HBO's Silicon Valley
- Thread starter dahliaclone
- Start date
The first few episodes had been languishing on our DVR, so I binged them all myself this weekend. My thoughts:
- I have always really liked TJ Miller, saw him do stand-up at the Union this fall and it was hilarious. However, the guy's a possible-rapist who is apparently a drunk and possibly addict. The show made the right decision to mutually part ways... but I do think some of the punchlines have suffered for it. The last season or two, he had a much smaller role - and this show is made better by the bit parts that are scene-stealers.
- I'm torn on Bighead looking like he'll get more screen-time. He can be hilarious in small doses, but his character is pretty one-note, and not incredibly believable. With some of the bigger personalities, they're so ridiculous that they're believable, and they're caricatures of archetypes. But it's a little implausible that someone could keep failing upwards so phenomenally in Silicon Valley when he can barely tie his own shoes.
- I know I'm a dork, but it hasn't been very techy yet this season, and I miss that. The "middle out" scene and the porn convention were two of my favorite scenes in the whole series, and it's because they're winks to the intelligence of the audience. Not been much winking so far.
I will keep watching, but it's a little slower going. I don't care that Dinesh and Gilfoyle have the same dynamic over and over - I just love watching the two of them. I love Jared so much it hurts. I can take or leave all of Richard's scenes, and I hope they find a new foil other than always going to the Gavin Belson well.
I also know Silicon Valley (the place) is a sausage-fest, but it seems like they've marginalized the few women's characters even more than before. Monica barely gets any screentime because they've made her role so unimportant.
- I have always really liked TJ Miller, saw him do stand-up at the Union this fall and it was hilarious. However, the guy's a possible-rapist who is apparently a drunk and possibly addict. The show made the right decision to mutually part ways... but I do think some of the punchlines have suffered for it. The last season or two, he had a much smaller role - and this show is made better by the bit parts that are scene-stealers.
- I'm torn on Bighead looking like he'll get more screen-time. He can be hilarious in small doses, but his character is pretty one-note, and not incredibly believable. With some of the bigger personalities, they're so ridiculous that they're believable, and they're caricatures of archetypes. But it's a little implausible that someone could keep failing upwards so phenomenally in Silicon Valley when he can barely tie his own shoes.
- I know I'm a dork, but it hasn't been very techy yet this season, and I miss that. The "middle out" scene and the porn convention were two of my favorite scenes in the whole series, and it's because they're winks to the intelligence of the audience. Not been much winking so far.
I will keep watching, but it's a little slower going. I don't care that Dinesh and Gilfoyle have the same dynamic over and over - I just love watching the two of them. I love Jared so much it hurts. I can take or leave all of Richard's scenes, and I hope they find a new foil other than always going to the Gavin Belson well.
I also know Silicon Valley (the place) is a sausage-fest, but it seems like they've marginalized the few women's characters even more than before. Monica barely gets any screentime because they've made her role so unimportant.
My PS Vue rolled into this episode after finishing the new one from Sunday night. I forgot how hilarious it was.
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My PS Vue rolled into this episode after finishing the new one from Sunday night. I forgot how hilarious it was.
It is such a legitimately hilarious scene. Jared's awkwardness/innocence and such just make it.
A couple things, that rape allegation was debunked and found that the girl who made the accusation was a previous classmate of TJ and his wife, who during college would send threatening messages to them because he was dating wife instead of her. That was the response that he and his wife gave, and I'm not sure why we should believe otherwise.
Also, the show did not want TJ to leave, every executive except for Alec Berg was pleading with him to stay. TJ and Berg had a rift and Miller questioned his storylines (the repetitive nature of the highs and lows of starting a business) and Berg did not like that his writing was brought in to question. However, he knew that Erlich was such a big part of the show that he couldn't just fire him or write him out.
I don't claim to love the guy, and he's an idiot for what he's done recently in the news. But I can't blame him for leaving SV at his height when he had Deadpool, The Emoji Movie, and an hour long HBO stand up special available for him to be involved in.
That is what they both said, yes. Which could also be consistent with trying to keep your brand strong. I said "potential" because I don't think we're getting a full account of the story from either side. I want it to not be true - just like I don't want Aziz Ansari to be an a-hole (although he's definitely not a rapist, I feel like that whole story was just all around bad behavior by everyone). But I think there are at least nuggets of truth in each.
TJ said that Berg was the only one who wanted him to leave, but there have been multiple sources (including Mike Judge: LINK) who refuted that. I think that both sides were done.
I actually really think TJ is hilarious, and want him to be a great guy. But it sounds like he has some demons at some level, it's just questionable how much?
The scene where Gavin Belson was talking out where he should stake his claim on the earth, as he names off Billionaires who "own whole sections of the earth" had me dying.
"And James Cameron owns the entire sea floor!"
"And James Cameron owns the entire sea floor!"
This was a better episode across the board than anything else this year. Jared's triumph with his manure analogy was terrific as was his inevitable immediate fall from grace. The creepy guy and his she-bot was funny to.
Agree with Angie on the lack of female roles so far in geek world. Seems with that being in the news so much in 2017 that they would have found a way to work that in.
Agree with Angie on the lack of female roles so far in geek world. Seems with that being in the news so much in 2017 that they would have found a way to work that in.
There are good amount of women in the new team of coders. But having been in Silicon Valley working many times over the past 10 years (we have an office there), and being a geek. I will agree, it is a total sausage fest.
It is. And I know that it's accurate in that way. I just thought Monica was a good character, and it's too bad that she's getting such reduced screen time.
Even just Iowa-based IT does not have a lot of women. We're sort of unicorns.
I'm happy to say that I work with a bunch of great "unicorns" in the IT business today, and over the last 20 years.
I will say, it is far more normal in today's Silicon Valley for women to be in Director and higher up roles rather than being the coders in the bullpen. Not to say that that isn't changing, and that there are not women coders. But the ones with prominent positions are mostly the ones who were in the tech world before women coders was a normalcy. The monica and lori roles exemplify a more standard position for women in the tech industry today, imo, but it isn't like SV hasn't explored the women coder storyline as well.
I find it hilarious that you didn't notice it until they mentioned it. I (and probably most viewers) saw it immediately when they were trying to choose the new "signature".
I thought last night's episode was really well done again. Gavin getting outplayed, Dinesh-Gifoyle's back-and-forth, Jared's low-key comments and the Lauri's anxiety of having to be CEO, and the fact that the robot's clothes fit Lauri perfectly with her identical facial expressions were all fantastic pieces last night.
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Jared's analogy of "working the corner" freaking killed me, man. That was hilarious.
I was thinking someone in the show mentioned right away or at least hinted at it. Maybe it was just so obvious to me I assumed they said something.
"If you want to work the corner, you can't fall in love every time you turn a trick. That's why you do the Oxy."
I absolutely love cringe-worthy and incompetent (at least on the business side of tech) Richard. It's when he becomes overly arrogant that I find the character insufferable. I get there needs to be some arrogance in order for him to dig his own grave (and to dig himself out of it), but they're turning him into a total ******* far too much lately.
I don't know how many of us thought they were going to go with the "anatomy" angle with the signature (although considering "center-out", perhaps I should have seen that coming), but we knew something was coming because after 5 seasons we know Gavin and we know Hooli. When Gavin says he's going to task the workforce to come up with his signature as a way of doing it on the cheap, if you're familiar with the Gavin and Hooli story you know something is going to go wrong - it's just a matter of what.
