Silicon Valley's final season puts Pied Piper at the top, ready to fall down
TV Reviews Silicon Valley
When Silicon Valley premiered in 2014, it felt like a natural extension of the satire Mike Judge had developed in projects like Office Space and Idiocracy. With wealth and technology consolidated in a hyper-insulated space, the tech industry was a breeding ground for eccentric character types, and ideas that sounded like a great idea to those who came up with them but sounded silly to anyone who wasn’t part of that bubble. And despite diminishing narrative returns over the years, it’s kept to that ethos, the team of Pied Piper encountering all manner of missteps and egos on their quest for success.
As the show heads into its final season though, the environment has changed. Start-ups like Uber and WeWork are losing billions in their rush to go public, turning into punchlines where once they were lauded as successes. There’s a new data breach lawsuit in the headlines almost ever other day. Mark Zuckerberg is regularly hauled in front of Congress to squirm as he attempts to mimic human emotions and his company is a frequent target of attorney generals. The perception of tech companies has gone from amusingly disconnected from reality to almost callously disinterested in humanity. The joke is no longer as funny as it used to be, because of the unpleasant feeling the joke is on us.
But Silicon Valley has always had a eye for the trends and scandals of the tech industry—case in point, Russ Hanneman losing $300 million in his jeans pocket long before Gerald Cotten took $200 million to his grave—and Judge and company are now embracing the world that’s grown darker and more nihilistic in recent years. The battle for Pied Piper is no longer one of success, it’s going to be if Richard Hendricks and his friends will end their journey with their souls still intact. And if “Artificial Lack of Intelligence” is any gauge, the odds are not on their side.
To that end, Silicon Valley has gone back to Richard’s original consideration from the pilot, the idea that by starting his company he could break the mold. The opening monologue is a Thomas Middleditch showcase, beginning with the deer-in-headlights expression he’s perfected over six years and turning into an impassioned walk-and-talk as he explains to a United States Senate committee that the control and power of the tech behemoths is so great they can’t be brought to heel. Only his decentralized Internet, data access limited to its users, is the future. It’s a proud mission statement, one that’s almost undone by falling back in his chair, but at least that’s some assurance a human’s behind it.
Bold words to be sure, but they’re also in opposition to the new playing field that’s been drawn. Even moreso than the new office they found themselves in last year, Pied Piper’s new setup is vast and cavernous, a decision that Judge (in the director’s chair for the season premiere) showcases in the opening party as Richard and Jared are swiftly pulled apart by the hundreds of excited Pied Piper employees. They’re no longer in the grey area between start-up and legitimate company, a decision the creative team has thankfully embraced after stepping back from it so many times the last few years.
And with more human involvement comes proof of Gilfoyle’s hypothesis that humans suck. Colin bringing K-Hole Games back to Pied Piper was the tipping point in last season’s finale, and now he’s turned into a breaking point when he admits that Games Of Galoo is gathering user data through their headsets. The blithe immorality of Neil Casey’s performance stands in stark contrast to Richard’s increased lividity, taking entirely different levels of comfort about lying to Congress not under oath. And with more time to stew, the less it becomes about his company than it does a personal affront to Richard’s authority—something that he’s taking with less and less grace each time it happens.
It’s become a trope on Silicon Valley that Richard’s algorithm is an all-purpose solution to Pied Piper’s problems, and in the smartest move of the premiere it subverts that when Richard pairs it with Colin’s tech to aggregate his calls into a spiderweb of depravity. Rather than cowing Colin into silence, it sends him excitedly to his shareholders, presenting Richard’s blackmail attempt as the greatest data aggregation platform in the history of the medium. It’s the latest stark illustration of Silicon Valley’s nihilistic sense of humor, that everyone winds up being the systems architect of their own destruction and that there’s no level of shame high enough to keep someone from seeing an opportunity for profit.
If Richard’s losing the fight for his company’s integrity, he’s also losing what let him keep his own. With Erlich Bachman banished to an opium den—and T.J. Miller having zero chance of a final guest appearance, continually unaware that “benevolent benign maniac” is just another way of saying “piece of shit human being”—the core relationship of the show has grown to Richard and Jared. Ever since Jared showed up at the door of the house with a bottle of wine and a request to be a small part of what Richard was building, he’s been the moral center of Pied Piper, a series of increasingly dark reveals not obscuring his fundamental decency. (This week’s horrific analogy: “It’s like stealing from your pimp to pay for your friend’s appendectomy.”)
Now even that center is tested in what could become the true heart of the season. Jared’s so desperate to be close to Richard he allows this spiteful plan to go forward—complete with a botched “fuck you o’clock” joke—and disillusioned by his failure he drifts back to his old comfort zone of the incubator While it’s disappointing to see Silicon Valley reject another option to keep these marginal characters Big Head and Jian-Yang relegated to the margins, it sets up far more personal stakes as Jared offers his business development expertise to another socially maladjusted coder. If Jared truly cuts the cord with Richard, or even turns on him, those are stakes that feel even higher than Pied Piper’s future.
While Richard wages the fight for his company’s integrity, his employees continue to demonstrate their lack thereof. The feud between Dinesh and Gilfoyle remains a steady delivery of mutual loathing, and it’s now ossified to the fact that Gilfoyle has found a way to excuse himself from it entirely by creating an AI program to respond to all of Dinesh’s gripes. Writer Ron Weiner gets a chance to go meta here as Dinesh asks for his own AI to avoid dealing with people, subsequently crashing the entire Pied Piper network when it interacts with his and produces seven million emails worth of sexist and racist comments. And it also introduces an interesting sci-fi twist: how insane would it be if the combination of Richard’s algorithm, Gilfoyle’s server skills, and Dinesh’s craven self-centeredness, led to the end of the series with Pied Piper replacing Cyberdyne Systems as the company that brings about the end of the world?
If they do manage to end the world, they’ll at least have more of an impact than Gavin Belson at this point. He’s failed to crush Pied Piper so many times that he’s lost all sense of menace as an antagonist, and Silicon Valley appears to have reached the same conclusion. The developments of the last season means that Hooli, once the behemoth and cautionary tale to the scrappy upstart Pied Piper, is now consumed as an Amazon subsidiary. Matt Ross remains great at expressing how Gavin’s ideals and ego have become indistinguishable from each other, and his desire to keep the Hooli name leads to the best visual gag of the episode: so few employees left that he has lease the building to El Pollo Loco corporate, a poke in the eye that becomes literal when the new logo knocks off the last part of the old.
It says something that the two extremes for Pied Piper are giving birth to the new Skynet or sharing space with the market research team of Five Guys, and even more that neither of those options feel like they’re off the table. An ugly paranoia has descended over the world of big tech, and it seems like Silicon Valley is wholly content to drag its characters down into the muck with them. They just might pull a win out in this final season—it is what they do, after all—but for the first time, it’s starting to feel like a victory that might cost them everything.
Stray observations:
- Welcome back to The A.V. Club’s coverage of Silicon Valley! Glad to be back for the sixth and final round of system updates.
- With a new season, time to play Spot the Opening Title Updates. I caught an Impossible Burger truck replacing the Soylent truck, the Twitter pole starting to lean over, and an emphasis on Eaze delivery services.
- Richard’s first guesses on what Dinesh’s t-shirt tribute is supposed to be are “licked ass” and “dicked ass.” Gilfoyle wonders why those are his first two guesses, but given how long Richard’s known them, guessing they’d give him a profane tribute makes a lot of sense.
- If you ever see someone with a wearable chair, punch that person in the face.
- The diagram of Colin’s conversations is one of the great Silicon Valley visual gags. Highlights include: masturbated in sporting goods store, crop-dusted coworker’s cat, used condom he had in wallet for five years, manscaped gooch, made out at dog park, said he’d fuck a dog if it was hot enough, shot fish in a barrel.
- “He looks like a child in a custody hearing.” “Right, but you don’t feel sorry for him. You just want him to go away and not have any parents at all.”
- “Hiroshima was an elegant implementation!” “I don’t think anyone agrees with you on that.”
- “This is the cost of working with humans, Richard. They suck.”
- “Do you need the real me for this conversation?”
- “I know you’re my therapist. I was there when the court appointed you.”
- This week’s closing track: “Easy Lovin’,” Freddie Hart.
59 Comments
I have to admit that Thomas Middleditch kinda creeps me out now given that it came out that he’s a swinger with his wife having to approve every girl he has sex with. Still, it’s great to have the show back. The wearable chair looks exactly like the next stupid idea to suddenly become popular like the selfie stick.
So, he respects his wife enough to get her permission before engaging in what would seem to be a mutual agreement? Because I know several couples who do that. Is that my cup of tea? No. Do I judge them for it…. a teeny, tiny, secretive bit, but I would never tell them they’re wrong or creepy for doing it. If that’s what it takes for them to work, then what should any of us care? We all get to have our opinions but we don’t have the right to force them onto other people.This concludes my unnecessary morality TED talk with three people in the audience.
About two weeks ago I read an article about the start-up who make that butt-chair, and how they are trying to make that a thing. It truly is not the answer to anybody’s question. It is as stupid, awkward, and douchy as it looks. Better to carry a shooting stick.
I don’t know – I read the interview where he stated he was a swinger. It sounded like he strongarmed his wife into an open relationship at the threat of dissolving it if he didn’t get his way. This was his own admission.
I think, if you read the Playboy interview, it comes off much more like he pressured her into it.
What’s “creepy” about an open relationship/marriage?
You find out you have a chance and that’s creepy?
The thing that bugged me about it wasn’t the arrangement per se (not for me, but I don’t judge). It was the way he talked about it. Like after they got married, he just dumped it on her – we have to do this or I will not last in this relationship. That’s a shitty thing to drop on a person AFTER you’ve legally committed to each other. Then there’s the fact that he talked about it publicly while admitting she’d be pissed he was talking about it. He just seems like a bit of a selfish baby-man and I kind of feel sorry for his wife.
You sound like an uptight prick. It’s a shame that your life is so pointless and boring that you’d never be able to be in a relationship like that. Fuck you and fuck your kink shaming, you vanilla piece of shit.
I sure as hell didn’t want to know anything about Thomas Middleditch’s sex life and I turned away once I read the information. It reeked of “I play a dork on a TV show, but I slay all kinds of hot poon on the regular.”
Is that true? Or is it one of those funny fake anecdotes they tell at late night shows?
He did a long interview in Playboy about it recently.
Nope. There is nothing wrong with an open relationship that has healthy boundaries. But what is creepy is that Thomas Middleditch told the world about this arrangement without the consent of his wife. Now that is creepy.
I hope his wife goes full Verizon on him and promises “unlimited” sexual partners of up to one person.I cant think of another ad campaign that made me hate some one who I sort of liked as much as the Middleditch/Verizon commercials.Second place are the State Farm commercials where Aaron Rodgers treats his agent like shit. In the latest one, Rodgers is getting groups of people to gang up and bully his agent. I wonder if State Farm will cover the property damage when the agent gets coked up and blows his brains out in Aaron Rodgers’ living room?
I can’t put my finger on it on how but they seem to have Richard slowly mutating into Mark Zuckerberg.As the reviewer suggests Silicon Valley’s always been one step ahead of the public’s perception of the real Silicon Valley as, over the course of the show’s run, that perception has shifted from from ‘Silicon Valley techies are well-meaning though eccentric disruptors and innovators who should be running the world’ to ‘big tech will almost certainly destroy us all’. So I’m really curious how this season’s going to end–whether or not it will hold out some hope for some version of a sincerely egalitarian Silicon Valley.I will wager we’ll hear of Bachman’s offscreen death sometime this season.
I bailed on this show a couple of years ago, but I’m surprised they hadn’t killed him already.
I think they kept him alive to hold out the possibility of a return, but I’d guess Miller’s subsequent problems pretty much put an end to that.
I’m hoping they break the formula a bit this season, because each season starts/ends the exact same way: Just when Richard/Pied Piper seem to be coming up roses, Richard does something to fuck that up for everyone involved. Cut to ten episodes later and they’ve compounded his screw up while also redeeming it slightly by making him become more of a monster. Wash, rinse, repeat. Don’t get me wrong, I love this show, just hoping for more of a curveball in its final season. Why 80%+ of tv shows can’t seem to nail their landings at their end, especially after great runs, I’ll never understand, but a bad series finale spoils the pot every time.
This. And it’s starting to look that way. Not to mention it keeps recycling the same Gavin/Hooli plot cycle of him ineptly trying to plot/scheme against Richard and whoever else, etc, etc, as it seems that he’s never learned his lesson after all these years. And moar of the same Gilfoyle vs Dinesh bickering between each other, and ethnic jokes through Jin Yang. Yay. The last episode of the last season would’ve been great enough as a series finale. Would’ve been happy if they’d just had ended it there. Not even sure what the point of this season.
I’ve never had an issue with SV’s formula because it seems true to the boom/bust cycles most startups seem to go through.My prediction for the finale is that Hendricks cashes out (he should have just taken the $10 million Belson offered in season one!) and leaves the tech world to become a schoolteacher in Idaho.
*Lumberjack in Alaska
Well, they start at the top this season. So that’s a change *shrugs
New in the opening: Facebook logo temporarily turns to Russian.
The whole thing with Games of Galoo shows a major implementation problem with Richard’s idealistic decentralized internet. Any company that chooses to use it can just decide to collect user data, it seems.
I think that’s always been one of the big issues and one that they’ve rarely addressed. For all the big talk about a new, free internet and this great, idealistic technology, they have no real way to control how the tech is used. Richard will never be able to overcome the desire for profit that ultimately drives most of Silicon Valley’s tech companies.
this discussion, like many, many others; ends logically with “the problem is capitalism”
I couldn’t believe it when they started playing “Easy Lovin’” for the end credits. My parents had that album when I was in grade school and would constantly play it in rotation with Simon & Garfunkle’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and the original cast album of “Jesus Christ Superstar.”And people wonder how I turned out the way I did…
I enjoyed the premiere and I laughed frequently at many of the antics, but I have to admit that I am starting to grow tired of what this show is offering. The stuff with Dinesh and Gilfoyle was hilarious and probably the highlight of the episode for me, but a lot of the stuff with Richard felt cringey because we’ve been here before a dozen times and it always ends the same. Richard’s stubbornness now feels kind of rote and I find myself wanting him to just make a damn decision instead of trying to come up with some scheme to have his way. On the other side of things, I’m tired of Gavin. His shtick feels old now. Nothing has changed and I could honestly not care what is happening with him. It’s obvious that he will somehow manage to wedge into Pied Piper business, even as Hooli circles the drain, but I just really don’t even care anymore. The return to the incubator was a pleasant surprise as Jian Yang and Big Head are always welcome. As a positive I-don’t-care, they can come up with whatever excuse they want to feature the incubator with the two characters and I’d be happy to accept it. I can say I am honestly happy this is the final season as, for however much I love the show, it does feel like it’s worn it’s welcome and it’s time to close this story.
First time I’ve ever watched Silicon Valley and thought this show’s getting a little long in the tooth. But I guess that’s ok since it’s the final season.
Yeah the whole Dinesh and Guil thing is beyond tiresome. I find it offputting. The chair gag was great though. This is very much a wash, rinse repeat. So good that this is the final season. It’s definitely time.
Though season 5 didn’t lean too hard into the Dinesh/Gilfoyle bickering. I thought they’d put that behind them, but I guess not.
Though season 5 didn’t lean too hard into the Dinesh/Gilfoyle bickering. I thought they’d put that behind them, but I guess not.
First time I’ve ever watched Silicon Valley and thought this show’s getting a little long in the tooth. But I guess that’s ok since it’s the final season.
Don’t watch the show but FFS I can’t stand whoever that is in the lead image. I hated him in the verizon commercials. He just has such a punchable face
Gavin Belson has been defanged by overuse in the same way that Q was on Star Trek: The Next Generation.Having watched seasons 3, 4, and 5 over the weekend, I can say that I really miss Erlich, even if some in the cast do not miss T.J. Miller.“…a frequent target of attorney generals. ”Ak! That’s “attorneys general”. Someone who writes for a living should probably know this.
Ak! That’s “attorneys general”. Thank you.
theyre both valid
No. They aren’t. Attorney-generals is used by the British but they ‘connect’ the words using a hyphen. Which changes the rules of pluralization.
Genuine question, in a real-world context, what is it that Pied Piper is now doing? I get the concept, kind of, of a decentralized internet, I don’t super see what role a big silicon valley business plays in that though. BUT, in all earnestness I may simply not be grasping it because the decentralized internet idea still seems fuzzy to me, to date myself, is it like the BBS days of the 90s? Not nitpicking, I get that pied piper has always just been a placeholder for an inroad into silicon valley goofiness, so its real-world feasibility etc has never been the important aspect of the show, just curious what role its alluding to playing at these days.
It sounds somewhat similar to IPFS and content-centric networking projects in general, but in real life IPFS is a tiny, fringe project with maybe 15 people on staff
I just wish Middleditch got owned by AOC like Zuckerberg did. The pornhub meme has to be my favorite internet thing of the year.
“amusing mostly for the unintentional commentary on how repetitive their rivalry has become.”Are we sure it was unintentional? It seemed like it was hanging a lampshade on it to me. Having a robot Gilfoyle respond to everything Dinesh says with “I hate you.” “I want to kill you.” etc… definitely felt like they knew exactly what they were doing. I guess their relationship over the remainder of the season will determine the intent behind that gag, but for right now I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they were winking to the audience like “yeah we know their banter has become pretty robotic”
The writers, Kumail, and Martin are all clearly smart comedians… I kind of doubt they accidentally stumbled on that perfect metaphor unknowingly.
My thoughts exactly. It might be over-identifying as a writer, but I always see people talking about unintentional comedy on TV when I’m 95% certain it was quite intentional and it’s become quite the pet peeve.
Agreed, it’s making the assumption that “you” the viewer are smarter than the writers because you picked up on something that you assume was so subtle there was no way they noticed they were doing it during the brainstorming, writing, editing, re-writing, editing, table reading, re-writing, rehearsals, re-writing, filming process.
I really liked the absurdity of Big Head pouring cans of Coke out on the trees, then telling Jian Yang “I got you more cans” to shoot at.” Why do that outside?
Who else was weirded out by fit Dinesh.
“attorney generals”What, when you go to Burger King do you order a couple of Whopper Juniors? Major faux pas.
No mention of the Facebook logo turning into Russian letters in the intro? Is that not new this season?
That is not new this season.
I’m pretty indifferent to the show at this point, but I really enjoyed the gag with Gavin’s security(?) bud trying to angrily confront the employee talking about the Amazon deal.
I’m disapointed he didn’t bring an animal to make his point.
Nice review, but these embedded videos that start automatically are making me really
dislike the site. Please let
your bosses know how frustrating it is for readers and how it makes us visit the site less often.
Anyone else disappointed that Gavin Belsom didn’t bring an endangered animal to Congress to illustrate his point?
There should have been some kind of endangered tree squirrel in a cage behind him that nobody acknowledged.
Is Dinesh and Gilfoyle’s loathing mutual? I also got the impression that Dinesh craves Gilfoyle’s approval. Look at the way he turned to his uninterested co-worked and said ‘we’re friends’.
Great review Les, but just wanted to comment on something else tangentially.If you use The A.V. Club search option and enter Silicon Valley, you get results back for Newswire, Interviews, Great Job Internet, Clips, Trailers, and indeed every section aside from TV Club. One you would think someone would search for most option. Beneath the main results set is a link to a TV Club review of Silicon Valley, but from a previous season.AV Club search is truly the very worst search system, and that’s saying something. I had to go into TV Club and scroll down for many pages.
I’ve started just Googling “Silicon Valley AV Club” to save myself the headaches. It’s super annoying.
It’s “attorneys general”.
Finally watched and“how insane would it be if the combination of Richard’s algorithm, Gilfoyle’s server skills, and Dinesh’s craven self-centeredness, led to the end of the series with Pied Piper replacing Cyberdyne Systems as the company that brings about the end of the world?”got pretty close.