Mike Judge's "Silicon Valley" (HBO Show)

Not Hotdog

jian yang has not only eclipsed the other characters, he's somehow eclipsed both the sun and moon

"Trigger Warning: Fuck you!"

bad episdoe

the erlich in a corvette and fedora bit was a little too easy

Not as many laughs per second as the last two, but still good for laughs per minute.

Richard using Gavin's giant photographed forehead as a whiteboard was exquisite. I'm also happy anytime they get deep into Jared's psychosis.

Jared's list of means of violence was good

"Trigger Warning: Fuck you!"

died @ this

This show is on fire this season

Richard fucking sucks

Jared's list of means of violence was good

― mh, Monday, May 15, 2017 2:33 PM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this was the best bit

i went to moma today and when i went to the cafe, zach woods was reading a book and eating a salad so i stuck my head down and said "sorry to interrupt, but i really love your work" and he honestly and heartfelt and in full-on jared said "oh my god, thank you so muuuuch" and then i went to my table

<3

LOL wut

Love the show but my only problem with it is the common thing shows like this do where they take a funny quirk of a character that works and write all of the jokes around it. In this case, Big Head is just way TOO stupid at this point. He only started out as a dolt, not a complete imbecile. Still hilarious I just felt they're leaning a little too hard on that for his character in particular.

lol the Hot Dog/Not a Hot Dog is such a nerdy dev joke. how does Mike Judge know all this stuff?

he has an engineering background iirc

what is the nerdy dev joke of "hot dog/not a hot dog"? Just the frame work of an is() statement?

its the assumed function of the app (mostly in Erlich's mind) vs the reality of an engineer following poorly given directions too literally

it's also a good joke about client demos. this type of stuff happens all the time.

Gold foil

blood boy's rant was good

didn't catch, did they explain how blood boy knew Jared, although as "Donald"?

secret view into Jared's past maybe

that's a reference to a joke from season 1

thank you

ok Laurie's 4th kid was lol but Laurie calling Monica her best friend was looool

love how they never said anything about whether Laurie had kids and somehow we all assumed... no

"we're all human. you, me, ed chen, this."

"this is already the best job I've ever had"

I've been a fan of the show from the start but I must say I don't love the new season so far.
It's nice to have them back and all but I find it not as funny as the previous seasons.
there are so many big things happening since the beginning of the new season (sometimes crammed within ONE episode!) and many of these could be a season finale cliffhanger SORRY SPOILERS (Richard quitting the boys to start his new internet project with Gavin, launch of Piperchat/Dinesh CEO, Gavin being fired from Hooli, Laurie and Monica leaving raviga, Gavin leaving town/giving the patent...).
it's like they multiply the big story lines without really developing them at the expense of the little/individual stories (and jokes).
so, so far, it's still interesting and nice but I find myself almost not laughing over long periods of time (well, compared to the standard they set previously).

imo the quick one-off jokes that are references to stupid real-life SV decisions have been eclipsed by the whole idea of tech innovators in this internecine struggle to *create* which is a lot less funny

I like when they're in professional and emotional turmoil for quick laughs, not on the quest to change the world

the Peter Gregory world-changing quests were better because he was shown to be intelligent but completely divorced from reality, lol libertarian island

they could make a spin off about the time Jared spent on the island, Lost-style !

tbf it was just a mothballed oil platform, there's not a whole lot to do there unless pirates show up

pirates of... ok, never mind

was kind of amazed when Richard explained his app could compress all the info on someone's phone so that it takes half the space and they would just use the rest of that free space, as if the app customer is going to dl "revolutionary" compression software and not wonder why all their space is used up anyways

iirc it'd reduce used space by 20%, they'd give 10% to the user and use the other 10%

ah yes, you are correct

ya the problem w the show is they constantly write themselves into plots that take them out of the show's equilibrium universe of 'four guys working on a start-up in Erlich's house' that they then have to dig themselves out of (took them to the fifth episodes this season to get Dinesh back in the fold--also i didn't get why he couldn't have quit Periscope sooner?)

quitting periscope would have outed his lie to the hacker he was dating in some way -- she'd find out he was now working with the dude he supposedly destroyed on purpose

as someone posted upthread, they seem more and more cartoonish and reduced to repetitive situations/jokes. also, there are less interactions. Like, Erlich/Jian Yang don't even seem to be in the same show as Richard now !

quitting periscope would have outed his lie to the hacker he was dating in some way -- she'd find out he was now working with the dude he supposedly destroyed on purpose

― mh, Tuesday, May 23, 2017 10:48 AM

of course this also sets up her coming back to hack them right when they get their thing up and running

uh of course

I really hope she goes hard on them, every one of these fuckers deserve it

Like, Erlich/Jian Yang don't even seem to be in the same show as Richard now !

What television scholars call the Turtle/Johnny Drama B-Story.

any bets now that peter thiel has divested to go on a spiritual quest, jian yang will end up the primary funder, using hot dog money?

i like the yo-yo plot & also i think the jokes have been pretty consistently paced throughout the series—it's very big on 90s pre-Family Guy timing, where each lol is given space to breathe & feels funnier as a result, imo

I also think this show feels v relatable even if you have nothing to do w/ the tech world but are searching for creative purpose in a society that is constantly trying to 'disrupt' your grip on things

Veep is much tighter w/r/t its jokes and characters—before Jonah or literally anyone on the show says something im already laughing, and when the joke comes its funnier than you expect—but has less of that feeling of tapping into something personally relevant—like its a world we recognize from a distance

sometimes just seeing TJ Miller onscreen cracks me up, before he speaks. read an interview w Mike Judge where he said he started laughing after seeing his silhouette when he showed up for the audition

saw a promo for miller's stand-up and really, unless it was an artifact of commercials being very compressed, he could use that breathing space in his own shit

wonder if they coached him by telling him to assume every line deserves the weight and time that saying "aviato" did

laurie/lori is probably the best peripheral character in anything atm

this week's 'pause the episode to laugh for half a minute' was that 'you, me, ed chen, this' bit

also yes, this & veep are the two best current comedies (the trip also good)