Review of Halt and Catch Fire

I tried four episodes of this show and the ridiculous amount of blatant audience manipulation was just sickening. The main characters are Suit Guy, Average Programmer Guy and Hot Programmer Girl. Suit Guy waltzes into everything with a stupid amount of confidence even when he hasn't got a damn clue what's going on, and then goes home and cries every night at the realization of his own idiocy, if he isn't consoling his egotism by screwing whatever is available. Hot Programmer Girl is supposed to wow everybody because she's so hot, and bisexual, and duders think that's hot, and she stinks and that's hot, and cuts her hair short, and she's so hot, and she's a programmer who's crazy and stays up for days on speed or something, and she's so hot (even hotness gets as tiresome as hearing about it). Suit Guy screws her within minutes of the first episode, before we know who either one of them are. Average Programmer Guy is the only 'real' character who isn't relegated to the background, and his presence can't save this from the realm of 'most promise and least payoff' of anything I saw on TV that year. Real programmers who were alive during that era have said they see the show as a silly unfunny parody of those times, and that's exactly how it comes off.