2FUD
Joe ends up being correct about the meeting with IBM: as long as they all stick to the untrue story that Cardiff Electric had long worked on developing a PC clone, and that what has ended up being Cameron's job to develop the BIOS code does not involve Gordon or his discoveries about IBM's proprietary BIOS code, Cardiff Electric is just working within the boundaries of what is legal and there is nothing IBM can do about it. After that meeting, Joe outlines his vision for what he, Gordon and Cameron will be working on: a PC clone that is twice the speed and half the price of what IBM has on the market. Neither Gordon or Cameron share this vision, Gordon who believes in the standard marketing practice of offering the consumer something marginally better than the previous model at a slightly higher price, while Cameron sees the project as just another boring "beige box". Although Gordon sees this path as at least being bright to support his family, Cameron does not like what she's gotten...
3High Plains Hardware
Despite IBM's raid on Cardiff Electric's clients, Joe has convinced those concerned, most specifically Gordon and Cameron, to continue with the PC project. The company is in a much weakened state because of the raid leading to staff layoffs, which an ill-equipped Gordon is responsible for issuing to the affected engineering staff, and the search for investors for the PC project. Joe and Bosworth have differing views on where those moneys can potentially come from. Gordon, with a much reduced staff, is working on the engineering issues Joe wants for the PC, namely that it now be portable and no heavier than 15 pounds. Gordon gets some help from an unexpected source, that help which has repercussions in that person's own professional life. Conversely, he faces a roadblock with another, that roadblock which he sees more clearly after a traffic incident. Cameron, basically living in her "office", is having a mental block in writing the BIOS code. She wanders around the Cardiff Electric ...
4Close to the Metal
With a mid-project success with the BIOS code, Joe makes two bold moves within the office. First, he destroys the book that contains the IBM proprietary code, and second, he invites Wall Street Quarterly to do a story about their PC clone project. The story Joe wants written may not happen first because the reporter, Ron Kane, doesn't see what's happening as being newsworthy, and second as a crisis occurs in the office during Kane's visit, that crisis issue which may in turn be the story. As Joe tries to manage Kane, Gordon tries to manage the actual crisis issue by calling in an outside expert, that person who does not sit well with Joe. Cameron, who outwardly is most affected by the crisis issue, takes action to some news she learns during the crisis which may affect her already tenuous relationship with her co-workers, most specifically Gordon. Because of distractions in her life, Donna's work at TI suffers. The Cardiff Electric crisis and Donna's work issues affect the Clarks' ...
5Adventure
The Wall Street Quarterly article and Cameron being able to complete the BIOS code have created renewed public interest in the PC project, upon which Joe wants to capitalize, not only for the project but also for himself. Cameron is dismayed however to learn that Joe's suggested vacation for her was so that he could hire a software engineering team behind her back. She does find that there are like minded individuals among the team, but she isn't sure if she can work under her new boss, the overly bureaucratic Steve. Gordon believes he has a possible solution to the computer's weight issue and the contacts to achieve his plan, Gordon's initiative which irks Joe under the surface as he was not the one to initiate it. Regardless, Joe believes he needs to be involved in the meeting with Gordon and the Japanese manufacturers to discuss the issue, and later clean up the mess that Gordon creates at that meeting, which Joe feels has placed him once again as being in a position of being ...
6Landfall
The impending hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast, which will peripherally affect Dallas, matches the excitement at Cardiff Electric as the PC team seems to have achieved its goal of producing a portable PC that is smaller and faster than anything on the market. This excitement is tempered by an incident that shows Joe his pecking order in the company, and Cameron's vision for the project, which she sees as so much more than just another boring beige box as she refers to PCs. For Cameron's vision to be realized, she needs both Gordon's support in extra hardware requirements, and Joe's approval. While Joe ponders the idea, Gordon is less than willing to compromise what he already sees as a great product for Cameron's fanciful whims. With Donna's help, Gordon believes he has to do more than just talk to Joe to convince him his stand is correct. In the heat of the moment, Gordon promises Donna that he will go out to buy Joanie a present she wants, some new toy called a Cabbage Patch Kid, ...
7Giant
The next phase of the PC project is design. Believing it could be atheistically beautiful and not just another beige box, Joe is able to call in an old friend, top industrial designer Simon Church, to come up with a concept. Simon's arrival onto the scene has the possibility to alienate both Gordon and Cameron, but for different reasons. Gordon is feeling tired of people not listening to him, and acts upon his new-found albeit temporary freedom with the girls while Donna is out of town on business. Donna, on the other hand, may also act upon her new temporary freedoms based on a business meeting and a telephone call home to Gordon. And while he has been issued a divorce petition, an action which no one in the company knows about, John gets more bad news: the PC project is out of money, and without a quick cash influx, the entire company could shut down within a week if the PC project proceeds. John has to find some money to tie them over until COMDEX in a couple of weeks, without ...
8The 214s
Scandal rocks Cardiff Electric as the team finalizes preparations for COMDEX. Bosworth makes a sacrifice for the good of the PC program. |
9Up Helly Aa
Unforeseen adversaries and new complications threaten to derail all that the Cardiff Electric team has worked for at COMDEX. |
101984
The outcome of Joe, Gordon, Cameron and Donna's trip to COMDEX is that all relationships are still in tact except for that between Cameron and the "company" and most specifically Joe, as she could not accept his decision to downgrade the operating system, regardless of that decision leading to the $40 million net profit deal with Computerland. Their split is despite Cameron believing she was in love with Joe, and Joe still being in love with Cameron. Joe begins to believe that Cameron may have been right after seeing the new generation Mac having that wow factor, which the Giant does not have. As such, he feels that down the road the Giant will not be seen as a major milestone in computer history. Regardless, Joe and Gordon are able to negotiate a lucrative deal with Nathan Cardiff as joint operations heads, despite Cardiff still not liking Joe and not being interested in the profit far exceeding what the company has experienced in the past. Gordon, however, begins to believe that he ...
1SETI
After the success of Cardiff Electric's revolutionary new computer "The Giant", Cameron alongside Donna...
2New Coke
After Joe meets Sara's father, Jacob Wheeler, CEO of Dallas-based oil company Westgroup Energy, Joe contemplates accepting a job offer from him, as none of Joe's other professional opportunities panned out, something of which Jacob is aware just based on Joe's recent history making him non-marketable job-wise. A discussion with Sara at the end of his first work day answers a lot of the questions Joe had about the nature of that work day. Cameron makes a unilateral decision to hire someone as "the boss" of Mutiny. The unilateral nature of the decision irks Donna, who wants more of a collaborative decision making environment between the two of them, while the rest of the Mutiny staffers seem ill at ease with the person himself. Cameron and Donna face two other immediate issues. The first is trying to find money to operate more effectively, they having a meeting with Stokes, a venture capital firm. The second is finding out that someone is hacking into their network and repackaging much ...
3The Way In
Joe and Sara discuss what he should do about the job offered by her father, which he only found out after accepting it that it was a low level data entry job. Joe believes he has stumbled across an opportunity to reinvent his lucrative self in the process, which requires Jacob's approval to proceed. Joe and Sara decide to host their first Dallas dinner party to which they invite some surprised guests, who feel they can't decline if only out of sheer curiosity. Gordon too has stumbled on a short term task to keep him preoccupied, one that requires him to learn programming. That task is to help Donna and Mutiny figure out how many network users they have, and not just their paid subscribers, this information which will help Donna and Cameron when they talk to potential investors. Cameron finds that she has a love-hate relationship with Tom, in that he is knowledgeable about the leading edge of online gaming, but that his visions can be different than hers and that he is not hesitant to ...
4Play with Friends
Following the issue with Sonaris, Mutiny is on the verge of financial insolvency, with many of their users, especially their heaviest users, canceling their subscriptions. Cameron and Donna feel they have no other option but to renegotiate with their employees if they want to keep Mutiny going. Some wholeheartedly agree to their proposal, including Tom, who, however, seems not to be there fully in spirit, when he is there, following this point. Bosworth, not officially an employee, decides to use his skills as a salesman to help Cameron and Donna. This situation places a strain between Donna and Cameron while they decide what they have to forgo considering their resources. But it's an act by Cameron on an associated issue which may not only kibosh their business but their friendship. Joe's latest get rich scheme, using Westgroup's mainframe, gets officially kiboshed by a mid-level manager. As such, he decides to go rogue, trying to get Gordon involved without fully disclosing to ...
5Extract and Defend
Because she presses him on the issue, Gordon has to admit to Donna that his contact regarding the great deal they are getting on the network is Joe. This admission sets off a series of other admissions between all the players about what is going on, which culminates in a meeting between Joe and Cameron among others. This new professional partnership has profound effects on the personal lives of all involved. Donna and Gordon largely keep their medical issues to themselves. While Donna contemplates what to do in light of her increasing workload, Gordon feels he can't lean on Donna while the online community function becomes a more integral part of Mutiny's business. So Gordon reflects on his life, most specifically the carefree part of his marriage before the children arrived. And Bosworth has a potentially embarrassing moment on his first post-prison date.
610Broad36
Now that Jacob is involved, the terms of the deal that Joe and Gordon made with regard to Mutiny using Westgroup's network, that deal which was handled verbally, needs to change on Jacob's directive. While Joe is still handling the deal on behalf of Westgroup and has heard what Jacob wants, Joe unilaterally decides to bend those directives based on his own wants. The "negotiation" with Donna and Cameron leads to a possible impasse as Donna and Cameron decide how they will handle Joe's demands. Those negotiations are tempered by the emotions Donna is feeling about her pregnancy, of which only Bosworth knows so far. Donna eventually decides to come clean to some while bending the truth to others. Also at Mutiny, Cameron and Tom's sexual relationship, which they thought they were hiding well, is discovered in a very public manner. Meanwhile, Gordon has taken the girls "home" to visit with his brother Henry and Henry's family in California where they all grew up. Feeling like he can't yet...
7Working for the Clampdown
Gordon tells Donna about his health issues. He downplays it in his own life as he starts a new venture with some old colleagues: custom built PCs. Donna has troubles with the health news, not only in that the impression she gets is that he felt he couldn't turn to her because of work issues, but also what it truly does mean for their lives. It is not good timing as Joe brings Westgroup/Jacob's offer to purchase Mutiny to the Mutiny team. The offer on the surface allows the current team to retain creative control, while behind the offer Jacob and Joe are solely interested in taking over the community aspect of their work, in Joe's words a forum to allow "housewives to share recipes". Joe understands that it is Cameron's continued mistrust of him that is the primary obstacle, and as such works on others who may have influence on her. What happens may depend on whether Cameron sees the company as hers or the collective. An incident specifically with Lev may change everything. With this ...
8Limbo
Mutiny is holding its first ever appreciation picnic for its staff and customers. Beyond not liking being the center of public gatherings, Cameron avoids the picnic for another reason, as throughout the day she and Tom deal with some business and personal issues. Bosworth receives an unexpected but welcome visitor at the picnic, while Donna basks in what she sees as the success of Community with the number of customers who come to Mutiny solely for that function. Running around with all his nervous energy at the number of orders for customized PCs, Gordon, based on some incidents, becomes unfocused in his life, which leads to paranoia exacerbated by Stan's visit from California. Following his and Sara's elopement and decision to move to California, Joe wants to feel like he has left a legacy at Westgroup, which is making it more difficult for him to let go, especially as he only gets standardized platitudes from Jacob, who quickly replaces his position. The replacement, Jessie Evans, ...
9Kali
Everyone at Mutiny is still reeling from Westgroup hijacking its community function and its users and appropriating it all as their own called WestNet. Beyond the legal actions, Cameron, Donna and Bosworth have to figure out how to keep from going financially bankrupt. What happens affects both Tom and Bosworth directly. Joe is caught in the middle as Cameron is still certain he had something to do with it all, while Jacob believes Joe, who is angry with what transpired, will do nothing to protect his own future, which will also affect Sara. Meanwhile, Gordon, still in his paranoia, goes looking for who is behind JGL. In the process, Gordon may come to a realization about his own state of mind.
10Heaven Is a Place
The Sonaris virus has destroyed Westgroup's mainframe, which unofficially but publicly is attributed as Joe's doing. As such, this phase of Joe's career, and his marriage, seem once again destroyed. Only one person comes to Joe's defense, albeit solely in private, but which provides him with a glimmer of how to rise from the ashes. With Westgroup out of the way, Cameron, Donna and their team have been able to rebuild Mutiny, without either Bosworth or Tom who have left the company. They are focusing solely on the community aspect of the company, leaving the games behind them. But Cameron feels they still face the same issue they did when they were using Westgroup's network. Cameron comes up with what she believes is the only solution in moving forward. These items combined with how Gordon is treating his therapy leads to problems in the Clark's marriage, which may be irreparable.
1Valley of the Heart's Delight
Donna and Cameron explore their options to expand beyond chat. Gordon settles in at Mutiny. Joe launches his latest product. |
2One Way or Another
While Cameron and Donna struggle to find venture capital, Joe hires a key coder, leaving the rest of the team at a loss. |
3Flipping the Switch
The strain of living and working together start to show for Gordon, Donna and Cameron, especially as Gordon believes Donna has only asked him to attend regular executive meetings to make him feel included, demonstrating that the power in his and Donna's overall relationship rests with her. Donna carries the stress of that strain into a business lunch with Diane, while Gordon turns to an old friend to cope. Ryan's departure from the company leaves an obvious hole that needs to be filled. As Cameron's attempt to lure Ryan back doesn't work, she is tasked with looking for a new coder from among the students in a college computer class to which she will be giving a guest lecture. Cameron finds someone unexpected there. Ryan is feeling at a loss working for evasive Joe, who wants him to figure out exactly why he hired him without being told. Joe inviting him to a senior executive meeting a week into his employment may or may not answer the questions for Ryan. And Cameron and Donna delegate...
4Rules of Honorable Play
Cameron is having a hard time in her life. With Mutiny's acquisition of Swap Meet, Mutiny, under the contract, has had to hire who were Swap Meet's owners/developers, Doug Sheridan and Craig Bosch, the former in particular who she finds to be difficult if not impossible to work with. She is also getting increasing implied pressure from Gordon and Donna to find a place of her own to live. However, it is the work pressure in combination with hearing from a person from her past with some current news which makes her want to be with those that she loves now more than ever, and thus is making excuses for not moving. An unexpected connection to someone relatively new in her life may provide some emotional support during this trying time. Through Cameron's trials, Donna is the one who is left to deal with issues, especially when it comes to Diane, who wants to ensure that her money in acquiring Swap Meet was spent wisely and that Cameron and Donna, without micromanaging them, are doing what ...
5Yerba Buena
Mutiny's acquisition of Swap Meet is still going through growing pains, this time specifically in an issue between Donna and Cameron, the latter who does not want to add an extra layer of providing the service of payment through credit cards, not wanting either to swallow the credit card fee or pass it along to customers, who she believes will balk at having to pay it. This disagreement sits unresolved going into the July 4th holiday. Both Bos and Cameron have decided to go back to Dallas. Cameron wants to buy the one thing from her mother of sentimental value that belonged to her father, namely his motorcycle, before her mother and stepfather move. Cameron has not told anyone she is coming, and has in the back of her mind to see Tom, who may or may not want to see her. Bos wants to visit with James and see his new grandson. What happens on Bos and Cameron's respective visits may have some affect on their psuedo father-daughter relationship. With their kids away, Gordon and Donna ...
6And She Was
There is open but unspoken tension between Donna and Cameron as Cameron lets Donna know using cryptic language but clear in its message that she knows Donna lied to her about Doug and Craig. That tension is increased when Diane lets them know that there is a lucrative offer to buy Mutiny, which also means another option is to go public. In deciding what to do about the sale but needing time away from each other, Donna decides to take Diane up on her offer to use her personal retreat as a weekend getaway by herself, while Cameron remains at home with Gordon and the girls. What Donna anticipates as time alone to clear her mind doesn't quite end up that way, with a specific incident only confirming what she already feels about her role in the partnership with Cameron. At home, Gordon and Cameron end up bonding over Super Mario Bros. (1985), that bond which may extend to other areas in their joint life, while Cameron also contemplates what to do about making public what happened between ...
7The Threshold
Gordon finds out about Joe's admission regarding the software being created by him, also discovering that Joe also made the admission after the Board fired him from MacMillan Utility. Gordon wants to find out what Joe's long game is in making the admission before he himself decides how to proceed, the asset which is valued at $25 million. Joe also suspects that Ryan will be fired, and provides him with only a broad outline of what has happened so as to protect him from questioning by the Board, while being able to find a way to proceed with NSFNET after the dust settles. Ryan has to decide who he will trust if he gets conflicting information as to what each believes are the facts. Meanwhile, Tom has arrived in California, he who will ultimately not work at Mutiny. Among those in California, Gordon is the only person Cameron has told about getting married. Gordon telling Donna about Cameron and Tom's marriage provides Donna an opening to mend the deep wounds that exist between her and ...
8You Are Not Safe
It's the latter half of 1986. Donna has been on the road doing the dog and pony show trying to garner interest in Mutiny in preparation for the IPO on December 18th. She is going through a learning curve in what she can or cannot say, and how she addresses the issue of Cameron no longer being with the company, which has to sound both credible and positive. The success or failure of the offering rests solely on Donna's shoulders, with Cameron not being able to take any credit for success, or accept blame if it is a failure. Cameron, who no one has spoken to, has solely been bored housewife to Tom, with the occasional foray onto the computer to code new ideas to keep herself preoccupied. Since he released the security software to the world, Ryan has been on the run, but not before he told Joe what he did. Ryan's action has a direct affect on Joe and Gordon's new company and the NSFNET project, as Joe is under investigation by the FBI, who believes he is probably the person who released ...
9NIM
It's the fall of 1990, four years after Mutiny's failed IPO, Ryan's suicide, and Cameron and Tom's move to Tokyo. Gordon and Donna have split, and have joint custody of the girls. Donna, who is now using her maiden name Emerson, has just made senior partner in Diane's venture capital company, Donna's name which is first among the partners. Bos and Diane are now an established couple. Gordon has been working on the NSFNET project, which is funded by Donna and Diane's company, they all waiting for the government deregulation which they expect to happen in the next year or two. While Donna has focused on her career, Gordon, whose health problems have accelerated, has spent some time looking for love, he currently dating Michelle, one of his employees. They have not talked to Cameron at all, she who is still in Tokyo and who probably still has bad feelings about everything that happened with Mutiny. Donna has long wanted to mend fences with Cameron for personal reasons, but now has a ...
10NeXT
Donna is able to persuade Cameron to meet about the project, the meeting to take place coinciding with Cameron and Tom's trip to the States to visit with family over the Christmas holidays. Donna feels forced to invite Joe if only to appease Cameron. Joe, in turn, invites Gordon, believing he having useful input seeing that they worked together on the NSFNET project. And Cameron invites Tom. The project, as Donna initially lays out to them and which uses Gordon and Joe's work on the NSFNET as the impetus, is to create a means for all the individual networks worldwide to be connected to each other - the world wide web or the Internet or whatever else they may want to call it. Those around the table each are excited by certain aspects but have some issue with the project, whether it be defining purpose, having conflicting visions of form, having issues with timing, or other issues. Joe brings important information to the table based on a conference he recently attended about relatively ...
1So It Goes
Two segments of Gordon, Joe and Cameron's business are going in divergent directions. CalNect, their ISP, is doing well, AOL who wants to buy it. Loadstar, their web browser which Joe and Cameron are working on, the latter remotely from her home base in Tokyo, has bugs which Cameron, the coder, has to fix. Much to Joe's dismay, Cameron seems to have gone silent on him. As such, another web browser, Mosaic, has overtaken the market, despite the fact that Joe and Cameron had a full one year head start on them. And Gordon wants Joe's energies placed on dealing with the issue of CalNect and AOL. As Gordon celebrates his fortieth birthday and the financial success of the company overall, they are unaware of the other issues which Cameron has been facing beyond her day job at Atari. Meanwhile, Donna is not averse to pulling the funding from projects that have either stalled or that are not visionary enough for her taste. When she gives twenty-four hours to Rover, a company looking for funding, to rejig their medical database idea, a clash may be in the works between Rover/Donna and Gordon/Joe as information was passed between ex-husband/ex-wife in general dinner chit-chat.
2Signal to Noise
While talking on the telephone, Cameron discloses to Joe that her marriage is ending, that Tom has found someone else, and that she will not be returning to Tokyo. This admission begins a human connection between the two despite the physical distance of the telephone line. They are both unaware that people have been looking for them, with one message making its way through to Cameron affecting her professional livelihood. The telephone call means that Joe has not made his way into work, where there is a crisis with CalNect's flat rate structure leading to some users being logged on 24/7 preventing other users from logging on due to limited bandwidth. As Gordon and Shep try to connect with someone with authority at MCI to address the issue immediately, Gordon has other things to juggle in his life. One is Haley, who, generally reliable, was caught skipping class. Gordon knows that there is something deeper going on with her. And another is Bos, whose outward social visit masks his true...
3Miscellaneous
The ISP division of CalNect is unable to overcome its external difficulties by the time Joe resurfaces at work, Joe who sees getting rid of the boring albeit financially lucrative (even in its sale) division as an opportunity. What Joe and ultimately Gordon venture into has differing opportunities and issues as seen by the two partners, Gordon's view which has a more personal investment. As Atari has decided to shelve "Pilgrim" temporarily, Cameron takes steps to market her game outside of the Atari machine, one of those steps which doesn't end up quite the way she wants. And Donna's professional life isn't going very well. The Rover team, overseen by Tanya and Bos, isn't producing the results she wants, she blaming Tanya, Bos and the contractors. She runs into an old adversary at a conference, that adversary who she probably would not have wanted to see but who she cannot help take at dig at anyway. And she and Trip constantly seem to have the knives out for each other, Trip who ...
4Tonya and Nancy
The Comet and Rover teams are competing for the search engine market, each side coming into their respective projects from two different directions. On the Comet side, Joe and Gordon are hiring content experts to direct the respective sections - Haley the head of the comedy section - all overseen by a traditional librarian, Katie Herman. With the lion's share of the market, it is a party atmosphere at Comet as each person goes about his or her work. On the Rover side, most of the impetus for success or failure rests on Cecil's shoulders, he who has written the so far poorly functioning algorithm which is supposed to result in the most relevant hits for any search. As such, Donna continues to rail on Tanya and Bos to manage the project toward success. Bos, who is still facing dire financial problems without telling anyone, tries to steer the project in a direction for his own financial windfall. The two teams are bound to collide with so many of the players having personal ...
