Geeks, Yuppies and Jobs

Noel 2022-01-28 08:29:02

Dramas that are full of trendy trends are always my favorite. The 1980s is another era that I particularly like, but because there are not as many huge events to attract attention like the 70s, the frequency of appearing in film and television works is too infrequent. So I was very pleasantly surprised to see such a drama, which cast my favorite actors, and described the style of this era, which is old and new. This also determines that my evaluation of this drama may not be the most objective.

Old habit, sub-character evaluation.

Joe is always
the label in my head: Not able to tell the truth at any time, not able to speak something straight forward. Not able to commit to a relationship, a place, or most things that are claimed to be valuable. I think until the end of this season, Joe's heart is still in a frenzy, always after something, but he doesn't even know what he's looking for. He should just tell himself: "I want this now".
Joe McMillan's prototype can be said to come from many people, IT leaders in the 1980s, almost all contributed some elements to Joe's image. He's ambitious, ambitious to "change the world," confident to the brink of fanaticism, and at the same time a typical doer: unlike a researcher who pursues an idea and pursues it tirelessly, when Joe catches an idea—usually the An immature idea - he will immediately find a way to form a group to fight monsters and gain experience to collect money and put it into practice until the idea is brought into reality. This kind of person is usually like water and fire with the down-to-earth science and technology workers (General G and General J in the play), but it is precisely because of the existence of such people that we have a lot of fresh progress in our lives . Scientists and technicians will continue to experiment and explore for the ideas in their minds, but they can't help but ignore the real needs (as a person engaged in biological research, I must honestly admit this is a fact). The representative of such people in the play is Cameron, who is Mr. G. C said that the PC Joe was going to make was "an old, old-fashioned, microwave-like cliché," which is exactly what a genius creative would say to a marketing boss. When the "second phase of scientific research" is over, people will realize that applied technology and pure scientific research innovation each have their own significance. The comparison between the former and the latter may seem childish, but if there is no person like Joe who applies the newly developed technology little by little and pushes it to the public, how can the public benefit from the advancement of technology? This also explains why most people today refer to smartphones and remember Jobs' name. When I wrote this, I couldn't help but be wordy, because it really reminded me of the teacher's evaluation of another great leader in the school, very similar to what Donna said about Joe (laughs). ). In any case, they are the core, the spiritual guide, and the trendsetter in the key link of cutting-edge technology to the public.
However, such a character can never be a glorious image of all aspects. They are speculators, and they are the most successful group of speculators. They must have the ruthlessness of hungry wolves and the shrewdness of gamblers. When necessary, they are simply the law of life, and when it is necessary, It's all up to him. In the fourth episode, Joe concocted a "storage crisis" in order to gain news coverage. According to Donna, it almost destroyed Cameron's calm self-confidence, and a night that completely ruined her family. It also seriously affected Donna's work and technical team. All sleep and the two little girls' night-time rest, of course Joe has no moral burden at all. The reason is that these things are not included in the calculation category at all in Joe's general head. Part of Donna's anger also comes from the inability to recognize that - Joe's problem is not the most troublesome, he doesn't think it's his own problem that makes other people hate it the most.
Joe's heart is undoubtedly chaotic, so chaotic that he can't even tell if he's a dreamer or a liar. That's why Cameron's words in the final episode hit him so hard - perfectly hitting his deepest self-doubt. Everywhere Joe goes, he is uneasy, and this can be seen as an external transmission of his inner unrest. This restlessness and confusion brought energy and produced results, but did not help him find an answer. So at the end he sets out to find the answer. The "Cardiff Giant" became famous, Gordon got a job, a salary increase, and the high-profile recognition, Donna got a satisfying job, a more harmonious family, and the right to speak, and Cameron got a team of self-employment. And Joe is still looking for answers. Excluded from all of this, quest alone. There was no doubt that Joe was in love with Cameron, or else he wouldn't have allowed Cameron to be so close to see him better than anyone else. However, his own heart is also chaotic, so if he wants to see clearly, he can't actually see that clearly.

Cameron
In fact, I originally wanted to put C beauty in front of Joe! The reason is that Cameron was really the epitome of the new women of the '80s, and my mom was part of her generation of young women. They grew up in the spirit of independence. In their adolescence, they watched a generation of youths who were rebellious, decadent, and even hesitant (the youth wave in the 1970s), and took this as an example. In the era of the new technology revolution, they faced unlimited possibilities for employment. So they are vigorous, powerful, yet full of youthful fragility. Girls in Cameron's era were fashionable not to care about their female identity, and even deliberately erased the appearance of women, despising those secretaries who chatted with high heels and blouses in the office. To a certain extent, her contempt is capitalized. She does creative work and is an indispensable part of the soul of the company's new technology and new products, while the traditional office women's work is the vassal of men. On the other hand, when she was young, she did not realize that everyone has their own way of life and the way to realize self-worth. She stubbornly believed that only her life was full, and only her goals were worth pursuing. Cameron's growth in the 10 episodes of the show is very limited compared to Gordon or Joe (he was a young man with courage and talent at the beginning, and at the end, he never hesitated when he wanted to do something), after all, a few months are not enough. Let a young girl who didn't graduate from college transform into a mature individual. But Cameron's youth without regret, spiritual and material independence and flourishing make her destined to be outstanding. The scene in the third episode of Cameron getting his first week's salary, cashing the check and walking down the street shocked me a bit - such a sharp description of the youngest side of a young man, and it passed by like a little bit of water. There are flaws in this show, but it is really done with heart.
A large part of Cameron's charm comes from her imperfection in my eyes, because her growth is far from over, it's only just beginning. In the second season, I even look forward to the development of Cameron's character more than I look forward to Joe - obviously Lee Pace is my favorite actor in this show! If Joe's character's charm comes from his cult-leader spirit, and his cool switching between teeth-gnashing sanity and teeth-gnashing madness, Cameron's allure comes from her consistency. From beginning to end, she was independent, spiritually, materially, emotionally. How can someone not love such a person~ Her life is described as a mess (Donna language: a mess), but her heart has never been lost, and she always knows exactly what she wants and what she wants to do. Even when love came, and when love was frustrated—the moment when these two women were most likely to make irrational decisions to ruin their lives, Cameron wasn't the least bit confused about what he wanted, and he wasn't shaken in the slightest about who he was. This is spiritual independence. The strong female spirit of the 1980s was properly interpreted by Cameron. And the other side is with Donna.

Donna
first ask Beauty D to take my knee!
If Cameron is a little witch, Donna is a superwoman. Affordable, put down, this is my summary of D beauty. It's scary and attractive for both men and women to be able to do this. Donna seemed to appear as a foil wife at first, and I thought it was the vase character of the show. Although his appearance is gentle and graceful, there is nothing conspicuous about it. The first time Donna became bright and vivid was when reporting to her young boss (and her classmate), a small unwilling eye flashed, a deliberately stiff submissive expression, let us see her talent, her hidden , her heart is strong and deliberately restrained. With this plump character and the actor's soft face, the characters suddenly become three-dimensional, and the engineer's wife instantly becomes noticeable (for me).
As Donna's husband, G is always selfish and sweet. Subconsciously Gordon still believes that his dreams and work are more important than his wife's, but he will also admit that his wife's talent is higher than anyone else. After Donna helped him achieve Giant's success, Gordon also encouraged Donna to pursue the job he wanted to do. It was a lot of love at the time. A lot of Chinese men can't do it now, can they? Not only in the 1980s, but in every period, the more out-of-this-world women are, the more they need to face the reality of the relationship between the sexes, which is actually not so unbearable to face. Cameron, as a younger generation, chose to break through reality. The crew borrowed the words of Boz to say: "Many people are looking forward to seeing you fail because they are afraid that you are the future." And Donna chose the more common option: compromise - "she made Gordon's life/achievements possible". At the end of the first season, in order to appease the contemporary audience, it gave some positive energy. Gordon thanked his two partners at the thank-you dinner: Donna and Joe, Donna was placed in the front. As much as I feel sorry for Joe, this is a belated and well-deserved flattery to the D-beauty.
Both Donna and Gordon epitomize the science and engineering intellectuals of the 1980s. The romantic idealism of intellectuals and the meticulous pragmatism of science and engineering are closely intertwined. They can talk about ideals and dreams, and they can quarrel with people over a tip for a bill. They can play musical instruments, disassemble missiles, and repair bicycles. . At the end of episode four, Donna looks at her husband who is once again lost on the brink of self-pity and outbursts of terror, sighs, picks up a tool shovel, and walks out to the front yard -- still wearing high heels! Then a shovel resulted in the little bird that made my daughters unable to sleep peacefully. I watched it several times, but I was still very happy.

A talented beauty, a charming wife, a tenth-level piano player, and an expert at making complaints, isn't this really the character of a beautiful girl Mary Sue's novel?

Gordon
The poor engineer can only be put behind his wife. Gordon is a typical sample of middle-aged men from his parents' generation. He is stable, realistic, cowardly on the surface and under the pressure of life. His once swaying has faded into an intolerance to firewood, rice, oil and salt, but he will do his best to maintain this day after day. The smooth life of diesel, rice, oil and salt. Timid, seems to have become his camouflage. But taking a closer look, this ordinary-looking man clearly has nothing to do with cowardice. He can be selfish, and sometimes quite crazy, with an undisguised bookish anger, but he's extremely dependable in a pinch. Whenever the team encounters a big trouble that seems to destroy everything, he is the one who first yells and vents his dissatisfaction, and solves it in his own way first—it is also him (probably because he has finished venting, so he can quickly adjust the state , or venting is to adjust the state). It has to be said that men with families become more cowardly (seeing the damaged utility pole in the sixth episode, Gordon's first reaction is to run away, not to rescue the fallen pedestrians), but G is always With this kind of cowardice, I can constantly seek support for my dreams from the family, and stumble towards my goal step by step.
I feel like Gordon was reinvented by Joe in season one. Before Joe always appeared, he had been young, dreamed, passionate, wild, but all of them failed, so he gave up all of them, hid in the daily life of the family, tried to hide his talents and difficulties, even Live a life of ignorance. But in his heart, he was very clear about the stupidity and wastedness of his blindness. Under this contradiction, every day of his life is painful and there is no joy at all. Gordon and Cameron have many similarities, and in a crisis, the two can quickly break the ice through their unrelated pasts and teenage trivia. People like them who were born to create can't bear the pain of not creating - but he doesn't have the courage and confidence to create again. Joe's presence pulls him out of the puddle of self-evasion and self-denial, and slams him onto the concrete floor, kicking him forward (perhaps wearing Italian leather shoes). If not, Gordon would be just another mediocre mechanic drowning in office politics and failed marriages. This kind of odd couple drama is not uncommon in American dramas, and HCF can only be regarded as quite satisfactory.

The jokes in this play are rather boring. Many of the things that belong to the science and technology technology house will find it interesting. The detail design is a little too detailed and it is not easy to arouse the audience's interest. One of my favorites: The company encountered an avalanche before going to the exhibition. Joe, who has always been working with chicken blood, decided to give up and go back to IBM to listen to his father's words to live. At this time, Mr. G suddenly broke out under the aura of mental illness, and quickly settled his suspicions with Cameron. The two established a revolutionary comradeship between the tech house and together they talked about Mr. Joe, the big peacock, for them to become a seller and go to the exhibition. It was a real laugh.
Judging from the ending arrangement of the series, the screenwriter did not expect that there would be a renewal for the next season. So at the end, the endings of the three main characters are explained, and only Joe has an open ending. However, as the new male god of 2014, the leading actor Li Peisi has played a good standard, and the performance of each role is extremely admirable. So it's no surprise to get a renewal.
One of the big shortcomings of this drama is the addition of nonsensical plots, the broken back kiss in episodes 3, and the flashlight in episode 6 of the hurricane, all belong to this kind of non-nutritive, meaningless and incomprehensible plot. It may be that there are too many things to express, but the space is limited, so it is a little messy. It also shows that the screenwriter is not completely unambitious.
I really like the camera language of this show. A large number of single-person rear cameras make the narrative always alternate from the perspectives of several characters, which is more close than the pure third perspective (God's perspective or panoramic camera), Let this story about coils and program commands get rid of some cold outsider feeling, so that those of us who don't understand computers can also substitute purely from the perspective of the characters, and feel the emotional ups and downs, excitement and frustration in the story. As part of the narrative, I have always valued the camera lens very much. The HCF camera image is elegant and clean, conveying a touch of realistic romanticism unique to that era.
Finally, let me put an introduction I wrote in the school magazine:
HCF is small in quantity and high in quality, with a reasonable rhythm. It combines geniuses, lunatics, rock music and feminist pioneers, unscrupulous bossy presidents, and geek engineers of parents and mothers in old-fashioned Under the incandescent lamp of the office building, nibbling on a hamburger, speaking with a spiced Texas accent in the faded picture, and rarely maintaining a respectable height, it is definitely a good niche drama worth watching this year.

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