Supernatural (TV Series) Halt & Catch Fire (2015) User Reviews

While a fun ghost story typifies the problem of the Carver years

[CubsandCulture · 8/10 · 5 October 2020]

I find the Carver years somewhat frustrating because they really helped revitalize the show on the big points and made the ongoing storylines very compelling. But they also routinely sloppy with the mythos and became less daring with the one off episodes. This episode is a good example of this. It is an entertaining hour of TV and it if I saw this randomly it would get me interested in the show. But at this point this ghost story is pretty rote and procedural. And it is every so slightly *off* as the ghost here is electrical; it doesn't make sense with much of the text around ghosts in the proceeding 9 years.

Not the best episode, but...

[WhoTendsTheFire · 6/10 · 14 February 2021]

Some of these reviews are pretty strange. Having a bunch of obnoxious teenagers in an episode doesn't mean that the show is trying to appeal to them. Though I definitely agree with the reviewers complaining about the college kids' dialogue. Definitely a bit of a "How do you do, fellow kids?" vibe there. Anyway, I like the premise of a tech-based ghost, and was surprised it took them so long to get to it. I was expecting it by season t at least. X-Files did their "Ghost in the Machine" episode pretty early in its run. The execution could have been a lot better though. I felt the concept was wasted, and the plot of teens having a secret seemed a bit too much like those teen internet ghost movies that were popular at the time.

Kill by numbers

[shwetafabm · 6/10 · 3 July 2020]

Dean being old is a fun joke but nothing else is great about this ep. Good concept but wasn't into the ep.

Too many discrepancies

[jessicaelwell-50190 · 6/10 · 30 April 2019]

There are many discrepancies in this episode. When Sam and Dean get to campus, the young college student they interrogate says she has finals the next day. However later in the episode the detective in Julie's bedroom says that most students are gone for spring break. That means they would have been taking midterms since it's the middle of the semester. Another thing is when Julie starts freaking out over her computer talking to her she unplugs the power cord but the computer would still have a charge even without the power plug hooked in and would not turn off automatically. Not to mention all the weird things the college students are saying that does not seem real to me for the day in age we live in. This episode was okay because we'll Sam and Dean still make the show. But the plot points were severely lacking.

Stupid episode

[wolfordcheyenne · 7/10 · 17 August 2020]

This episode was so boring. I couldn't get invested in the plot at all. A ghost using the WiFi is an interesting concept, but this episode screwed it up. The dialogue was awful and the writing was lazy. I have to agree that the shows portrayal of college students was bad.

No spoilers, just a general summery of how the show has plummeted.

[neckeevertigo · 1/10 · 11 February 2015]

Worst episode ever.

Supernatural has hit a all time new low. Apart from the awful acting the show is starting to revolve around twitter hash-tags and from what I can tell "teenie" audience who talk like "omg, lol, feel, etc" and base their social life on how many likes or faves they got yesterday. Its not a show for 14-year-olds, stop making it that way. I just want to ask, where have all the good scripts gone, where is the lore behind the hunting, where is the feeling of chill you get from the soul bearing story? Take the scene when Death was arriving in a Cadillac, the music in that scene, the story, the original approach to it. The show has lost most of its elements that made it. Now its just gore, blood, chopping heads and fandom screaming "lol, selfie, omg, etc".

How do you do, fellow kids?

[grue-28146 · 1/10 · 18 March 2022]

Is there anyone in the SPN writing room who is below the age of 60? It's like watching a boomer trying to be "young" and "hip." In short, painful.

I have watched the show in its entirety and I can honestly say this is the weakest episode. For the love of God, stay away from this dumpster fire. Spare yourself the pain of watching your favorite show debase itself trying to become something it is not.

Can Season 10 Be Saved? Not With Episodes Like "Halt and Catch Fire"

[bmacoms1 · 3/10 · 13 February 2015]

This episode is another example of how Season 10 seems to have lost it's groove and can't seem to get it back (exceptions of outstanding episodes Fan Fiction and There's No Place Like Home which were both bright shining stars in an otherwise dark cloudy sky). The premise of a WIFI ghost wasn't scary or interesting. I guess I shouldn't be surprised since this episode came from the writing team that gave us "Mannequin 3 - A Reckoning" which I thought was the better episode and that's not entirely a compliment. I did appreciate that this episode was about Sam and Dean (hello, they are they show) and didn't have oodles of secondary semi-interesting characters with boring story lines to steal away screen time. I love ghost stories and of all the ghost stories that SPN has aired this has to be one of the worst. I also think the writers are walking a very thin line of possibly turning Dean (who saved the world from The Apocalypse) into a caricature of his former self as we don't really know who he is anymore as the dark Dean is on then off then on then off. I also find a mid-thirty's year-old man still cruising college girls a little age inappropriate (I get that this is not that much of a stretch but it could be toned down to keep Dean from looking creepy) and the 2 scenes in the cafeteria where Dean was either playing with his noodles or trying for comic effect just silly. When we did get dark Dean he was more like a bad frat boy on a binge than a Knight of Hell or even a demon as he didn't fling one person against a wall unless he was punching them in the face. Dean is a hero - he was the chosen vessel of heaven and I get that Season 10 was an opportunity for Jensen to show us more of Dean and more of his acting prowess but unfortunately the lack of good story writing kept him from giving us all I know he could deliver. This episode felt like it was written for a tween audience and as an avid fan and very long time follower and lover of the show I wish this episode had never happened. Next week's episode has the opportunity to get rid of the MoC and allow the story to move forward. If we could just get Cass his grace back (didn't he lose it in Season 8 and we are half way through Season 10), get Crowley to be Crowley and see through his boring mother's scheme and cast her away to another dimension plus banish Clair from the show that would give the remaining 8 episodes an opportunity to correct so many things that are wrong with Season 10. I understand Carver is staying for Season 11 as Frequency did not get picked up but I really want him to wrap up this current arc as it's not working and give Season 11 a new big bad and a fresh start where the show goes back to being about Sam and Dean and uses Castiel and Crowley's formidable acting skills in a much more appropriate way. Crowley and Castiel's stories have been so diminished in Season 10 I'm not sure I even care about them anymore. What if one of them were killed off - would you care? I would still care because we should have never gotten to this point. Season 10 is like a bad dream that I thought could never happen to SPN. I am hoping for a course correction and a much improved Season 11. Shows that have had 10 seasons (Smallville, for example) kept key characters from Season 1 until the series finale. SPN has killed off so many KEY secondary characters that in the process they chipped away bit-by-bit at what held the show together and created a family. Carver has improved ratings but with episodes such as the current one I just don't see how that can be sustained. I would like SPN to go to Season 12 or even 15 but that would require a massive shake up in the writers room and a new show leader who could take SPN back to being about hunting things, saving people, The Family Business

A somewhat offensive portrayal of college students here.

[matt_macha7 · 4/10 · 30 September 2018]

The writers clearly were behind on the times.. and definitely do not understand how college students, or people, interact 😂 With cringeworthy dialogue such as "Oh dude I just retweeted your tweet" "Oh man I just favorited yours haha" Or the fact that these college students were still using instant messenger (specifically AIM), which as someone who was roughly the same age as the college characters when this came out - I can honestly tell you nobody had used AIM or instant messenger since 2007😂

Sloppy, cheesy, inaccurate writing make for a disappointing episode

Still better than Bloodlines

[vlcupper1 · 4/10 · 7 September 2020]

This is not a bad episode per se; it was just dated when it aired. It was reminiscent of the season 1 episode of Buffy: laughably bad understanding of technology, but with better writing. The BM (heh) scenes were good, though.

Still loads better than Bugs, Bitten, and Bloodlines.