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

nah this episode was weaksauce, stevie d covers it well

oh sure, it is weak... but no less than the whole season so far...
and the "they almost do something huge but then it all falls through" is what the whole show is about !

My wife fell asleep during the episode. It's a bad sign when it takes two nights to make it through a 25 minute sitcom. I thought it had its moments but yeah, was a little boring, and while I liked all the nicknames for Haley Joel's character, reverting to the same ol' "so close, so far" model the show has stuck with for years was a little frustrating and forced. Which is, sure, how the show works, but it's getting a little silly on that front. And it's almost always Monica who swoops in as the voice of some sort of reason to say, yeah, you could sell and you would be rich, but ... Which is problematic, because for most people on the show, becoming rich seems to be the prime motivating factor. Even Richard, he's not so much a save the world idealist as a judgmental control freak with really immutable views (about spacing, about Haley Joel Osment, etc.), and he gets as excited about money as anyone. And none of them seem to face any hardships at all, for all their supposed lack of money, so the hunt for money doesn't work that well as a dramatic impetus.

Anyway. I thought "Veep" was pretty funny this week.

The one at gary's mom's house ?
yeah, that was pretty good (well, they all are). the gay dad especially !

Jonah was particularly funny in his meeting with the president. I love the running joke of no one comfortable leaving him alone with any woman.

as for SV, unless they find something new and exciting to do next season, I think this is basically over afaic.

ah, yeah. and Jonah's obsession with daylight "savings" time is so absurd !

everyone is otm i really dont care what happens in the story at all anymore cos it will be reverted in 5 mins

for a minute I thought this was the last Erlich episode and he was going to immolate himself in the palapa

my wife watches it with me now but didn't at the beginning so she was going back the other day and watching season 1 and I have to admit the characterization was a lot better then. Bighead wasn't a complete idiot and Jared wasn't a complete lunatic, they were both at least somewhat competent people with distinct personality quirks. and Gilfoyle and Dinesh had more to do than just be total dicks to each other every waking second.

At the rate it is going it seems inevitable that at some point Richard will be given control of Hooli. Then Monica will talk him out of it, because of something, and Richard will give Hooli back to Gavin. Because.

Have we even seen Bighead for a couple of weeks? I know he is teaching, but it's weird that he just hasn't popped up again. Same with Gavin, and his awkward departure. Now with Ehrlich leaving, it's like a showrunners are desperate to write off all the broad secondary characters.

I feel like we're chronically deprived of Bighead. Not sure if the actor is just in a feature part, or if the writers can't figure out what to do with him.

xpost
exactly. I think I have said something like that upthread but yeah, all the characters don't really do anything anymore and they only interact in the one caricatural way they have been reduced to and nothing really happens (or things happen but they are fixed within one ep) and so who cares ?

Like for instance, one of the things that were fun with Jared was that he was bringing all the corporate/management process (and bullshit) and trying to make the guys accept it.
Now he's just Richard's crazy/creepy shadow.

for a minute I thought this was the last Erlich episode and he was going to immolate himself in the palapa

― mh, Wednesday, June 14, 2017 9:50 AM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark

same

it's GETTING a little silly on that front?? imo it has been way, way past this point for quite a while. A season or so ago I just totally let go of caring at all about the plot (bcz it just frustrated me so much) and now I just watch it for the funny jokes and satire.

but I rly don't think it's asking too much for a TV show to have a semblance of narrative trajectory

the show is bad now

it's like a band that keeps making the same album over and over and over again but you still listen because they keep remaking a really great album but like after a while you kind of wish they'd maybe do something else??

tech sector is a giant hamster wheel why would the characters all of a sudden run a maze instead

it's a multi-rodent ecosystem

can someone clear this up: they gave the algorithm to the VR guy and it turned around his demo and then they decided to work up a deal where he buys them for a ton of money so he can use their algorithm and then Richard met w Monica and she instantly got him to turn down $25 million so he goes back and turns the guy down and now VRguy is working with Hooli...? does that mean he has their algorithm still? but would he still have it since Richard turned him down? but i guess he didn't turn him down, the VR guy just left to work for Hooli... does that mean he stole the algorithm? or does Hooli own it too?

I think this is the first episode where I've felt it all going seriously wrong - everything up to this point has at least been funny. This wasn't even very funny

xp I think the VRGuy turned them down on his own--seems to be an established character trait that he uses and discards people and companies.

he's going to Hooli because they have the second-best algorithm, back from the big algorithm battle

It was really briefly mentioned that was how they pulled him in, a great deal on the second-best option

Which is hilarious, because he's going to keep doing his pump-and-dump scheme, but they won't care because Barker is only bringing in VR to not look like a jackass in the meeting

or presentation, rather

it's like a band that keeps making the same album over and over and over again but you still listen because they keep remaking a really great album but like after a while you kind of wish they'd maybe do something else??

yep, exactly how I feel. I hope Miller leaving shakes up the writing

yeah, like many people said, the story and what happens with Pied Piper don't really matter anymore. And no one seems to actually WORK for PP anyway. They all hang around being dicks/losers and dealing with whatever new cataclysm occurred which is fixed within one ep.
at this point, it actually seems reasonable for Miller to leave...

isn't the overarching plot's seeming aimlessness an allusion to how the silicon valley economy's underbrush right now is mostly full of companies that might have had a good idea at the outset but were forced to pivot by overzealous vcs and other market forces so many times that their missions have been rendered meaningless, and so all that's left is the server bills and existential dread?

hopefully the next two episodes will 'pivot' back to being really good again

It seems a lot easier to satirize silicon valley excess then failure, because so many of these people fail up or get fired with golden parachutes. Marissa Mayer got $186 million after her disastrous tenure!

I think Richard said he didn't want to pivot anymore !
xpost

yeah but the new pied piper is still different than the original vision

anyway i'm sure the hoolicon episode will be full of ott ridiculousness (does any sv company have a similar event?)

http://s3.amazonaws.com/digitaltrends-uploads-prod/2016/06/Screen-Shot-2016-06-13-at-10.01.18-AM.png

oh duh of course, haha

what does it say about me that i don't even think of apple as being on that plane? i was like "wait, does yahoo have a big event..."

I suppose Google, Facebook etc all have that kind of thing, haven't they ?

when you get to a certain size or outside of the churn cycle you're kind of institutional and less contingent on hoopla

The show's use of Hooli is as a vague stand-in and they've jacked basically every company's origin story and business model in different episodes. More than anything, it reminds me of a more successful version of Yahoo around the time they were flush with cash but bankrupt in ideas and kept buying hot new companies and then wrecking them

yeah i always figured hooli as a yahoo stand in

I think we're biased because we're trying to think of what company just makes fuckin' dumb decisions and they're the go-to

the whole Hooli chat thing reminds me of Microsoft's acquisition of Skype, though

Hooli is definitely a stand in for Yahoo. And Google. And Microsoft. And Apple.

I feel like they have a post-it board with a bunch of dumb SV ideas, and a bunch of character traits of actual SV people, and they graft them on to characters in combinations that seem workable

Jack Barker reminds me of Steve Ballmer a little

Funny, I never thought of them being anybody other than Skype.

Gavin as Jobs, Peter Gregory as Woz. Gavin is a sucker for weird medical practices that are just snake oil and Eastern Mysticism that he wants to pick and choose bits of. Also sacked from his own company only to have a 'glorious' return to take them back to success.And is Gavin's speech at Hoolicon that Jack watches in the last episode supposed to be Macworld Expo 2007 (announcement of iPhone)?

Not Skype, Apple. (multiple windows, multiple jobs. which means I've told someone at work to call me tomorrow on Apple)

The garage in the warehouse a few episodes ago was great.

I missed Ed Chambers this week.