of women who love their child, though they’re not fans of other people’s babies or toddlers. There are women who love someone else’s children, but don’t want them themselves. There are women who adore babies but mother nature gets in the way. Kali/Parvati notoriously was not an obvious mother figure, until she actually held her own baby, which was conceived with great difficulty.

SELF-SABOTAGE

The point for Joe in season 4 imo is that now that he has an actual exclusive relationship with Cameron and tries to build his shrine of family and home, the real thing won’t be like the ideal in his head. The pitfall here is that this home building is less about the process but the goal for him. He knows he just can’t get from basement to family picture, but what comes in between that delays and diverts from that family picture is not something he can fully enjoy.

The emails that Cam hasn’t checked give us a good timeline impression. The oldest email is from Tom about a package from Tokyo (that got hit by a truck) and was sent by the end of October. Her benefactor “Alexa” contacts her halfway November about having seen her at the convention MISCELANNEOUS. Joanie and Haley were going to school in the first episodes already, and thus the telephone conversation between Cameron and Joe in 4x02 occurred sometime in September. The last email of Tom where he informs her he’s going on a business trip to SF is from Sunday March 20th, and he visited Cameron on a Friday. Hence 4x05 was the 25th of March. The snug love time in the airstream would have been the weekend (26th and 27th). So, it’s early April in 4x06. Cameron and Joe are a couple for a whopping 6-7 months. The divorce papers have been signed for less than a fortnight. And they’re both complicated people. But Joe wants Cameron to move in 24/7 with him before she even told him she loves him for the first time ever in a decade, and if it were up to him they’d be making babies right now.

Joe’s approaching their relationship like a product manager, putting the relationship on a time schedule where he considers Cameron as a bottleneck in writing the BIOS to make it on time for Comdex, or like Donna pushing for an IPO with what they have instead of ensuring a solid foundation. A lot of Joe’s pain stems from this self-imposed approach. How much of his frustration would be resolved if he saw the relationship with the love of his life as a lifetime process instead?  

Joe should take his time and enjoy the process now, rather than speed ahead to the future in his mind, for he’s inexperienced with Cameron’s tendencies to retreat at various moments, how she can be awkward with intimacy, nor is she a talented communicator. If Donna and Bos would witness Cam taking Joe along when she buys the airstream, the conversation she has on the hotbed in the airstream, her informing him verbally or by note where she’s going, they would both think Cameron improved immensely. Unfortunately for himself, Joe does not have a reference for much of that S3 behavior, which the people she loves the most tend to take personal to then end up making mistakes.

So far, luckily, Joe halted in time to redirect his goal building:

he bought the wok after the fight in 4x05 and reflected he should enjoy his time with her, and was rewarded with the truth in a (space) truck.

he let go of his initial dislike of her weird looking cheese egg and the airstream he can’t stand up in. He doesn’t need to stand up to make love in a hotbed, right?

And when she left for her magical land once more, Joe visited Bos and connected with him in a way he likely never did before (except that time when Bos shoved his fist in that asshole boring grey box designer in the strip club), got positive feedback by Bos on his relationship with Cameron and what the future may have in store for him.

But can he maintain perspective or will his tendency to obsess wreck it all? Can he identify the true danger and enemy to his relationship or will he end up making enemies of potential allies who could help him understand Cameron better?

SURPRISE

4x06 have a humongous amount of conception metaphors:

the “cheesy” egg, incubated in a microwave

firing rockets

a rocket making “landfall”, the title of 1x06

a thematic cosmic airstream = rocking the universe, for a couple that have so many references to a cosmic creation couple as Shiva and Parvati/Kali

love making in a “hotbed” or “love nest” (more incubation) and cosmic airstream = rocking the universe

Joe and Cam unwittingly may already have conceived by the end of 4x06. I use the word incubator, because it helps brood and hatch eggs. The season has given us a lot of egg and bird references, including Joe holding an imaginary pigeon like a baby. Psychologically "incubator” means subconsciously thinking of a problem while doing another activity (S1 “I’m stuck”, S4 “I want babies, but let’s have fun shooting rockets”). It’s one of the first strategy games with full 3D graphics published in ‘97, using Kali software developed in ’95. And in a ritualistic sense it is a practice of sleeping in a sacred area in order to experience a miraculous and divine cure, and oracle dreams, which is what Cameron may require if she has fertility issues. And apparently, Cameron doesn’t dream in code anymore. And Cameron also answered Joe that “computers” may one day know what he wants, before he does. She is the true visionary ahead of everyone else after all, no?

Every visitor at the airstream so far got what they materially and emotionally wanted and needed from Cameron:

Bos got the algorithm and Cameron’s daughter-like empathy

Tom got signed divorce papers, a congratulations on becoming a father, and a sincere apology for how she wronged him

Haley, Gordon and Katie got to bond with each other

Donna got a signed release on paper for free and a sincere inquiry after her well being, a gesture that Cameron holds no ill feelings anymore and would welcome a friendship.

So, why not Joe? If true, then Joe is on his way to be a daddy around New Year. The irony is that he may be torturing himself in 4x06 and coming episodes over this for nothing, just like he tortured himself with fear over losing Cameron in 4x04 and 4x05, only to learn that she wanted Tom to leave her four years ago already, because she loved and loves Joe.

Cam may be in ecstasy over the modem sound connecting via the satellite, but in the background we can see Joe’s rocket he fired during Haley’s birthday (oooh, that does sound very cheesy in metaphorical doublespeak). Cam seems to have kept it as a relic somesorts. Oh, and it’s reflected in the window, implying that “Joe’s rocket” (yayayayaya) will have a reflective comeback moment in the story. Without the modem sound, that satisfied, secret smile of hers looks like a woman who just got her wanted pregnancy confirmed, except of course Cameron doesn’t yet actually know. Or maybe she does?

Last note: Joe’s rocket is like a flame (orange and yellow). Some observed (as did I) that Cam’s rocket was black and the sole one not flying. But black is Kali’s color, and for this miracle to work she has to “receive” rather than “fire”.