Television Review: “Silicon Valley’s” fourth season sees the Pied Piper crew at a crucial turning point.
Like “Veep,” that other unimpeachably great half-hour HBO comedy about ambitious strivers who are intellectually advanced and emotionally maladroit, “Silicon Valley” is a show that could probably air for at least one or two more seasons before it starts to run its course. The network seems to be embracing the limited series format with popular programs like “Big Little Lies” and even more divisive works like “The Young Pope” and “Vice Principals,” and more and more television outlets in general seem to be okay with the idea of shows that bear a limited creative shelf life. And yet the successes of shows like long-running “Silicon Valley” and “Veep” are not, I would argue with the plotting — though each show is indeed thoughtfully orchestrated to play to the strengths of its ensemble.
Rather, what these show offer viewers is something that goes beyond what some critics refer to as “plot soup”. It’s an inimitatable interpersonal dynamic between its performers that unquestionably works: a kind of instantly recognizable repartee, a singular and identifiable vernacular that is buoyed by some of the best comic acting on television right now. In this way, shows like “Silicon Valley” and “Veep” are HBO’s equivalent of smart, broad network programming like “Parks and Recreation” and “Blackish,” albeit with far more creative profanity and celebratory weed smoking.
“Silicon Valley” is a particularly interesting case in this regard. The show is now in its fourth season, still coasting on the barbed, bitter rhythms of its dialogue and the generous performances of its cast. Year after year, the show’s writing staff have proven themselves to be some of the sharpest minds working in television comedy today. At this point, the Pied Piper troupe is like the nerd equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters: each player performs their role to perfection, and they also know when it’s time to pass the rock to another member of the team.
It’s still a joy, for instance, to see Kumail Nanjiani’s smarmy, needy coder Dinesh trade insults with acerbic hacker Gilfoyle (series secret weapon Martin Starr), just as it’s equally wonderful to witness T.J. Miller’s delusional Erlich Bachman attempt to dig himself out of his own neverending garden of self-made holes. And I haven’t even mentioned the disarming blend of childlike innocence and genuine dementia that Zach Woods brings to the role of Jared Dunn, the former high-ranking Tech Admin who essentially demoted himself to join the Piped Piper crew, and who also, curiously enough, seems to be the only member of the team who isn’t in some way motivated by money.
Each one of these characters can be considered a unique fictional creation on individual terms. Combined, they are one of T.V.’s foremost comedic forces. The acting on “Silicon Valley” has only improved with each season, while the show’s satirical attack on the myopic, tech-fueled fantasyland that is the real-life Silicon Valley has become has only grown sharper and more depressingly accurate as time marches on.
Up until now, there have been stakes in the “Silicon Valley” universe, but never anything that felt monumental. I, for one, have mainly continued to watch the show because I find that the writing is consistently some of the best in its genre, and I enjoy hanging out with this motley, shit-talking crew every Sunday night. However, in “Success Failure,” the first episode of the show’s fourth season, the stakes are high: maybe higher than they’ve ever been. There’s a sense of clock-is-ticking immediacy to this first half-hour of “Silicon Valley’s” newest season that hasn’t always been there — and, for the most part, it’s enough to compensate for the somewhat sluggish pace and mid-to-low laugh ratio of this first introductory chapter.
To be honest, I expected this, at least to some degree. I still maintain that “Silicon Valley’s” second season was one of the most note-perfect seasons of television comedy that the network had produced in years, and the excellent third season only faltered slightly in its backend because it had to live up to that unimaginable standard. By now, those of us who’ve watched this show since the beginning are familiar with its established comic patterns. We can predict the precise moment when Big Head will say something patently idiotic. We know that if Gilfoyle and Dinesh are in a scene together, it won’t be long before they start taking verbal potshots at one another. We know that if we see Andy Daly’s playing his grinning, oblivious doctor in a scene, we must prepare for the worst. And yes, there’s a lack of surprise in “Success Failure” that makes the episode feel slack at times. That said, this is perhaps the most overtly dramatic that the show has ever dared to be, and I’d be lying if I were to say I’m not weirdly invested in the plight of Pied Piper boys, in all their bumbling, self-serving glory.
The genius of Mike Judge and Alec Berg’s show is the prescience of its satire. Simply put, “Silicon Valley” is a sharp-witted look about what happens when all the money and power involved in cultural capital ends up in the hands of people with no understanding of culture itself. It’s a show about how technology shapes humanity, and exactly how inhuman (also: awkward, egomaniacal, etc.) some of these people can be. The Piped Piper team has mostly been a cohesive unit up until now: the group seemed capable of tolerating Ehrlich’s relentless gloating with a bare minimum of resistance, and even Dinesh and Gilfoyle’s childish, almost brotherly rivalry seemed rooted in some fundamental understanding that they were both rowing the boat in the same direction. But in the opening moments of “Success Failure,” we can tell almost immediately that there’s trouble in paradise. Morale amongst the Pied Piper boys is at an all-time low, with everyone calling Richard’s leadership as CEO into question (the exception, of course, being Jared, whose blind devotion to Pied Piper borders on religious fanaticism).
When “Success Failure” opens, Richard has been reduced to driving Ubers to make ends meet. It’s a nifty entrapment scheme, as we see in the episode’s opening teaser, where Richard tries (and fails, badly) to pitch a moneyed hedge fund asshole on the crew’s newest creation: a video chat app called PiperChat (though PiperChat certainly isn’t a winning name, almost all the characters seem to agree that it’s better than just Pied Piper). What’s more, Richard’s friends and employees (except Jared) seem eager to boost him from his position. The episode ends with Richard on the outs and, somewhat inexplicably, Dinesh inheriting the mantle of Pied Piper’s resident head honcho. Along the way, there’s some mildly funny business about Gavin Belson (Matt Ross, smarming it up as per usual) and his new sort-of bestie “Action” Jack Barker (the indispensable Stephen Tobolowsky) keeping a kind of petty running tab in regards to the air mileage on their private jets, and while this is undoubtedly the sort of priggish, childlike behavior that many of these pampered man-babies are often afforded the chance to indulge in, the episode’s somewhat saggy B plot mostly just distracts from the engaging drama at the heart of the episode’s primary conflict
Season four’s second episode, “Terms of Service,” is a big boost over the season premiere, recalling some of season two’s daffier lunatic excursions. Dinesh, not surprisingly, takes to his new position as CEO in a painfully regrettable way — mainly by putting too much product in his hair and dressing like a wannabe version of one of the alpha-male suits on HBO’s “Ballers”. It’s hilarious to see Pied Piper’s dweebiest non-Richard member attempt to imitate the style of someone like professional dickhead Russ Hanneman (who makes a brief but welcome appearance in “Success Failure,” where the creators give him another memorably awful nu-metal sendoff to the notes of Papa Roach’s bro-rock anthem “Last Resort”), while Gilfoyle’s undisguised mirth at Dinesh’s impending downfall is somehow even funnier. Meanwhile, Erlich is trying to save whatever measly stock he still has in the company by investing in the new idea of his bizarre housemate/tenant/sidekick Jin-Yang, whose woeful misunderstanding of the Oculus VR rift leads to what is perhaps the episode’s most rewarding reveal.
At this point, I’m just grateful that “Silicon Valley” still feels funny and (mostly) fresh in its fourth season. Most network comedies start to run on fumes after their third season (see: “Californication,” “Sex & The City”), but like “Veep,” “Silicon Valley” is coming to a greater understanding of its strengths with each season that passes. The show is still obsessed with what happens when mediocre minds are elevated to positions of high power; it’s a thread that gets a workout in the third episode “Intellectual Property,” where the perpetually incurious Big Head ends up accepting a guest lecture position at (no shit) Stanford University.
What’s most engrossing about these new episodes is the heightened sense of drama. The processions of big buys and bigger failures that exist on this show often taken a backseat to creative jokes about masturbation and marijuana consumption that could politely be called ambitious. And yet, at this stage in its run, “Silicon Valley’s” highbrow affectations are delicately intertwined with its lowbrow humor in a way that suggests comic symbiosis: there is no having one without the other. Such is the Mike Judge way.
Thomas Middleditch doesn’t get nearly enough credit for his performance as Richard Hendricks — which is somewhat understandable when you consider he’s surrounded by an ensemble of some of the funniest and most talented young actors working today. And yet Middleditch himself is no slouch and if the three episodes I’ve seen are any indication, he’s going to be called upon to do some actual, capital-A acting in the later half of this new season. Richard’s been a passive, stammering fussbudget for most of the show’s run, but he’s reaching a point where he can no longer stand by and watch sneering insubordinates like Dinesh and Gilfoyle trample over his dreams. As always, Martin Starr and T.J. Miller will remain audience favorites: they get most of the best lines, and Starr’s devastating deadpan nicely offsets the rambling stoner bluster of Mr. Miller’s expert characterization. Still: Middleditch is the show’s anchor: its core, its nucleus, if you will. You could even argue that he and Jared together constitute the “heart” of the show (it’s certainly not with Gilfoyle, that is for certain).
One of the complaints that “Silicon Valley” has received since it first aired in 2014 is that it sometimes feels too insular: that the show reflects the strange customs of a narrow sliver of the population whose reality is far removed from our own. Undeniably there is some truth in this, and even though the show has made gentle strides in improving its male-to-female funny-performer ratio, I would argue that there’s still work to be done in that regard. And yet, there’s a very human story at the core of “Silicon Valley,” beyond all the fart jokes, profanity and poker-faced rib-digging. It’s a story about the messy place where friendships and business meet, and the fallout that can occur from these very delicate scenarios. It’s an antsy, bottled-up comedy for an antsy, bottled-up time that still feels resolutely modern even four seasons into its run. “Silicon Valley”: welcome back.
Grades: “Success Failure,” B. “Terms of Service,” A-. “Intellectual Property,” B+
