HBO’s Silicon Valley is a show that has shocked me. It is a TV series with of inside jokes that many not partially understand or even get at all, unless you have worked in the tech world. Spaces over tabs, anyone? To be blunt when I first saw the show show I though HBO was making a huge mistake airing it. But I was wrong, very wrong. I was also wrong when I first heard the idea for 3rd Rock from the Sun.
Mike Judge’s satire on the tech industry keeps getting greater since it first premiered two season ago. For those of you who have not watched the show – the time to fix that is now! But please don’t watch it while eating. We here at TOT cannot be responsible for the mess you will make while laughing out loud.
The show covers the ups and downs of start-up called Pied Piper. Which on the surface could grow old very fast, even for geeks. But the behind the camera team of Judge and former Seinfeld writer Alec Berg powers a front of the camera team of Thomas Middleditch, T.J. Miller, Kumail Nanjiani, Martin Starr, and Zach Woods.
From the opening credits, which some how they were able to get companies like Google, Lyft, Uber and Facebook to let use their logos in, to the ending credits it one fast funny ride each episode. Like many great sitcoms, the third season is where the team really finds their way and their voice, making it the strongest yet.
Middleditch’s Richard Hendricks, demoted from CEO to CTO of his own company in the final moments of Season Two, has decided he wants to quit Pied Piper. “You have created a company that is too valuable for you to run, you should feel good about that,” his investor, Laurie Bream tells him. He assumes that his loyal engineers, Nanjiani’s Dinesh and Starr’s Gilfoyle, will follow him out the door. Let’s just say they may think is he is “great coder” and an “amazing human being”, but they love having a paycheck.
Ultimately, the guys figure out that they can’t scale up Pied Piper’s tech without its mastermind Richard.
Richard also find out he really likes what he has started over the offers he was getting from other firms. So he meets the person who will be the new CEO of Pied Piper, Jack Barker. This man has a strong track record but from the start you can see he has some evil inside!
Barker’s true evil is not revealed until later in the season, when he starts hiring a massive salesforce to sell his big idea—a “box” that helps corporate server farms work faster—instead of the consumer platform Richard has been trying to build since the beginning.
Now you have a taste of what is going on season three, let’s talk about why the show works, even for non-geeks. Look at this way, MASH was about doctors in a war. Not the funniest setting at first look, plus most of us do not know much medical terms or practices. But Silicon Valley, like MASH, uses for many what is an unfamiliar back drop but fills with great actors nailing great pose about life, situations dreams and people which we can all relate to. For those in the know, they even drop in some inside baseball jokes like vim vs emacs but in way that even people who have problems getting their cable box to record their favorite show can see the humor in.
Now Season 3 marks the happiest ending for Silicon Valley so far. Sometimes that could be the mark of death, but in this case is just another jumping off point for the series setting itself up for a bright future in Season 4.
You can buy the Digital HD version of Silicon Valley – The Complete Third Season from Amazon, Google Play iTunes, Vudu, and Flixster.
