This was a HALT episode that shadowcased grief and how to deal with it for different generations, characters and what role Gordon had in their life. It is one of the most moving portraits of such a devastating loss as I've ever seen.
The show started about building a PC, but it was never a tech or IT documentary. Tech or IT was the world building or setting, since whatever the characters and their companies do is fictional against real history. And they always used their projects to project their wishes onto human connections. You know from the start none of their projects or businesses will go down into history. It has always been about the characters, how they inspire, love, sabotage or destroy each other. After all, since 1x06 Camero tried to put a soul in the machine. And as the characters grew and bonded more, they require less tech and more personal interaction about life itself to influence each other.
We've been with Gordon since the first episode. Neither viewers nor the surviving characters who loved him could just "move on and re-launch" the episode after learning of his death.
In other writing hands it could have been corny. But it wasn't. It was all just devastatingly and beautifully human, from the daughters, to Donna, Joe who does not know how to deal with it, to Cameron, Katie who only had freshly fallen in love and was envious of a picture of a time Gordon shared with Donna, not knowing the wrongs he did at the time, and Bos making some soul food.
So, everything else came to a grinding halt for this episode, as it should be.
No need to "guess" this is their last season. The writers and actors confirmed that S4 was going to be the last season and that it was exactly what they needed to wrap up the series on their own writing terms.
The show started about building a PC, but it was never a tech or IT documentary. Tech or IT was the world building or setting, since whatever the characters and their companies do is fictional against real history. And they always used their projects to project their wishes onto human connections. You know from the start none of their projects or businesses will go down into history. It has always been about the characters, how they inspire, love, sabotage or destroy each other. After all, since 1x06 Camero tried to put a soul in the machine. And as the characters grew and bonded more, they require less tech and more personal interaction about life itself to influence each other.
We've been with Gordon since the first episode. Neither viewers nor the surviving characters who loved him could just "move on and re-launch" the episode after learning of his death.
In other writing hands it could have been corny. But it wasn't. It was all just devastatingly and beautifully human, from the daughters, to Donna, Joe who does not know how to deal with it, to Cameron, Katie who only had freshly fallen in love and was envious of a picture of a time Gordon shared with Donna, not knowing the wrongs he did at the time, and Bos making some soul food.
So, everything else came to a grinding halt for this episode, as it should be.
No need to "guess" this is their last season. The writers and actors confirmed that S4 was going to be the last season and that it was exactly what they needed to wrap up the series on their own writing terms.