SILICON VALLEY – Live-action comedy developed by Mike Judge; rated TV-MA; airs Sundays on HBO; 30 minutes. Episode 1.8: “Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency” (original airdate, June 1, 2014). Directed by Mike Judge; written by Alec Berg (9 out of 10)
The story so far: Richard Hendrix (Thomas Middleditch), Gilfoyle (Martin Starr), Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani), Erlich Bachmann (T. J. Miller), and Jared Dunn (Zach Woods) are employees of a startup called Pied Piper. Richard has created a lossless algorithm that could change all digital media as we know it, allowing for quicker streaming and less space needed for storage. They receive mentoring and funding from angel investor Peter Gregory. Meanwhile, they are in a race against philanthropic rebel billionaire Gavin Belson (Matt Ross) and his company Hooli, who are trying to reverse engineer Pied Piper, even going so far as stealing Richard’s best friend Big Head (Josh Brener) to head up “Project Nucleus.” Now competing at TechCrunch Disrupt, Erlich put the entire team at risk when he reveals that he once slept with their judge’s wife. While trying to find out if the judge knows or not, he meets the judge’s new wife, and then proceeds to sleep with her. The season penultimate episode ended with the judge tackling Erlich, punching him in the face and yelling, “You son of a bitch!” He knows. And now. . .
In this episode:
Well, it appears that Pied Piper’s douche-bro lawyer (last seen in episode 3) is pretty fantastic at his job, as he successfully threatened TechCrunch Disrupt with legal action, enough to catapult Pied Piper into the finals.
Unfortunately, Gavin Belson and Hooli’s presentation of Project Nucleus stands between them. And their reverse engineering is not only flawless, they have the same compression engine ready to work with all of Hooli’s suite of products (imagine if Google did this with Gmail, Youtube, etc). And they have. . . Shakira!!! (And that’s all before the opening credits, now set to “Hips Don’t Lie” in this episode.)
And with that, Pied Piper is screwed, setting off a madcap set of misadventures. Erlich tries to ambush Gavin Belson, Dinesh and Golfoyle start thinking about new jobs, and Jared starts coming up with a new venture for the company to undertake.
This all culminates in our team trying to figure out a math problem of exactly how long it would take Erlich to manually pleasure all 800 of the men in the TechCrunch Disrupt audience. During this, Richard has a brainstorm and may have just unlocked a way to save the company. .. .or send them brutally crashing even further.
Potent Quotables:
“I was just happy you got punched in the face, Erlich, but now I’m super happy. I feel like I won twice.
“I’m gonna disrupt this bathroom.”
“Until then, we need to do what any animal in nature does when it’s cornered: act irrationally, and blindly lash out at everything around us.”
“Like Instagram. That was a location-based check-in service when it started. And then they pivoted. Or Chat Roulette. That was social media. And then they pivoted to become a playground for the sexually monstrous.”
“What if Pied Piper was an app that could help you attract rodents? You know, like the fairy tale? For purposes of extermination or to feed your pet snake. We’re not here to tell you what to do with your rats. We’re here to get you rats– STAT!
THE ENTIRE discussion about Erlich servicing. . . errr. . .”manipulating data.”
Final verdict: 9 out of 10
Yeah, the ending was a little pat and convenient, but it was an awesome ride leading up to it. Who doesn’t love a great underdog story? Very glad we’re going to see a season two, where it is likely we will not see the guys working out of Erlich’s house any more.
I can’t wait for a next season, especially since we’re likely to see them in an office. And who knows office space tech company comedies more than Mike Judge?
CAST:
Thomas Middleditch as Richard Hendrix, T. J. Miller as Erlich Bachmann, Zach Woods as Jared Dunn, Kumail Nanjiani as Dinesh, Martin Starr as Gilfoyle, Josh Brener as Big Head, Christopher Evan Welch as Peter Gregory, Amanda Crew as Monica, Angela Trimbur as Langdon.
PS– Some of you may have noticed that many months ago, Big Shiny Robot began adopting a specific format for most of our film and TV reviews. I’d like to personally thank Mr. Jeff Michael Vice, wherever he is, for helping to develop this format and inspiring us all to be at our most professional. I’m happy to use this for one last time for Silicon Valley, a show I know he and his best bud and roommate Shannon enjoyed watching. We’re already missing you, Jerk Bot.