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

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

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/31/blood-transfusions-from-teenagers-start-up-charging-8000-apiece.html

Reading this 2011 profile of Peter Thiel, and there's a great Peter Gregory / Laurie Bream moment.

Thiel, who is the company’s biggest investor and sits on its board, was driving with his seat belt off. “I oscillate on the seat-belt question,” he said.

I asked what the poles of the oscillation were.

“It’s uh—it’s the, uh—it’s the—it’s um—it’s probably, uh—it’s probably just that it’s not that—well, the pro-seat-belt argument is that it’s safer, and the anti-seat-belt argument is that if you know that it’s not as safe you’ll be a more careful driver.” He made a left turn and fastened his seat belt. “Empirically, it’s actually the safest if you wear a seat belt and are careful at the same time, so I’m not even going to try to debate this point.”

imo the SV characters would be a little sharper than that, that's his pure libertarian streak fighting his robot intellect

xp- lmbo

I took drama with Amanda Crew and she is a very good actress - this show really underdevelops her role though. I've mentioned that before though

I'm hoping SV will stick around long enough for the coming tech bubble collapse.

You're going to be waiting a long time

Convince me that the current situation is sustainable outside of the few megacorps that will obviously survive. I went through the 90s dot.com crash so I've got my biases, but geeze my dashboard sees red.

all the small ones constantly crash now, but they're not a major portion of the stock market

you guys spend a lot of time hating on some of the funniest shit in this show

hating on bighead??

i get not liking tj miller, i probably dislike him too, but his character is so essential to what makes this show hilarious. Even the little shit he does like clipping his hair back to eat ramen makes me lol

also, i think the constantly shifting plot is a huge strength of the show, it keeps it from falling into the formulas you guys claim it falls into. Like even if nothing changes that's unexpected because 'unexpected things happen that push them back to square one' is what is expected

Lest we forget, Gavin Belson is in American Gaucho

Psycho, that is

love Bighead, his jokes are the easy lay-ups we need

Skimmed a really long interview in ew with TJM last nite on my phone about his reasons for leaving, whether or not he is being honest it seems like a terrible move. he wants to put more work into a podcast (lol), his standup (the promo looks awful), being comic relief in action flicks, and animated features like Emoji movie

http://ew.com/tv/2017/06/02/t-j-miller-silicon-valley-exit-interview/amp/

Real life Silicon Valley more interesting than hbo Silicon Valley

let it be known I had not seen that article when I made the laurel & hardy comparison!

can't believe EW doesn't know how to spell "palapa"

Miller leaving for these seemingly dubious projects sounds like an erlich move actually !
That said I kinda agree with him that it's better to leave at the top and erlich could become irritating and limited.
I love this character but I alteady find him less fun and key this season.
So I guess thanks for all the great moments (yeah his hair clip and almost any tinny things he does are hilarious) and bye !

it seems like a terrible move. he wants to put more work into a podcast (lol), his standup (the promo looks awful), being comic relief in action flicks, and animated features like Emoji movie

i dunno can't go wrong under-estimating your public. the last 2 moves with probably make him lots of money and guarantee future $$$ jobs.

just saw episode 6, it was pretty weak (the guy listening to Live for a half a second was the funniest joke in the whole show) maybe he's jumping a sinking ship

Erlich character the only one who seems to recognize that just standing around and waiting for someone else to succeed is a stronger strategy than staring at numbers at a white board. Though even on that front, no one ever seems to work on this show. They just stare at the computer until they yell I've got it! And the next scene is them pitching. Which is actually kind of funny.

Would be funny if one by one the cast departs until there is no one left but Jared, who goes on a quest to find them and discovers, after a freak storm, that they have all been marooned on an island with no power or tech and then it turns out we're in a meta reboot of Gilligan's Island and the series becomes a story of a bunch of bickering dudes stuck on an island trying to use their brains but no computers to find a way off. Like, one episode a white board would wash up, and rather than make a boat they'd crunch numbers. And so on. Would watch (for a season).

watching Richard accidentally seduce the new investor in the latest episode was like.... really? you guys couldn't write anything better than this 30 year old sitcom c plot?

if he accidentally killed her, they could have brought back car-wash lawyer

There should be a poll between Ron LaFlamme and sexoffender/aminal nitrate/carwash guy.
I'm RLF all the way !

Love the closing song this week.

yeah that was great

Erlich mansplaining mansplaining.

I swear I've been to a doctor who used the same inappropriate joking style as the dude Richard goes to

yeah, the song was nice.
Erlich was barely in this episode (and kinda sad in most of his scenes : begging to be hired, hiding his ignorance re : bball). I suppose they prepare for his exit.
Again, I found the episode meh (I'm not sure it made me laugh once). maybe it's only me who doesn't connect with the show anymore...
I don't even know what piedpiper is atm ! has he given up on his new internet thing ? all he seem to do is sell his top 500 app.

The space saver app is his new internet thing, or rather it's the back door into it because he can't get the new internet working until enough people share the space using his app.

ah ok thanks, I didn't get that !
Oh I forgot another sad Erlich moment : when Jian Yang mocks him because he's fat and poor.