“I actually don’t know what to do when things are going well,” Richard says breathlessly to Monica early in “Tethics” after a meeting with an AT&T executive that promises PiperNet’s access extended to hundreds of millions of consumers. And that’s an ethos that permeates most of Silicon Valley, a show that thrives on making things as hard for its main cast as possible. In six seasons every indignity that can be dumped on Richard Hendricks and company has been dumped, a series of personal and professional humiliations that have kept him from being the golden goose of Santa Clara Valley for more than a week at a time.
Those beats are often frustrating for the way they’ve kept the show at a static level between seasons, but Silicon Valley deserves credit for the fact that when these beats happen they do so organically. Mike Judge, Alec Berg, and their team never need to introduce a curve ball out of nowhere, as when the company fails it’s always a combination of the same proven factors. It’s an industry whose standards and favor mutate frequently. They have vindictive enemies who know how to play the game better than they do. And at their core, Richard and his team tend to let the uglier sides of their personalities get in the way of making smart decisions. It’s a combination of all three that leads to the latest hurdle in “Tethics,” a sturdy rebound from the lower points of last week.
The highest point of last week was Gavin’s search for meaning after his Hooli ouster, and somehow falling upward from self-published author to anti-tech evangelist. Now he’s taken that mentality one step further to establish his own code of conduct, a pledge for technology ethics—the erstwhile “Tethics”—that he’s pitching to the heads of industry. It understandably gets under Richard’s skin from the first interview he witnesses, and he takes to Twitter to rant about Gavin’s hypocrisy in circulating the pledge. And unfortunately, he does so in between his meeting with the AT&T executive and said executive signing the pledge, making Richard’s refusal to play Gavin’s game a series impediment to this game-changing deal. Best line of the episode goes to the AT&T executive assistant, urging Richard to swallow his pride: “We all have to fall in line, or we’ll be in PR hell. Or worse! We’ll face government regulation.”
It could feel excessive to draw the Richard/Gavin feud out past Richard’s victory in “Hooli Smokes!” but writer Pete Chatmon makes it work by adhering to the reasons why both the men in question want to drag this out. Introduced with the empty ethos of “making the world a better place” Gavin has absolutely no shame about claiming lofty ideals to sate his ego, and is deeply attuned to how the industry will jump on any trend if it makes them look or feel better. And as much as Richard genuinely believes in those ideals, his innate pettiness won’t let his arch-rival take public credit for them, and he can’t do the bigger or even smarter thing and just keep his mouth shut. (Another poor character trait of Richard’s, he gets pissy whenever people don’t think he’s funny. His irritation at no one laughing at “thumbass” is a clever runner through the episode.)
The importance of the AT&T deal also reverberates through the episode’s subplot, which renews a promising pairing from last season. Tracy is determined to drive up Pied Piper’s profile for the AT&T bigwigs, and part of that is providing strong employee satisfaction ratings. Unsurprisingly, Gilfoyle’s interpersonal numbers are dead last—but more surprisingly, Monica’s aren’t that far away. (Monica quick to blame Priyanka’s “witches’ nest” at Foxhole for that, furthering last week’s theory that the writers know she’s poorly suited to inspire women in the tech industry.) The two decide to enter into a competition for best scores, leading to some sturdy cringe comedy as Monica tries and fails to endear herself to the programmers fails on several occasions, up to and including a Princess Leia haircut that delivers the episode’s biggest laugh.
It’s a good expansion of the late-series discovery that Monica and Gilfoyle have a connection, furthering the good work done in in last season’s “Fifty-One Percent.” There’s nothing romantic or even all that friendly about it, it’s a pragmatic pairing since they both hate everyone else at Pied Piper and want to be left alone to do their jobs. And once Gilfoyle admits he’s just telling them what they want to hear so he can discover their passwords, it’s Monica who suggests they sink Tracy’s scores in retaliation and get the program killed entirely. It’s a coin-flip as to whether or not this is another of Tracy’s employee manipulation games until the end, but the win it gives to the two of them is ultimately more rewarding in the long run, down to a highly satisfying clinking of mugs.
Similarly satisfying is the way that Richard finds a way out of bending the knee to Gavin Belson. Jared starts reading through the Tethics language and Richard realizes that a lot of its platitudes are more than just generic. With as little regard as Gavin has for other people, it’s no surprise that not only has he plagiarized the entire Tethics mission statement, he’s been plagiarizing it from takeout menus. It’s about as scathing an indictment of the industry’s commitment to change as you can get, where no one cares enough about doing the right thing to double-check if Applebee’s did it first.
Richard pushes Gavin to back off and let him have this one thing, and Gavin does—and then some. Matt Ross is making a case for MVP of the final season as Gavin grasps for relevance and revenge, and his speech here is fine form as he sacrifices Tethics publicly and throws Richard’s insult back in his face a minute later. Gavin’s total lack of shame in embracing the mantle of Tethics also extends to a total lack of shame in destroying his new reputation, welcoming any and all scrutiny of his business practices—especially given he doesn’t have the business anymore. It’s the exact same problem that got Gavin in so much trouble in “Terms Of Service,” so eager to acquire a competitor in full he didn’t take the time to detoxify its assets. Small wonder Ron has to take his hat off to Gavin, because it’s both a brilliant scheme and a brilliant twist to Pied Piper’s fortunes.
What’s going to save Richard? The only figure in the valley with less shame than Gavin. After being listed in the main cast all season, Chris Diamantopoulos makes his triumphant return in “Tethics” as Russ Hanneman’s back to ask for a favor. Silicon Valley is killing it with cold opens in its final season, and this is possibly one of the best as Russ pitches a three-day festival devoted to his lifestyle in a Mad Max: Fury Road-inspired video that allows the show to go to a special effects extreme it doesn’t often indulge in. (Mike Judge and company must have seen The A.V. Club’s pick for best film of the last decade coming and decided to get that bump.) Diamatopoulos is top-notch here, gushing over the potential in the festival and then flipping to anger on a dime once Richard sensibly decides not to enter this ego trip:
Richard: “We appreciate the interest…”
Russ: “I like where this is going.”
Richard: “But…”
Russ: “Fuck!”
Bookending the episode neatly, once more history repeats itself. We’re back to where we were the first time we met Russ all the way back in season two’s “Bad Money,” where right at the moment Richard was ready to admit defeat Russ offered him a devil’s bargain to save Pied Piper. Now, it’s offering to blackmail the California attorney general with the information that Russ bribed that same AG—a staggering degree of arrogance and disregard for consequences—all if Richard lends his support to RussFest. Richard’s traded one monster for another, and once again, there’s no one to blame but himself.
Stray observations:
- Dinesh’s narrative is a minor part of the episode, but it fits into the theme of bringing misfortune on yourself. At maximum insufferable levels heading to Hawaii for a Pied Piper pilot program (of course he’s saying “Aloha” to everyone on the plane) he insists on a lei made with real flowers and triggers an allergic reaction that costs him any chance of sightseeing. You’d hate to see it happen to anyone other than him.
- Jared’s returned to his role as COO with no fanfare, but a conflict with Holden is brewing as now each man sees the other as a threat to their relationship with Richard. You have to feel for Holden here, who may be a crazier man now but is nowhere near qualified to wage psychological war against Jared—his self-declared new best friend. Holden: “Are you fucking with me?!” Jared: “Why would I do that to my best friend?”
- Russ’s dynamic with the Pied Piper team remains a great constant. No “This guy fucks!” to Jared, but his reaction to Gilfoyle remain on point. Gilfoyle, on Russ’s desire to have a Burning Man for profit: “So, Earning Man?” Russ: “… I literally love you, you spooky fuck.”
- Gilfoyle’s feedback: – He’s unapproachable. – RUDE. Rude. Rude. Rude. Rude. – Bertram Gilfoyle is capable of great hurt with an unsettling stare. Monica’s feedback: – She’s aloof and cold. – I don’t think she likes me. I don’t think she likes any of us here. – Every time I see her, she seems bothered that I’m even there.
- “You see the chick in the Racism car? I banged her in the Famine truck.”
- “The Verge referred to you as ‘notable Tethics holdout’ and ‘amateur insult comedian.’”
- “It’s like you have a non-evil twin. It’s very weird.”
- “I saw a yeti one time and forgot for a couple of years.”
- “Jesus, look at that.” “… Is that you?” “Yeah, so’s this, and this. That’s portrait mode. There’s a panoramic in here somewhere.”
- This week’s closing track: “Zen Drums/Dada Drums,” Bibio. Thanks to @kisszem on Twitter for succeeding where Shazam failed.
34 Comments
This episode paints AT&T (parent company of HBO) in a far too positive light. In the real world they don’t care about public relations, employee satisfaction, ethics, or investing in their phone network.
I mean they also said Facebook signed tier ethics contract. It’s fiction. What’re you going to do?
But the benevolent corporate overlords at AT&T love all their children at HBO! They’re all one big happy family and every HBO show is just overflowing with love for their supreme leaders.
Companies like AT&T, Facebook, and Google pledge to a standard that one exec describes as “toothless.”It’s almost as if name dropping tech companies that are known for ethical issues is the joke.
Of course not, they eternally have great PR just by the merit of not being goddamn Comcast.
They don’t care, but they love doing things like signing a toothless pledge that they can use to *say* they care
Is there an irl company someone can point to that compares to PP? At this point, they seem to be holding on by a thread. How many times this season alone has PP almost been killed, only to have a last minute save? I’d like to know if any companies have enjoyed as many saving graces as these guys have.
I thought Gilfoyle’s comment was just “so…. Burning Man”, which was a better joke and an indictment of the current state of Burning Man.
From all the recurring characters, Chris Diamantopoulos as Russ makes me laugh the most. Glad for his return before the show ends! Also, glad there’s been more Amanda Crew this season.
I love him. I feel like when Mike Judge cowrote or gave notes on the character, he was like “Give me a live action, filthy rich, Butthead.”
He actually reminds me a bit of Kevin Dillon’s Johnny Drama from Entourage (the best part of that show!). The super enthusiastic bro thing.
The show has always had such a bizarre relationship with Chris Diamantopoulos. He’s been listed as a starring cast member all season, yet sat out well over half of it. With only two episodes left, I can’t imagine he has a massive role. It was even more bizarre in season 4 where he was listed as a starring cast member, yet appeared in a grand total of literally two scenes across the whole season. I guess Russ is a tough character to have too much of. He’s like a hurricane of deranged dick behavior and he’s such a funny performance. I’ll be deeply upset if Russ doesn’t get even a brief scene with Gavin and Laurie. He’s always so much with the main characters but I’ve always longed to see what he’d be like with other people (we know for a fact Laurie hates him and Russ clearly hates Gavin).
Agreed. I was shocked in season two when they didn’t have a Laurie/Russ interaction on-screen. My view has always been he works best in small doses, one or two episodes to explode across the show’s plots and complicate everything. He definitely wore out his welcome by the end of the second season when he was around full-time. I don’t know why he shows up as a series regular in the credits, beyond some sort of contractual obligation. I’d certainly rather see more of him than Big Head or Jian-Yang.
Big Head is mostly useless at this point, but Jian-Yang is easily one of my favorite characters in the show.
Unless Big Head has some crazy role in the finale, it’s bizarre he’s been literally sitting around for two straight seasons. I actually enjoyed his random story in season 4 where he became a teacher, but the show seemed to immediately lose interest in that. Big Head rapidly became such a comically clueless character (despite seeming relatively intelligent in season 1) that I suppose it became difficult to write stories for him.
I’m actually stunned now I think of it that Russ and Big Head have never met. I could imagine Russ gets a happy ending where he and Big Head become best friends.
I want a spin-off show where he tells us how car doors should go.
He should be the next Top Gear presenter
As much as I love that car door gag, it’s a testament he’s gone at least a couple of seasons without using it.
If Richard could just shut his mouth… it’s hard to watch that same flaw screw him time and again because even though he is often in the right he just can’t help himself.
That song at the end started of funny – and then verged into totally creepy. Good job, Silicon Valley!
“the writers know she’s a bad example for women in tech.”She seems like a very successful women in tech.
“In six seasons every indignity that can be hoisted on Richard Hendricks and company has been hoisted…”I think you might mean “foisted on”.
*moisted on
I think they mean “perused on”
Actually, I believe it’s Gilfoyle that decides to drop the HR rep’s score. Monica wanted him to raise hers.
The closing music sounded like a very weird remix of The Laughing Policeman. Or at least, the laughter sounded like it was sampled from that song.
The past few seasons have felt like the show is sacrificing character at the expense of jokes and conflict, Dinesh being a prime example. The first seasons of the show, Dinesh is selfish, but still has awareness of social standards. He was relatable: we all know someone who thinks they are the best person in the room, but it comes out of a desire to be successful, or liked, or some other deep desire. Now? He is boorish and borderline-unwatchable. He exists in every seen just to be a punchline. And the show surrounds him with one-dimensional characters just to play up that fact (I don’t know who that coworker is that Dinesh hates, but he has no personality of his own, and we have no reason to care about who he is or why Dinesh hates him). Dinesh never grows anymore. This season he ripped off his cousin for millions of dollars, and we never even revisit it. Lack of growth can be a character trait, but the show has to acknowledge it.Jared is another wasted opportunity. Why introduce another character for him to mentor (who, again, has no depth) only to throw it away before any interesting development can occur? It felt as if the show needed a reason for Jared to leave, so just threw him away, until they needed him to come back. It’s lazy.Silicon Valley was best when there were stakes. Not just conflict, but actual goals that the characters wanted to achieve. I loved the TechCrunch storyline because that gave every episode a sense of purpose and direction. It was a constant driving force that centered the characters, forcing them to interact towards a shared goal, rather than allowing them to meander, looking for small conflicts that don’t matter (like the Piper Rating System). This season introduces big issues and resolves them within 20 minutes. Pied Piper was being threatened, found a solution of buying Hooli, and accomplished that goal immediately. We have been discussing the Hawaii rollout only for it to end within 10 minutes. Now, we have Russfest for the final two episode, something we just learned about today. The lack of focus results in each episode feeling scattershot, a collection of vignettes rather than a singular story.I’ve been surprised by the high reviews for this season. I feel like I’m watching a different show. Silicon Valley has devolved into a sitcom rather than a serialized comedy, and I think it’s worse for it.
“Why introduce another character for him to mentor (who, again, has no depth) only to throw it away before any interesting development can occur?”
Gwart? She’s been poached by Laurie so she’s definitely not thrown away — I imagine whatever she was developing is going to come back in the penultimate hour as a major threat to PiedPiper, and it will be up to Jared to choose between her and Richard.
I want nothing more right now than for Gavin Belson to end this show finally fucking losing, for good.
And for Big Head to fall upwards yet again. Let him win the gubernatorial election or something.
I am truly going to miss this show. I think it’s sad it’s being taken off so quickly. We seem to have the attention span of a gnat. Always looking for the next shiny thing but never allowing any show the time to evolve. It is true that sometimes shows are on longer than they should be but 7 seasons? The worst thing is that the last couple of seasons they didn’t even bother to give us a full season. Season 5, only 8 episodes then 7 episodes for the finale. What’s up with that?
I doubt it was influenced by it but the whole stealing the phrases from a takeout menu reminded me of the UK Transport Minister who hired a ferry company to help post-Brexit with the self-inflicted damage only to discover that they had no ferries… And their website stole their terms and conditions from a pizza delivery site (including referencing delivering pizzas): https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/03/brexit-freight-ferry-firm-appears-all-geared-up-to-deliver-pizzas
The closing track is “Zen Drums” by Bibio. (Sorry if that’s already been discussed; I haven’t read all of the comments.)
A week late here, but the famous ‘ballet’ dancer Ron LaFlamme was struggling to recall is Gregory Hines… a beloved tap dancer.