Accuracy aside, I found little redeeming in the all-too-familiar vying white guys trying their vested best in bland zest-spiked episodes where these brash blazens spake brave through rip-curl plots. Imagine the cast and home-stoner comedy of “That 70’s Show,” mixed with the lighting-paced abrasion and techtelligence of “Rick and Morty.” Throw in the unabashed douche-bag fuckery of “Workaholics” and there you have it. If these comparisons entice anyone: good! I’ve liked all these shows and laughed with them too.
Regardless they’ve brought nothing fresh to television: mostly white men using drugs while competing against one another with aggressive humor.
The slew of “Silicon Valley” episodes I watched ran together, in spite or because of their reliance on the same jokes applied to different episodic scenarios: a courtroom episode, the energy-drink stunt episode, the deal-earning competition episode, the guy gets a date episode...It goes on forever, even though the inner-episode connectivity and over-arching season plots are well maintained. While the situations change, the high stakes do not, with Pied Piper always on the verge of dissolution, bankruptcy, or lawsuit. The rivalries and conflicts between startups flare with the Western style lawlessness of a digital frontier.
The character Ehrlich--this show’s Hyde--may be the most cowboyish of the band, and the most obnoxious. This handsome-enough dude-bro blusters with a sir’s scripted swagger, misusing elegant, even renaissance language and inflections for his zingers and flirtations. Despite the ass he makes of himself, his almost literary charisma pulls a male admiration: one would rather be him than the meek Zuckerberg/Eric Foreman character, Pied Piper founder, Richard. Or the cold and geeky Gilfoyle. Or the pathetically horny and intelligent Dinesh--the show’s main character of color whose often unsparingly roasted with terrorist jokes.
Then there’s the pair of investors--Monica and Laurie--who have bought into Pied Piper. Their steady, intelligent competence saves the company many times. Unsurprisingly these women get a fraction of the screen time of the boys they’ve invested in.
At the moment, the tech sphere is in reality, dominated by men with such abhorrent personalities. To this fact, “Silicon Valley,” caters all too faithfully. But we all know that real life does not play out like the sitcoms in which the show falls in. So why does the show license its tired creative fictions without making any attempt to envision representational progress? “Silicon Valley” lacks the imagination to change the real world or sitcoms.