From the offbeat mind of Mike Judge, this HBO half-hour comedy takes viewers inside the world of tech start-ups – and the socially awkward underdogs who try to navigate its lucrative potential.
Starring a talented ensemble of young comic actors and veterans, Silicon Valley charts the rising fortunes of Richard (Thomas Middleditch), an introverted computer programmer who lives in a “Hacker Hostel” start-up incubator along with his friends Big Head (Josh Brener), Gilfoyle (Martin Starr), and Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani).
These social misfits live under the watch of Erlich (T.J. Miller), a dotcom millionaire who lets them stay in his house for free – as long as he gets a 10% stake in their projects. Stuck working part-time at a large tech company called Hooli, Richard’s obscure website, Pied Piper, is going nowhere fast.
When a mid-level Hooli executive named Jared (Zach Woods) is apprised of the value of the site’s novel compression algorithm, Richard finds himself caught in the middle of an extreme bidding war between Hooli founder Gavin Belson (Matt Ross) and independent billionaire venture capitalist Peter Gregory (Christopher Evan Welch).
This was by far the funniest, smartest new show of the year, giving anyone even slightly interested in the rapidly evolving technology that is rewriting social base codes an insider’s view of ground zero for the IT explosion. Mike Judge, the man behind King of the Hill, Beavis and Butthead, and the film Office Space, which was his first ‘at bat’ for the Silicon Valley (or somewhere a lot like it) experience, once again draws on his own history in the computer industry, updated to encompass the strange transformation that has taken hold of the insular, asocial, and still overwhelmingly male community. Judge’s unfailing eye for absurdity and hypocrisy makes the Facebook-Apple-Google era of Silicon Valley an easy target.
Sadly, Christopher Evans Welch, who played Peter Gregory with an inspired strangeness and a gift for idiosyncratic tics, died of lung cancer after filming episode five. He was not replaced for the final three episodes, and fortunately, his loss did not irreparably disrupt production (I didn’t hear of his passing until after I had watched the first season; the story doesn’t feel forced due to his absence, because he was playing the role of the ultimate misanthropic hermit plutocrat, with plans to escape to a robot-island). But the writing is the true star on Silicon Valley. Judge has put together a writer’s room that is as good as it gets, and they provide an amazing cast made up of mostly comedic actors the material they need to make it their own; for a show about socially awkward nerds, it’s amazing just how likable and yes, even charismatic, these characters/actors are.
Character to watch: Thomas Middleditch as Richard Hendricks.
Journal your answers to the following questions after you watch the series.
- How does this particular character’s journey compare with yours?
- Did the character develop certain characteristics during the movie that you have or that you would like to have? If so, what are those characteristics?
- What obstacles did this character face? What was his or her biggest challenge?
- What would you have done differently if you had been in the same position as the character?
- Is this character the type of person you would be friends with? Why or why not?