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

I am going to see him do standup on Monday, mainly out of curiosity. Also, the other comics on the bill are rock solid, so even if he's rubbish, it'll still be a good show.

There is a key difference between this and Entourage, in that SV is funny and charming, and Entourage was neither

I'm okay with TJ Miller leaving, as long as it doesn't mean more Russ Hanneman - he is p. much the definitive "fine in small doses" character

Surprised they dropped the Gavin Belson story so early, felt like that had much more potential

"There is a key difference between this and Entourage, in that SV is funny and charming, and Entourage was neither"

^^^ this.

imo Gavin will be back

still mourning the loss of Peter Gregory. Christopher Welch really pulled out all the stops in his acting on that one

trailer for tj miller special on hbo makes me think i wouldn't like him in anything but this.

will miss interplay b/tw him and jian yang.

yeah that promo for his stand up made me think that tj miller was more obnoxious than erlich bachmann

erlich/jian yang are the laurel & hardy of our days

that trailer looks terrible, but I did like him in Crashing.

i don't really care about whether i care about these characters or their personal growth or whatever, it's a sitcom. i do care whether it's funny or not, and unfortunately it's not as funny rn, though i still get some decent laughs out of each episode

i love martin starr but gilfoyle is pretty annoying. it's constant gilfoyle/dinesh battles but gilfoyle always comes out on top and is always smug, i want him to get some kind of comeuppance eventually

strong start but past three episodes have def been not as funny

xp hah if you think Gilfoyle always comes out on top you should have loved the last episode.

biggest laugh this week was jared's bro alter ego in the preview of the next episode

you mean the last episode where gilfoyle essentially came out on top again? i mean sure he destroyed his phone but so did dinesh and his secrets remain unexposed

yeah the big loss for gilfoyle is... the reveal he might have something worth hiding on his phone

plot hole: if they really were nerds they'd extract the memory chips

throw the phone in the microwave imo

many xps but

both have been pretty delicate in focusing on guys in a pack without slipping into misogyny

Sorry, is that supposed to apply to Entourage? are you crazy?

yeeah, I think I made it through 2/3 of one episode of Entourage and lost interest

I watched a lot of it and while it does have some similarities it is fairly terrible re women

otoh, so is Hollywood.

I'm not a huge TJ Miller fan, but his character on SV is a quintessential Mike Judge character. Nobody is really filling that absence

how has Stephen Root not had a guest appearance on this show yet?

I mean, the answer is probably that he's really busy, but I hope it happens

JiC, I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that the show more than 'slips into misogyny'.

Root was great on Get Out.

Russ playing 'I Alone' by Live in his car was an excellent character detail.

Oh, there is no question Entourage was horribly sexist. Even when they were making a shallow effort to be otherwise.

Bighead is the weakest link
Middleditch grounds it and when he goes off the rails it's fun
Miller's character = Jeremy piven
Gilfoil and Dinesh = drama and turtle
other nerdy guy / spirit guide = E

gilfoil and dinesh are rosencrantz and guildenstern

"they're all in purgatory" theory?

fav detail from this episode was russ hanneman blasting live in his car

Jared almost had me weeping

Bighead is so stupid it gets irritating (although there are some fun situations, like his climbing to the top of hooli).
It's good that the scenario didn't go the romantic route with Monica. I was a bit worried they would circa season2, I think.
oh, regarding major assholes, I also like Ron LaFlamme a lot !

The "we're gonna do it"/"oh shit we fucked up"/"we're saved!" cycle was annoying up to the first half of the second season but the rest of the cast has made it where I don't care - Miller and Middleditch are just foils for all the good stuff.

Zach Woods's comic timing is a thing of beauty

I would love it if Ron LaFlamme came back in some way.

he was good but i prefer matt mccoy as the disgraced lawyer/ car wash attendant

so many great characters... there should be a poll !
I think the only characters I dislike are jack barker and denpok.

I love Gavin's overeager security guy

Also (less good) he seems like the only non-white cast member who's race/ethnicity isn't continuously referred to (this is the show's creepy weakness IMO)

female characters still a weakness, too

yep

yeah, there's clearly a racism issue in this show (especially regarding jian yang)

yeah, the overeager security guy is fun. especially the multiple flights between china and the us to make sure jack barker chose the shortest flight for him !
also the fight with denpok to find out who jack barker was supposedly talking to.

xpost

Well the actors (Dinesh and Jian Yang) have both said they're comfortable with the roles (i.e. that they're trying to portray specific types rather than stereotypes) and I'm happy to give them benefit of the doubt. But the show's preoccupation with othering its non-white characters is... gross taken as a whole, rather than at the individual character level.

...it's not a dealbreaker for me, but I wish they'd try harder

this show presents its female characters extremely well imo but maybe some women can shed light on this rather than you lot

I don't remember Dinesh's race coming up too much really... and I'm not counting Gilfoyle's cheap shots.

yeah i think the women are presented very well for the most part. there aren't a lot of them and the men treat them shoddily but that's more a reflection of the milieus of the 2010s tech bubble *and* the "prestige tv" world

exactly. and it's maybe less problematic with dinesh because it comes from continual fights with gilfoyle and he gets a chance to answer as they're "equal" and each one teases the other.
I find it more difficult with jian yang since he's not really in a position to answer, at least he wasn't for a while, so he's basically the little asian guy who doesn't speak english very well, acts weird and is a nerd...

yeah the women are all powerful/experts/super pro. but they have smaller roles (even Monica. for instance, we don't know anything about her past and her life in general. except that she smokes !).

Gilfoyle's not particularly Canadian unless it's convenient