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FEMSLASH FEBRUARY 2019 #17: In which your moderator journals some thoughts about the claim that “Donna’s idea was Cameron”

So, a few weeks back I reblogged this post, which hopefully you’ve all seen and responded to emotionally (I know I have!), which contains the shooting script’s description of what happens in Cameron and Donna’s final scene together, as written by the Chrises, and a further clarification made via personal correspondence by Christopher Cantwell. The action lines describe Donna looking around the diner and trying to memorize everything about it, and that when she looks over at Cameron, who’s already outside, “Something hits Donna. Not nostalgia. Not Loss. Not peace of mind. It’s a subtle wave of something else, something washing over her, through her in this moment as her eyes go distant, and something catches behind them. She gets her change. But she can’t shake whatever just happened. Her face almost betrays a look of frustration. Goddamnit.” Cantwell explained, in aforementioned personal correspondence, again, that the idea Donna had in this moment, was Cameron.

I…don’t know if I’ll ever have had enough time to sit with this, or if I’ll ever have much to add. Let’s start with how there is no heterosexual explanation for this. Like, ‘something washing over her’ that isn’t nostalgia, loss, peace, activated by the sight of Cameron (by her truck, of all things!)…it feels apparent that what’s washing over Donna is a surge of affection, if not love, for Cameron. It isn’t necessarily ‘romantic’ (…), and it isn’t necessarily the same thing as or indicative of a sexual attraction, but that doesn’t really matter. And no, that’s not shipper goggles. That’s reading the text, both the provided shooting script and, like, 40 hours worth of film.

OP @grouchylion writes in the post that there’s a discrepancy between what the shooting script dictates and how the scene was shot and ultimately cut. I haven’t rewatched that scene, which is fine because I probably couldn’t handle it right now, but because I’m an incorrigible geek, I have thought about why that might be, and about what was published in interviews around the time of the finale.

It’s not made explicit in the finale that Donna is being overwhelmed by her feelings for Cameron, and it’s also certainly not made explicit in the text. The episode also wasn’t directed by the screenwriters. So presumably, director Karyn Kusama worked from this shooting script.In a vulture interview that was linked in this reblog, Kerry Bishé says, “Karyn [Kusama, the director of the episode] has this great idea about it. I’m paying for the food in our diner, and she sees somebody reading the newspaper, and she sees the jukebox, and she’s the waitress taking an order, and she sees the cash register. And then it’s like a lightning bolt. We don’t know what the idea is, which I love. Because it could be anything.” And then, “I made some joke like, is it the iPhone? But it’s great, we don’t have to know what the idea is. And Karyn’s like, It’s everything. It’s not one idea. It’s all of the ideas. Donna sees the future when all of this human interaction will be technological.”

All of which suggests that neither the director nor the actress considered that Donna’s idea ‘was Cameron,’ or certainly not in the way that the shooting script and Cantwell’s later admission hints at. I would say that I can’t fvcking believe, even if Cantwell didn’t actually communicate this to them directly (and, uh, it kinda sounds like he didn’t? Right?) that either Karyn Kusama or Kerry Bishé read the shooting script (idek if they did, maybe they didn’t see that script, or, what even is a ‘shooting script,’ we just don’t know!) and read the action lines provided and actually thought, ‘oh yeah, sure, Donna’s just looking at the cash register and stuff!’ but after a lifetime of dealing with non-gays, I kind of can believe it. I guess. Sigh.

All joking and meme language aside, we really don’t know what they thought when/if they read those action lines, or how much they talked with the Chrises or if they were even on set or what have you. I don’t think it’s possible to know to any satisfying degree how all of this happened, as in, even if we could question every single person involved, or even just, like, the Chrises, Karyn Kusama, Kerry Bishé, all thirteen credited producers, the editors, and the cinematographer (IMDB lists editors Rachel Goodlett Katz and Robert Komatsu, and cinematographer Evans Brown and yes, despite recent Oscars tomfoolery those professionals and their jobs are important!), we probably still wouldn’t know quite how we got from the original intent stated after the fact to Kusama and Bishé’s ultimate interpretation and performance. That’s just the magic of film production, people. And/or the magic of structural heterosexism, I guess!

To be clear, one doesn’t need to actually be heterosexual (and, reminder, we don’t actually know that Cantwell, Kusama, or Bishé, even thought they are all in m/f relationships irl, are heterosexual, because bisexual and pansexual people exist) or even actively heterosexist or hom*ophobic in order to perpetuate heterosexism, in great part because the majority of the social reproduction of heterosexuality as a construct imposed on human bodies is done by very large institutions, which makes it very easy for us as individuals to help it along without really meaning to. Which is to say, in the off chance that it’s not obvious, that I’m not here to point fingers. I’m not even here to complain, really. I’m mostly just here to marvel at how we can’t have (certain, explicitly GAY) nice things, and how complicated the reasons for that really are.

And so, we have fandom. And blogs like this one, fanfiction, fanart, etc, to make what’s in the text but not ever directly said explicit. I know that it can be and often is intensely frustrating to see relationships like Cameron and Donna’s (and Gordon and J*e’s!) be characterized as friendships, and feel like a tv show is being cowardly, or needlessly prioritizing bromances and ‘strong female friendships’ between mostly presumed straight characters over writing lgbt characters. More to the point, it’s really infuriating to see straight people in the fandom totally disregard the work that the people involved in the show put into depicting those relationships, and communicating their depth, nuance, and intensity, and talk over, dismiss, and insult gay ships and shippers.

We can’t always have explicitly gay things, sadly. And even when we can have explicitly gay characters and relationships, that doesn’t mean that they’re written well or that they’re in shows that we actually want to sit through, or that they get good or uplifting storylines. What we can do, and what I’ve been thinking about for the past few days, is learn to value the sort of representation that we did get with Halt, of partnership and commitment that develops into real care and affection, even in pairings that are not heterosexual, of complicated, sensitive human beings who are clearly not heterosexual, who are clearly capable of developing real, amazing, emotionally sustaining, nurturing bonds with people of the ‘same’ or similar gender, that can’t be cut down or simplified to fit into a box as tiny or as useless as our standard definition of ‘friendship.’ And like, I know we value it, that’s why we’re still talking about it here on Donna Emerson’s internet over a year after the fact. But, idk. Maybe instead of or in addition to being reasonably disappointed about Cameron and Donna (and plenty of other gay ships on other shows) not technically being canon, we should rethink what we mean by canon? Especially in cases like this one where the text shows us that characters have feelings for each other?

It’s just an idea, just a thing for my fellow incorrigible nerds to think about, maybe.

ananobrain replied to your post “ananobrain replied to your video “Aside from mistakenly describing...”

I totally forgot it was Donna's sweater?! Oh God! I read some interviews w the Chrises and what I felt was, they wanted Cameron and Donna to be canon. They said the S4 was a love story between them and since amc isnt that open, i think they tried to give us signs, and seriously, the colors and how the SONGS??? Endgame.

ananobrain replied to your post “ananobrain replied to your video “Aside from mistakenly describing...”

Also, one thing that I gathered was. Donna throughout this season was surrounded by yellow and there were always something green. When Cam was in scene, there'd be something yellow in it. The hospital scene shows it best, theres always something that connects them together. I also love how they manage to put them afar just using the cameras. It's fantastic. We are lucky to have Halt.

Your second point is such a cool observation, I’m gonna have to look for the yellow in Donna’s scenes when I rewatch!

But omg, I completely missed this entire ‘s4 was a CamDonna lovestory’ talk? That’s what I get for being petty and refusing to read any showrunner interviews after s3....

Regarding the ownership of the sweater...you know what occurred to me? Cameron had all of her stuff with her, so, she easily could have gotten something from her trailer? The sweater’s fit and color look more like something Donna would own, though, and I don’t think the viewer was supposed to remember that Cameron had her own clothes with her. I feel like if we were expected to intuit anything there, it’s that Donna loaned it to her. Not to overthink this (you know, here on my blog where I overthink these things) but, if you fell into a friend’s pool, you’d probably have to borrow something, a person wouldn’t have all or any clothes with them, typically. And again, we haven’t seen Cameron wear anything like that all season.

tl;dr I can’t help but agree with you about ‘the signs’. It’s all fun and games to joke/gripe about The Chrises and how they plotted Mutiny’s collapse and Cameron and Donna’s reunion, and/or how they’re white bros who accidentally wrote not one but two lesbians, but after a certain point, it’s like, okay, but what really happened here?

I haven’t the faintest idea of what things are like at AMC or any network, I just know from like, living in the world that lgbtp rep, especially for women, hasn’t improved as much as straight people seem to think it has. I also know that a lot of straight viewers, mostly whiny, heterosexist white girl Lee stans, have expressed how pissed they are at the idea of CamDonna being endgame. Regardless of how many viewers might not want to, it’s more than reasonable to shift the question from‘wow what was with all the gay subtext, were we supposed to get a vibe...?’ (with Gordon and J*e ALSO?!) to‘After all of that subtext, why weren’t Cameron and Donna fully and unequivocally canon?’

Different versions of Donna throughout time: more about Gordon, Donna, and Halt and Catch Fire 4x07

So, I knew what was happening when Donna walked into the house without looking at Gordon. Normally I am slow on the uptake with these things, but the show wasn't trying to fool us, with how it cut from Donna in her kitchen in pajamas to Donna in a different outfit, suddenly at Gordon's. Literally nothing but spoilers for Halt and Catch Fire 4x07 and 4x06 below.

For the entire scene I was sitting there hoping I was wrong, that Gordon would turn around and Katie would be there asking if he was okay, or that he'd wake up on the floor or in a hospital room. (Here's How Gordon Can Still Live! …too soon?) The further the scene went, the more clear it became. Random film reference, but it made me think of the Russell Crowe movie Gladiator (2000), which is also a movie about wanting to go home, that conflates dying with finally going home to your family after a long war. Though this of course is a common Christian conception of the afterlife, isn't it? That you 'go home' to your creator, that you're reunited with your departed loved ones, and that you finally get to be at peace with them? That was how I knew what was happening.

Gordon seeing Donna reinforced what he said to her in 4x06 when he picked her up from the police station: "Oh please…that 22-year old was hardly sweet and innocent. And the present you isn't so ruthless. They're all you, all the versions. You're the same person that you always were. And…I love that person." Another tumblr user pointed out how sad and kind of pathetic it feels that Donna can’t even get an ‘I love you’ here, and I can't help but agree, but in 4x07, at the end of Gordon's life, we see him see some of those versions:

He sees Donna as she looked the last time he saw her, the Donna of the present who is surviving and who is sad but okay

Donna as she looked when she went to Cameron's trailer. I.e., the Donna that's unraveled and who he's rightly concerned about because she's in a personal, existential crisis

What looks likes Donna in 1983, in the sort of pink skirt and jacket that she wore in the first season, the Donna who was his devoted wife who encouraged him to pursue his professional dreams, and

A Donna we haven't seen, from a few years before that: Donna as a new mom, holding their infant daughter.

The impression is that, despite their divorce, Donna has always been home for Gordon. When the last version of Donna sings "Baby of Mine," it calls back to her singing it in 2x06, an episode whose importance I don't think any viewer could have foreseen. A lot happens in that episode, but one major plot point is that we meet Gordon's other family, who hasn't been mentioned. We meet his brother, sister-in-law, and hear about his dad. It's never spelled out, but it doesn't need to be: Gordon's childhood was less than idyllic, and he's estranged from his brother, apparently an alcoholic, for good reason.

There's no mention of his mother, ever, which feels like the most telling thing of all, even though it doesn't actually tell us anything. Based on how miserably Gordon and the girls' visit to his brother ends in that episode, it's easy to see how Donna's secure, seemingly 'normal' family life would have seemed appealing to Gordon. More to the point, it's not hard to imagine that his life with Donna and their children was his first real experience with a loving family. Donna might literally be the first mom he really knew, and maybe that's why Gordon looks like he's crying he sees her holding their daughter.

There's a larger discussion, or really multiple discussions, to be had about gender, marriage, heteronormative standards and practives, the way men exploit their wives' emotional labor, and the general danger of 'mak[ing] homes out of people,' as Warsan Shire puts it. Those discussions are beyond the scope of this post, but I do emphatically think that the writers wanted us to be thinking about those issues when they showed us Gordon and Donna's marriage. Their relationship was always uneven, with Donna doing more than her share of the work required to keep them solvent and afloat. Like a lot of people (of various genders…), Gordon kind of wanted Donna to be his mother, but then resented her for it. Donna reasonably wanted an equal partner. They divorced, it seems, because they couldn't meet each others' needs.

Their marriage also wasn’t all bad though, and more to the point, their marriage and their kids were always important to the both of them. It was a little jarring when Gordon saw Donna, especially because they fought so much this season (and, well, every season…) but it also made sense. Who else would Gordon see at that point, but Donna, their kids, and their home? She was the one real constant and source of support in his adult life. Not that Donna has any way of knowing what he saw, or necessarily knows how much she meant to him.

FINALLY: Let's talk about Halt and Catch Fire 4x04, and how nothing seemed to happen and then suddenly EVERYTHING happened

*Exhale* Okay. So, "Tonya and Nancy" didn't feel like an emotional roller coaster in the way that 4x03 did with its scene after scene of these characters suddenly being brutally self-aware and saying straight out that certain relationships aren't working and that certain characters do the same ineffective, destructive things over and over. Comparatively 4x04 felt pretty quiet. Until the end when it suddenly got incredibly loud, AMIRITE? Here's what I, personally, am still not over [nothing but spoilers for 4x04 of Halt and Catch Fire below]:

In general:

Even though I kinda hate them both, I'm sort of here for J*e and Gordon's blossoming bromance? When will they get a room? Yeah sure, they're setting us up for Gordon and Katie. But we're also talking about a slow burn that's been central to the show since the first episode!

Donna is handling being both personally utterly delighted by and completely professionally outdone by Haley's good work as well as can be expected. Basically, she deals with it by pushing all of her subordinates. Classic Donna.

Tanya is kicking. ass. If she gets punished for being great at her job I will sue AMC

Still really not okay with Bos' storyline or with him and Diane. I don't like that their marriage seems unhappy, and I'm not sure what we're supposed to get out of that? Sure, it sets up the big upset at the end of the hour. But making Bos desperate enough for Cameron to help him feels…like getting sprayed by an Airstream sewage pipe, tbh. Especially because it's hard to see how either of them get to a happy ending from this point. Bos in particular.

Not that Cameron's having a happy present. She's flailing (like literally, like in actual mud), still, and still hanging onto her connection with J*e to take the edge off. But he's becoming more invested in his work, Cameron rightfully does not want to work with him again or be with Hungry for Success J*e, and their relationship is already buckling under her paradoxical desire to have constant access to the distraction he provides from herself and her problems.

So the question becomes, how much did that affect Cameron's involvement with the Rover algorithm? Which will come out, because Donna will likely be able to tell who wrote it. Cameron's main motivation is helping Bos; was the possibility of sabotaging Comet a bonus, or no? (Doesn't really seem like it, she's not really that desperate to keep J*e around, even if she thinks she is.) Either way, it does seem like Cameron knew what she was doing, even if some viewers (like myself) didn't realize how huge the consequences of Rover being competitive might be.

And then of course there's the real, real question: how much did Cameron think about how this would affect her relationship with Donna? Did she really think she'd be able to write an entire algorithm for Donna's browser team without Donna noticing? Did she really think she'd be able to get away with this? Is it her version of setting a truck full of computers on fire?

The details:

THE SOUNDTRACK. Cameron's Infinite Airstream Playlist FTW!

Cameron insists on giving her ex gf's partner's rival search site a B- when Dick und Doof J*e and Gordon give it a C- and D- respectively….and also sees that Comet is unsustainable despite being really good.

"We can't pay everyone in Necco Wafers" REALLY, GORDON?!

Cameron Howe in a leather jacket and riding a motorcycle. UM? Okay, cool cool cool, not getting gayer literally every time I think about it or anything like that

This was all before the cold open!

We finally meet Dr. Katie Herman! And she is wearing a short floral dress, I had at least three just like it When I Was a Tween, Back in the 90s

Comet is hiring adults, good for them! Even better there are people and women of color! Including Lorraine, the second Black woman on screen this season. We also meet Risa, a bespectacled white woman who frankly has a humorless lesbian vibe (me too girl, me too), I loved her as soon as she pointedly corrected Gordon's pronunciation of Zagat's.

CONFIRMED: Cameron played 'Airstream' -- which basically means house -- with her friend Tori as a kid. Tiny Cameron Howe played house with a girl. Also this is the first we've heard of Cameron having childhood friends.

Donna and Haley do a regular girls' night out and it's precious

Cameron gets upset that J*e might not sleep over, but doesn't want to be alone with him after Gordon and Bos leave. And then…J*e hates being out at her trailer. Okay.

Donna, Joanie and I all feel the same way about Gordon getting a pie in the face

It's okay Cam, I always hated meeting my sh*tty gfs' friend groups that I never fit in with, too

Maybe I shouldn't but I kinda love how Cameron literally morphs into a child when Bos shows up and starts helping/parenting her. It's also another thing for which Mackenzie Davis deserves recognition.

I get that Cam's a genius but I don't appreciate repeated references to the visibly brown Rover coder's inadequacy. FREE CECIL!

'Click beetles'

Series A funding! Yay! Remind me to look up what that is on Comet later

Also not happy about Cecil being forced to lie and getting dragged into some wh*te nonsense! Even though it's also totally real, SMDH

I knew that Cameron would write the algorithm as soon as I saw Bos telling her about his debt, and I knew Donna was gonna figure it out when I saw her listening to Cecil and realizing that he'd been coached. Still didn't see the end coming, or realize what the stakes were until that final scene.

Halt and Catch Fire Soundtrack Appreciation 4/??: The Breeders and “Cannonball”

So, Back In The '90s, corporate interest in 'underground', 'alternative', and 'grunge' rock seemed to have this weird effect on how we categorize 'cool' versus 'uncool', and 'popular' versus 'unpopular', and how we value those categories -- suddenly, 'popular' was broadly considered unfashionable? it was a bizarre but important cultural moment where literally mentally ill, working class, former foster care kids like Courtney Love, Kurt Cobain, and a lot of other talented but generally socially invisible people began to achieve the kind of celebrity reserved for movie stars, pop stars and athletes, and were suddenly seen by certain outlets as cooler, smarter, more interesting Hollywood's beautiful people. By the time I got to middle school, the weirdos I knew were already listening to grunge, and the preppy kids I knew followed suit, and suddenly started to be nice ('nice') to som4 of the weird loner types.

The cool outcast misfit types listened to grunge, but who were the cool kids' fave bands' fave bands? Well, they listened to early/first gen punk, 'real' underground, 'indie' and college rock. I remember reading interviews where Courtney and Kurt would talk about their devotion to (now relatively well-known) bands like R.E.M., Big Black, The Replacements, Sonic Youth, Hüsker Dü -- and especially Pixies and The Breeders.

"Cannonball" is the first single from the Breeders' 1993 second album, Last Splash. It is an incredibly deceptive alternative pop rock jam whose feel and lyrics make it sound like it's about a crush or a fling ("want you/cuckoo/cannonball"; "I'll be your whatever you want") when it's actually a musical eye roll at men (and/or male bandmates?) who like to bully the people around them. Musically and sonically lighter and sillier and more upbeat than a lot of grunge and other alternative rock, "Cannonball" and the rest of the Breeders' catalogue is also still really loud, percussive, and electric guitar/distortion-oriented (as evidenced by the album's opener, which might be my favorite song by them, volume UP, my friends).

The Breeders are fronted by twin sisters Kim and Kelley Deal, a pair of women who really just aren't about being image-conscious in the way that even platinum selling women musicians are expected to be. There is nothing conventionally ~feminine~ about their affect or behavior, nothing about them feels managed or like it's wearing Spanx, you feel me? (I'm not shaming or shading anyone who does wear Spanx or performs conventional femininity, I'm just saying.) They don't look 'bad' when they're on-stage or onscreen, but they also don't seem to bother themselves with making any special effort to look any particular way, forget particularly alluring. In interviews, they're thoughtful but a little kooky, a little rambly, very funny, but they're assertive. Nothing about either of them comes off as shy, self-deprecating, or self-conscious.

The Breeders' buzz initially came from Kim Deal's work with another huge 'indie' band of the era. She was a founding member of Pixies, who are still one of Those Bands that obnoxious music snob bros will cross-examine you about if they get the chance. Those bros all revere Pixies' frontman as a genius and never seem to have anything to say about Kim, or her and frontman’s reportedly poor professional relationship. It happens that Kim Deal is largely responsible for what is arguably Pixies' most beloved and recognizable song, "Gigantic", from their 1988 debut album. It is definitely the most gorgeous and energetic of their songs that people actually know.

Which might really be the source of the tension that always existed between Kim & Pixies' frontman. He thought of Pixies as his project, for his artistic ~voice~ or what have you, and despite the success of "Gigantic" he refused to record and release any of her songs on their later albums. It's difficult to understand that as anything more than run-of-the-mill insecurity, and possibly jealousy. A talented, creative woman, trapped in a project with an obstinate, intractable, possessive male 'genius' -- does that sound like any characters we know? -- Kim did the only thing she really could do: she used Pixies' hiatus to go off and start a new project of her own, which would become The Breeders.

Which brings us, finally, to Cameron and her Airstream. (Spoilers for Halt and Catch Fire 4x04 below.)

We hear "Cannonball" over a montage of Cameron driving her new trailer out to a parcel of land she's just bought and setting up her temporary campsite. It's easy to take this scene for granted -- honestly, who would say no to any montage where Mack is wearing that sleeveless crop top, overalls, and boots??? -- but inadvertent lesbian eye candy aside, why does the show want us to see this? It's not really necessary; we would have guessed that Cameron did that work without seeing it.

The work that she's doing is important though. Cameron is slowly starting to build her own life, by herself. In a way she's rebuilding, but on some level, this is the first time she's embracing her autonomy, as opposed to her prior attempts to build a life and maintain a marriage by ceding her autonomy to a man. Cameron literally owns everything in that scene, and she bought it herself, with money from her financially successful game design career.

Not unlike Kim Deal forming the Breeders, Cameron is in kind of a strange if mostly good spot here. She's ten years into her career, and she's not a kid anymore, but she's a young adult whose life and career are from settled or over. She's worked hard, and had some successes, and she's also faced some real setbacks, and she's learning to work through these sort of first real grown up life/work challenges. In this scene, we see that she's okay, and that she's starting to figure what needs to be done, and she's doing that work. When she sits down by her new fire pit at the end of the scene, she seems content, in contrast to the later scene where she sits by herself after Gordon and Bos leave, and she looks like she might cry. Staying busy and doing necessary work is good and helpful for Cameron, but clearly, hoping that the people in her life will solve her loneliness and other personal issues doesn't work. (Life hint: other people never solve anyone's loneliness, and the sooner you learn that, the better for your emotional health and stability.)

Learning to fully assume responsibility for and take control of your life is a luxury that doesn't feel luxurious. It's daunting, it's expensive, and no matter how hard you work or how positive you think, you realize that there is so much over which you have no control, and that you really don't know how it's going to work out, or what's going to happen. After childhood trauma and years of rootlessness, Cameron is particularly prone to real anxiety about The Future, and where she'll end up.

As for Kim Deal: the Breeders were massively successful. Pixies broke up (also in 1993, hmm), Kim was allegedly notified by their frontman via fax (…lmao), and then the Breeders went on hiatus for a while, and then came back, and then Pixies reunited and Kim wound up finally leaving the band. The point is, none of it stopped her from working or becoming a well-known and respected songwriter, or from spending the last 20 years making the Breeders a hugely influential and inspiring band.

None of us know where we'll end up, or where this show is going with all of this, and we're all worried about what these showrunners are gonna do to Donna and Cam. But the invocation of "Cannonball" and the sound of Kim Deal's wise, irreverent, irrepressible voice bodes well, or to me, at least.

Halt and Catch Fire Wardrobe/Accessory Appreciation: Donna's Watch.

Because I, too, am an earth sign lesbian who likes and wants nice (even if not super expensive things and at least one other person on here (*cough* @theresebelivett *cough*) is interested in this detail: watches are generally status symbols. Of course you can now find affordable watches, but 'nice' watches, especially fancy Swiss watches with their very fine inner non-digital workings, are surprisingly expensive. The most well-known high end watch brand is arguably Rolex, and if you put 'rolex average price' into google, an article titled '5 Affordable Rolex Watches for New Collectors' come up. The cheapest watch in this article costs over $5,000 USD.

[Image set: Donna’s first scene in season 4, in which she sits down at the head of a conference table and promptly flips over the face of her watch. Good morning to you, too bby ;> ]

What kind of watch is Donna wearing, though? It's hard to see clearly, and my eyesight is Not Great, Bob! so I couldn't even tell if there's a face on the other side. But I put 'reversible watch' into google, and found a watch buying advice column (…no, really) that said the following:

The reversible face watch was invented in 1931 buy another Swiss company called Jaeger Le Coultre (henceforth JLC)…in response to complaints from British soldiers stationed in India (so, occupying a colony) who were upset about their watch faces getting broken during polo games. (No...really.)

The only reversible face watch worth buying today is a JLC Reverso.

I looked up the Reverso and JLC, and it looked an awful lot like what Donna is wearing in the premiere. When I asked google, 'halt and catch fire' 'reverso watch', a reddit thread came up. Redditors think it looks like a JLC Tourbillon, JLC Grande Reverso 976, or JLC Reverso Classic Small. The last one is the only one currently listed on the company's website. Price tag: $4,150. The highest price on the same page is $48,000. But most of the prices fall between $5,000 and $25,000 USD.

All of which is fascinating-slash-disgusting but we want know what it means for Donna, not the watch itself or how much it costs, right? This is Donna Emerson we're talking about though, so the brand and the price matter. True to form (or, canonical aspirations), Donna isn't wearing any old watch, she's wearing an expensive timepiece with a long history. And she's not wearing just any old expensive timepiece with a long history, she's wearing one that's considered a classic and that seems to be highly recognizable to people who know their luxury watches. So, it is certainly an intentional indicator of wealth and status for Donna.

Watches and time are also about power and ownership. Because Donna reverses the watch face when she meets with developers who are seeking funding, I thought that there might be a stopwatch or timer on her watch, but none of the Reverso models seem to have that feature. (Though, there is definitely something on the back of her watch, it looks like it might be the actual guts of the watch, which the Tourbillon model has, and hoo BOY it costs more than most people in the US make in a year.) Also, I think that the show would have shown us that more clearly if that was the point.

You know the expression time waits for no man? Time comes up a lot in the premiere: how long it's been since they heard from Cameron, how much of a jump they had on Mosaic (a year I think?) and how they blew it, Gordon's birthday. Even the title, “So It Goes” could mean ‘time goes on”. And finally, that scene where Donna gives the developers in her office 24 hours to come up with a new idea. One of them nervously chuckles and says, "Uh, that's a mighty quick turnaround...." Donna smiles and says, "Yes, yes it is." And SCENE. When you're in Donna's office, it's not about time. There's only Donna Emerson, and she decides the fate of your project.

[Image: Another scene from 4x01 in which Donna is HBIC and seated at the head of a conference table, and her watch is clearly visible. ALSO: do you see how huge the watch face looks here? Looks like she might be wearing the ‘men’s’ version, and tbh I’m kinda hot for it]

Finally: Donna changes or flips the face on her watch -- 'face' can also mean 'persona', right? Donna seems pretty generally bossed up, but I think she gets to put on a different face in those meetings. That’s where she gets to be her most ambitious, professional, visionary and invulnerable self; when she flips the face on her Reverso, she gets to put away her human, sensitive, flawed face, and to finally be who she wants to be.

Screencapped this lovely gifset by @goodobservationshirley (here’s a link to the original post) because it clearly and wonderfully shows the blocking and framing of Cameron and Donna’s unexpected onscreen reunion.

In the top two gifs, Cameron and Donna are pretty much in the center of their respective frames. But they both shift, and in the bottom four gifs, they’re both to the right and left of their frames. An obvious empty space is next to both of them, and with where the window is in both frames, it’s almost like they mirror each other. It’s yet another way for the show to tell us, visually, that Cameron and Donna are “still connected even though they are no longer friends, partners or anything to each other.”

Some things about Cameron Howe and Donna Clark's dynamic that are introduced in "Close to the Metal":

Cameron feels judged by Donna, both for her work habits and her sex life, which is understandable because Donna is hard on her in their first scene together. At first, Donna isn't so much judgmental as she is honest; not saving your work is bad practice that leads to crises like the one they're in. But casually pulling out the 'you slept with the boss to get here' is catty in a way that I don't completely buy from Donna, but then I guess it's ostensibly a response to Cameron condescending to her about being a wife and mother.

Cameron is already on the edge of a panic attack and Donna unwittingly pushes her over by telling Cameron, "Wow, you really don't think much of yourself, do you?" Yikes. At the same time, Donna isn't really wrong? Yikes reprised. Cameron seems a lot tougher than she is, and Donna is harsher than Cameron can tolerate in that moment.

After she calms down some, Cameron offers to watch Donna's kids. Um, why? After how Donna treated her? Maybe partly because she feels guilty and like the entire situation is her fault, and she doesn't have any other way to contribute to the BIOS retrieval effort. But it seems like Cameron is already looking for Donna's approval, and already acting out her as of yet unnamed issues with her own mom.

Donna seems to genuinely appreciate the offer, and unlike Gordon, she seems to see Cameron differently because of it. Donna ignores Gordon's objection and deservedly makes yet another decision about her daughters by herself, and for the first time, Cameron and Donna purposefully work with each other to get something done.

Cameron's mature and supportive offer is rewarded with confirmation that yeah, the Clarks, particularly Gordon, consider her white trash. (Which, really Gordon? Where are you from, again?) Cameron is rightfully hurt by this reminder that she's an orphan who doesn't really belong anywhere. She can't bring herself to follow through on vandalizing their house, and I think that's because she realizes that she's not so much angry as she is just really sad.

Ultimately: Donna's first real experience with Cameron is cleaning up a mess that she's responsible for -- and then realizing that it isn't actually Cameron's fault. She confronts J*e and because she's a total lesbian Donna mentions her specifically: "And Cameron, who's sleeping with you, she's just collateral damage?" Even with everything Donna has been through that day, she recognizes that Cameron got hurt the worst in all of this, and worse, that she was intentionally hurt and deceived by both her superior and an intimate partner. Donna is clearly not okay with any of this and she shouldn't be.

When they see each other in the parking lot at the end of the episode, Cameron apologizes for what she said to her earlier, and you get the sense that she's also apologizing for secretly having a minor meltdown, abandoning the girls, and almost taking her feelings of grief and jealousy out on their house. Notably Donna does not apologize, because Donna is Always Right. She does go out of her way to be as kind as she can be though: she admits to having failed to save work too and excuses Cameron's lashing out, and then offers Cameron the professional praise that she wants and needs. Donna also tries one last time to mother Cameron, "You should go home, sleep, maybe eat a real meal," not realizing that Cameron doesn't have anywhere to go. She seems to appreciate Donna's intent, though.

If you think about it, that's literally kind of their whole deal? They clash, fundamentally, because they are so different, Cameron makes the effort to bridge the divide and/or apologizes because she wants Donna's/someone's approval, and rather than reciprocating and meeting her halfway Donna forgives her and then becomes more protective and 'maternalistic' toward her?

(Donna doesn't respond that way to be controlling or withholding though, she forgives/excuses Cameron and keeps it moving because really holding her accountable would require Donna to look more closely at her own martyr-y habits, and by extension, her unhappiness with her marriage.)

TL;DR WHEN HAVEN'T THEY BEEN GIRLFRIENDS? You can practically see Donna mentally going to pick up an emotional UHaul for all their baggage when she asks if Cameron is collateral damage!