We love TV and we love recaps, but a lot of times it’s not the big-picture plot developments that make a show great. It’s the little things; the details in the dialogue, set design, props, and performance. With Close Up, we’ll be taking a look at the coolest moments and most interesting details in some of our favorite shows. Today we’re looking at the latest episode of Halt and Catch Fire: “Close to the Metal.”

Joe MacMillan has never showed any qualms about hurting people to get what he wants, and in “Close to the Metal” he nearly causes a company-wide meltdown in the process. Anxious to get some good press for Cardiff Electric, he gets a reporter to visit the company for a possible story. The writer is less than impressed with Joe’s sales pitch, however, so he needs a little drama to make things interesting. Cameron is just days away from finishing her coding job at this point, but Joe stages an “accident” that destroys her data — and when they check her backups, they’re all mysteriously blank.

Gordon calls in his wife Donna to help, and she demonstrates his smarts and savvy yet again by spelling out how she can manually recover the data from the destroyed hard drive. Unfortunately, Cameron’s started spiraling, and decides to trash Gordon's house when she learns that he and Donna have been calling her white trash behind her back. A last-minute visit from a neighbor causes her to rethink her actions, and it’s a good thing she does: Donna has saved the data and put the project back on course. Even better, the reporter suddenly finds Cardiff a very interesting subject for a story.

But Donna is the smartest person in the room, and deduces that Joe faked the whole thing. He admits the ruse when she calls him out, claiming that it was for the greater good and suggesting she not share the information with her husband. Later that night, Joe is ambushed by two police officers that are providing a little payback on behalf of the potential investor Joe manipulated in last week's episode. The clone project may have cleared another hurdle, but Joe MacMillan’s facade is falling apart piece by piece.