Silicon Valley is an American comedy television series created by Mike Judge, John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky. The series focuses on five young men who founded a startup company in Silicon Valley. The series premiered on April 6, 2014 on HBO, and the fifth season premiered on March 25, 2018.
Video Silicon Valley (TV series)
Cast
Main
- Thomas Middleditch as Richard Hendricks, a college dropout and ex-coder at tech giant Hooli, Richard quits his job to pursue his Pied Piper compression application. For the most part, Richard is timid and quiet, and does not have much of a temper, but when he finally reaches his limit, is prone to extreme explosions of anger. Richard is constantly struggling with the demands of the business world, preferring instead to disappear into the coding of his application, but realizes that as CEO he must do more.
- T.J. Miller as Erlich Bachman (seasons 1-4), a narcissistic entrepreneur who founded an innovation incubator in his home after the purchase of his airfare collator Aviato. Under the incubator agreement, Erlich owns 10% of Pied Piper, and is later appointed to the company's board of directors after Richard realizes how important Erlich is to the business. Erlich is a frequent user of marijuana. It is revealed in the season 2 finale that Erlich no longer codes because of severe carpal tunnel syndrome. Despite being relatively unsuccessful in his own entrepreneurial ventures, he is a competent public speaker and negotiator, and is often seen as the "face" of Pied Piper.
- Josh Brener as Nelson "Big Head" Bighetti, a former tenant of Erlich's incubator and Richard's best friend who also works at Hooli. He is clueless and impressionable, but still manages to acquire significant influence as a result of the struggle between Hooli and Pied Piper. After work on Pied Piper commences, Big Head is offered a huge raise and promotion by Gavin Belson to help Hooli develop its copycat software, Nucleus, out of spite and because Richard was forced to limit his staff. He is continually promoted so rapidly that buzz develops about him, and he ends up on the cover of Wired magazine. He is later removed from the Nucleus project due to his lack of technical knowledge, and has absolutely no responsibilities at Hooli. He was later promoted further to make it appear that he was the actual creator of Pied Piper while working at Hooli, but he is unaware of this. After a disastrous binding arbritration with Pied Piper, Gavin makes Big Head redundant and pays him $20 million in severance, which he blows through very quickly when Erlich tricks him into entering into a business arrangement with him. Big Head then buys a majority stake in PiperChat following the sale of a technology blog he and Erlich owned. Due to his poor business skills, his father takes over control of his share on his behalf.
- Martin Starr as Bertram Gilfoyle, a LaVeyan Satanist network engineer and Canadian illegal immigrant, until he successfully applies for a visa after Dinesh puts him under pressure. Gilfoyle credits himself as an online security expert, and as such is responsible for system administration and server configuration at Pied Piper. Gilfoyle often plays cruel pranks on Dinesh, but the two do appear to be friends despite this, with the two often bonding over their shared moral ambiguity. Like Dinesh, Gilfoyle is acerbic and sarcastic, but in contrast, highly apathetic, sardonic and brutally honest. He acts as the systems architect of Pied Piper.
- Kumail Nanjiani as Dinesh Chugtai, a talented programmer specializing in Java originally from Karachi, Pakistan who is typically the victim of Gilfoyle's embarrassing games and pranks. Dinesh exhibits an acerbic and sarcastic personality towards everyone on the team, and often behaves in a callous and amoral manner, such as when he plots the death of a man who was dating the girl that he liked. Dinesh is also shown to be especially materialistic and unsuccessful with women.
- Christopher Evan Welch as Peter Gregory (season 1), the billionaire founder and CEO of Raviga Capital as well a 5% equity owner of Pied Piper after his $200,000 investment. Gregory is extremely brilliant but socially inept, eccentric and unpredictable, once delaying a crisis business meeting to sample Burger King products for eight hours in order to identify a potential new investment. Welch died after the fifth episode of season 1 was completed, but the character remained present off-screen for the remainder of the season. Gregory later died in the season 2 premiere.
- Amanda Crew as Monica Hall, an employee of Raviga Capital and assistant to both Peter Gregory and later Laurie Bream. Monica is often charged with engaging with clients on a more personable and approachable way than either Gregory or Bream are, and as such forms a bond with Richard after she convinces him to launch Pied Piper on his own. Her interactions with Richard subtly imply a mutual romantic attachment which, though rarely explored, is often a deciding factor whenever major decisions arise, such as Richard's decision to go with Raviga over Hooli, Monica's persistence in keeping Pied Piper on board whenever Laurie considers dropping them and, later in the series, Monica's willingness to side with Richard at the eventual cost of her position. In season 4, she leaves Raviga to partner with Laurie at her new VC firm.
- Zach Woods as Donald "Jared" Dunn, an ex-VP of Hooli who quits the company in order to join the Pied Piper team as its CFO and business advisor. Like Richard, Jared is meek and reserved, but gains confidence as the series progresses and the company's success necessitates it. He is also exceedingly optimistic, selfless and thoroughly devoted to Richard, sacrificing his high-paying and financially secure job at Hooli to lend his business expertise to Pied Piper. His birth name is Donald, but his former boss, Gavin, once referred to him as Jared, and the nickname stuck, despite the Pied Piper team knowing it's not his real name. He is frequently disrespected by the other employees of Pied Piper, aside from Richard who often defends him, though he tends to be oblivious of this or too awkward to actually understand the insult.
- Matt Ross as Gavin Belson (recurring season 1, starring season 2-present), the chief executive officer and founder of tech giant Hooli, who embodies the soulless corporate culture that Richard is desperate to avoid with Pied Piper. Belson constantly spews forth pseudo-philosophica rants to his employees, who remain enamored with his work, but often comes across as seeming unintelligent and mean-spirited. In season 2, Belson launched a lawsuit against Pied Piper, claiming that it was developed on Hooli company time and using company resources. Historically Belson and Peter Gregory were friends but later became business rivals, and interactions between the two of them became awkward as a result. Gavin's hubris and vindictive streak is often the root cause of many of Hooli's problems, such as the failure of Nucleus, the constant slew of PR disasters and his decision to take over PiperChat with no due diligence.
- Suzanne Cryer as Laurie Bream (season 2-present), the replacement for Peter Gregory at CEO of Raviga Capital, and later co-founder of Bream Hall Capital with Monica. Like her predecessor, Laurie is highly intelligent and socially inept, but appears to rely more on tangible metrics than Peter. Her business-centric approach is what leads her to terminate Raviga's investment into Pied Piper after Belson's lawsuit is announced, as well as selling Pied Piper as its reputation is severely damaged after Jared's deceptive practices. Little is known about her personal life, but in Season 4 she is pregnant with her fourth child.
- Jimmy O. Yang as Jian-Yang (recurring season 1, starring season 2-present), another tenant of Erlich's incubator, and the only person who lives there that is not involved with Pied Piper in any capacity. He speaks broken English but slowly and with a heavy Chinese accent. He and Erlich have frequent disagreements, and during Season 3, Episode 2, after finding out how difficult it is for a landowner to evict a tenant, Jian-Yang decides to take advantage of this and live rent-free in Erlich's house for a year. Jian-Yang often insults and makes prank calls to Erlich, and enjoys tormenting him.
- Stephen Tobolowsky as Jack Barker a.k.a Action Jack (recurring season 3, starring season 4), briefly the CEO of Pied Piper after Richard was voted out. Later he becomes involved with Hooli on their Endframe Box, though is later demoted by Gavin. Subsequently, he became CEO of Hooli after Gavin Belson was fired, but was shortly removed after he was held hostage by Hooli plant workers in China.
- Chris Diamantopoulos as Russ Hanneman (recurring season 2-3, starring season 4), an unpredictable, selfish and bizarre billionaire investor who provides Pied Piper with their Series A. In the fourth-season premiere, he agrees to fund Richard's 'new internet' project. Richard ultimately does not go with this funding offer, choosing instead to partner with Gavin Belson.
Recurring
Maps Silicon Valley (TV series)
Plot
Season 1
Richard Hendricks creates an app known as Pied Piper which contains a revolutionary data compression algorithm. Peter Gregory acquires Pied Piper, and Richard hires the residents of Erlich Bachman's business incubator including Bertram Gilfoyle and Dinesh Chugtai along with Jared Dunn, who defected from Hooli. Meanwhile, Nelson "Big Head" Bighetti chooses to accept a substantial promotion at Hooli instead, despite his lack of merit for the job.
Gavin Belson instructs his Hooli employees to reverse engineer Pied Piper's algorithm and develops a copycat product called Nucleus. Both companies are scheduled to present at TechCrunch Disrupt. Pied Piper rushes to produce a feature-rich cloud storage platform based on their compression technology. At the TechCrunch event, Belson presents Nucleus, which is integrated with all of Hooli's services and has compression performance equal to Pied Piper. However, Richard has a new idea and spends the entire night coding. The next morning, Richard makes Pied Piper's final presentation and demonstrates a product that strongly outperforms Nucleus and he is mobbed by eager investors.
Season 2
In the immediate aftermath of their TechCrunch Disrupt victory, multiple venture capital firms offer to finance Pied Piper's Series A round. Peter Gregory has died and is replaced by Laurie Bream to run Raviga Capital. Richard finds out that Hooli is suing Pied Piper for copyright infringement, claiming that Richard developed Pied Piper's compression algorithm on Hooli time using company equipment. As a result, Raviga and all the other VC firms retract their offer. Richard turns down Hooli's buyout and accepts funding from Russ Hanneman, though Richard quickly begins questioning his decision after learning about Hanneman's mercurial reputation and his excessive interference in day-to-day operation.
Belson promotes Big Head to Hooli [xyz], to make people think he created the compression algorithm and Richard stole it to create Pied Piper. Belson agrees to drop the lawsuit in favor of binding arbitration to prevent the press from finding out about how bad Nucleus is. Due to a clause in Richard's Hooli contract, the lawsuit is ruled in Pied Piper's favor. Raviga buys out Hanneman's stake in Pied Piper, securing three of Pied Piper's five board seats. However, they decide to remove Richard from the CEO position due to previous incidents.
Season 3
After a failed stint with Jack Barker as CEO of Pied Piper, Richard eventually regains his CEO position. Richard hires contract engineers from around the world to help construct their application platform. Big Head receives a $20 million severance package from Hooli in exchange for non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements. Big Head uses his money to set up his own incubator and Erlich partners with him. However, because of their spending habits, they declare bankruptcy, and Erlich is forced to sell his stake in Pied Piper to repay the debts. Gavin Belson hires Jack Barker as the new head of development at Hooli.
After release, their platform is positively reviewed by members of the industry, however, only a small fraction of the people installing the platform remain as daily active users. Meanwhile, Jared secretly employs a click farm in Bangladesh to artificially inflate usage statistics. An anxious Richard reveals the source of the uptick at a Series B funding signing meeting, leading to the deal being scrapped. Laurie no longer wishes for Raviga to be associated with Pied Piper and moves to sell majority control to any investor. Erlich and Big Head are able to buy control of the company after an unexpected windfall from the sale of a blog they bought. Pied Piper now prepares to pivot again, this time to become a video chat company, based on the sudden popularity of Dinesh's video chat application which he included on the platform.
Season 4
Richard steps down as CEO of Pied Piper, and instead begins working on a new project: a decentralized, peer-to-peer internet, that would be powered by a network of cell phones without any firewalls, viruses and government regulations. Gavin Belson is removed as CEO of Hooli after an incident involving COPPA violations from when he seized PiperChat. Jack Barker takes his place as CEO. Gavin leaves Palo Alto and goes to Tibet.
Laurie and Monica form their own VC company, Bream-Hall. Big Head becomes a lecturer at Stanford University's Department of Computer Science. Erlich gets into business with Keenan Feldspar, whose VR headset is the Valley's latest sensation. However, Erlich is left out of a signing deal and is abandoned by Feldspar, leaving Erlich disillusioned. Erlich then goes to Tibet to meet with Gavin. While Gavin eventually returns home, Erlich stays.
Richard gets into business with FGI, an insurance company, who uses Pied Piper for their data storage needs. After a crisis involving FGI's data storage, the team discovers that the decentralized internet is a working concept after the data from their Pied Piper server had backed itself up to Jian-Yang's smart refrigerator, as Gilfoyle used some of the Pied Piper code when he was trying to hack it, which in turn connected itself to a network of other refrigerators like it and distributing the data. Gavin offers a very generous acquisition deal to Richard, who turns it down and decides to be funded by Bream-Hall.
Season 5
As summarized by Variety, the season will follow the Pied Piper group as they "get their first taste of tech success." In a panel leading up to season 5, actor Kumail Nanjiani noted that it would be the "most different season we've had so far." Among other topics, he noted it would continue to address gender inequality in the tech industry, with Thomas Middleditch stating that the scarcity of women in the show was intended to mirror the real Silicon Valley gender breakdown.
Production
Co-creator and executive producer Mike Judge had worked in a Silicon Valley startup early in his career. In 1987 he was a programmer at Parallax, a company with about 40 employees. Judge disliked the company's culture and his colleagues ("The people I met were like Stepford Wives. They were true believers in something, and I don't know what it was") and quit after less than three months, but the experience gave him the background to later create a show about the region's people and companies. He recollects also how startup companies pitched to him to make a Flash-based animation in the past as material for the first episode: "It was one person after another going, 'In two years, you will not own a TV set!' I had a meeting that was like a gathering of acolytes around a cult leader. 'Has he met Bill?' 'Oh, I'm the VP and I only get to see Bill once a month.' And then another guy chimed in, 'For 10 minutes, but the 10 minutes is amazing!'"
Filming for the pilot of Silicon Valley began on March 12, 2013, in Palo Alto, California. HBO green-lit the series on May 16, 2013.
Christopher Evan Welch, who played billionaire Peter Gregory, died in December 2013 of lung cancer, having finished his scenes for the first five episodes. The production team decided against recasting the role and reshooting his scenes; on his death, Judge commented: "The brilliance of Chris' performance is irreplaceable, and inspired us in our writing of the series." He went on to say, "The entire ordeal was heartbreaking. But we are incredibly grateful to have worked with him in the brief time we had together. Our show and our lives are vastly richer for his having been in them." In the eighth episode of season 1, a memoriam is made in his honor at the end of the credits roll. The character of Peter Gregory was not killed off until the premiere of Season 2.
The show refers to a metric in comparing the compression rates of applications called the Weissman score, which did not exist before the show's run. It was created by Stanford Professor Tsachy Weissman and graduate student Vinith Misra at the request of the show's producers.
Clay Tarver was named co-showrunner in April 2017 alongside Mike Judge and Alex Berg, also serving as an executive producer. In May 2017, it was announced that T.J. Miller would be exiting the series after the fourth season.
Reception
Critical response
Silicon Valley has received critical acclaim since its premiere. Metacritic, a website that gathers critics' reviews, presents the first season with an 84 out of 100 Metascore based on 36 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Similarly, Rotten Tomatoes presented the first season with a 94% "Certified Fresh" rating and an average score of 7.94 out of 10 based on 50 reviews, with the critical consensus "Silicon Valley is a relevant, often hilarious take on contemporary technology and the geeks who create it that benefits from co-creator Mike Judge's real-life experience in the industry."
The second season also received critical acclaim, and has a score of 86 out of 100 based on nine reviews from Metacritic. On Rotten Tomatoes, the season received a 100% rating with an average rating of 8.3 out of 10 based on 19 reviews. The site's consensus reads, "Silicon Valley re-ups its comedy quotient with an episode that smooths out the rough edges left behind by the loss of a beloved cast member."
Its third season also received critical acclaim. On Metacritic, the season has a score of 90 out of 100 based on 15 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". On Rotten Tomatoes, the season received a 100% rating with an average rating of 8.5 out of 10 based on 17 reviews. The site's consensus reads, "Silicon Valley's satirical take on the follies of the tech industry is sharper than ever in this very funny third season."
The fourth season has received critical acclaim. On Metacritic, the season has a score of 85 out of 100 based on 10 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". On Rotten Tomatoes, the season received a 100% rating with an average rating of 7.8 out of 10 based on 17 reviews.
Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter said "HBO finds its best and funniest full-on comedy in years with this Mike Judge creation, and it may even tap into that most elusive thing, a wide audience." Matt Roush of TV Guide said "The deft, resonant satire that helped make Judge's Office Space a cult hit takes on farcical new dimension in Silicon Valley, which introduces a socially maladroit posse of computer misfits every bit the comic equal of The Big Bang Theory's science nerds." Todd VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club said "It feels weirdly like a tech-world Entourage--and that's meant as more of a compliment than it seems." Brian Tallarico of RogerEbert.com praised the jokes of the series but commented on the slow progression of the character development in the first two episodes and the reliance on common stereotypes in technology, including "the nerd who can't even look at a girl much less talk to her or touch her, the young businessman who literally shakes when faced with career potential." He goes on to state that the lack of depth to the characters creates "this odd push and pull; I want the show to be more realistic but I don't care about these characters enough when it chooses to be so."
David Auerbach of Slate stated that the show did not go far enough to be called risky or a biting commentary of the tech industry. "Because I'm a software engineer, Silicon Valley might portray me with my pants up to my armpits, nerdily and nasally complaining that Thomas' compression algorithm is impossible or that nine times F in hexadecimal is 87, not 'fleventy five' (as Erlich says), but I would forgive such slips in a second if the show were funny." Auerbach claimed that he used to work for Google, and that his wife also worked for them at the time of the review.
Other reactions
Elon Musk, after viewing the first episode of the show, said: "None of those characters were software engineers. Software engineers are more helpful, thoughtful, and smarter. They're weird, but not in the same way. I was just having a meeting with my information security team, and they're great but they're pretty weird--one used to be a dude, one's super small, one's hyper-smart--that's actually what it is. [...] I really feel like Mike Judge has never been to Burning Man, which is Silicon Valley [...] If you haven't been, you just don't get it. You could take the craziest L.A. party and multiply it by a thousand, and it doesn't even get close to what's in Silicon Valley. The show didn't have any of that."
In response to Musk's comments, actor T.J. Miller, who plays Erlich on the show, pointed out that "if the billionaire power players don't get the joke, it's because they're not comfortable being satirized... I'm sorry, but you could tell everything was true. You guys do have bike meetings, motherfucker." Other software engineers who also attended the same premiere stated that they felt like they were watching their "reflection".
In January 2017, in an audience interaction by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, Gates recounted the episode in Silicon Valley where the main protagonists try to pitch their product to different venture capitalists reminding him of his own experiences.
In conference talks, Douglas Crockford has called Silicon Valley "the best show ever made about programming," ranking it higher than other HBO series such as Game of Thrones and Westworld. He goes on to cite the episode "Bachmanity Insanity" to illustrate the absurdity of the tabs versus spaces argument.
Accolades
Home media
The complete first season was released on DVD and Blu-ray on March 31, 2015; bonus features include audio commentaries and behind-the-scenes featurettes. The second season was released on DVD and Blu-ray on April 19, 2016; bonus features include six audio commentaries, a behind-the-scenes featurette, and deleted scenes. The third season was released on DVD and Blu-ray on April 11, 2017; bonus features include deleted scenes. The fourth season was released on DVD and Blu-ray on September 12, 2017; bonus features include deleted scenes.
Broadcast
In Australia, the series premiered on April 9, 2014, and aired on The Comedy Channel. In the United Kingdom, it premiered on July 16, 2014, and aired on Sky Atlantic, while also being available on internet view-on-demand services such as Blinkbox. In New Zealand, the series airs on pay TV network Sky, on the SoHo channel.
References
External links
- Official website
- Silicon Valley on IMDb
- Silicon Valley at TV.com
- In-universe websites: Pied Piper, Hooli, Code/Rag, Raviga, Endframe, Aviato, Bachmanity, Homicide, BreamHall
Source of article : Wikipedia
0 Comments