Silicon Valley - a new Mike Judge comedy series - HBO Sundays (S2 full trailer is up)

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Discotheque said:
except that was not what was happening in the slightest. she asked him out after she thought his company was about to become a failure.

which is even more stupid because i dunno what the hell she saw in him. he can't even look her in the eye for more than a second and also just seems rude. any of the other guys would have had more success pulling her.
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She's attracted to failures.

Okay, it just doesn't make sense. But it's TV.
 
Trent Strong said:
Sexism and racism aside, this show is just not funny. The Big Bang Theory is seriously much better than this show.
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Those Silicon Valley guys would make a killing if they invented a news headline filter for your web browser with options to choose from -

For example, if I chose to filter out "implied sexism/overreach clickbait level 10" - articles like these from the New Republic wouldn't even appear on my screen, even if I visited the New Republic website.

It technically wouldn't be censorship because it's basically a filter you place on yourself ... kind of like an adult website blocker, but way better...

It would help clarify the click-through rates of these opinion sites too - it seems like at least half their traffic comes from people who are angered by their headlines and can't control their temper.
 
Shaneus said:
Junkee.com: Why Season One of Silicon Valley Was A Huge Disappointment
Probably click-bait, but it's definitely something to read.
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roosters93 said:
The Richard and Monica thing was hinted at once or twice before the finale.



There's a couple of them going around
The Boring Sexism of HBO's 'Silicon Valley'

The junkee one almost made me feel offended. sexist, racist, it's everything-ist!
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Both articles are right in the critiques though.

Previous said:
Those were funny reads.
Sexism, homosexuality, minorities jokes! shame on hollywood! oh god think of the children.. Big bang theory is a better blah blah blah.

I can't wait for season 2
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? The article correctly points out that Big Bang theory has more stronger female characters but also adds that Silicon Valley has much better joke setpieces
 
The budding romance seems so forced in this. It doesn't help that Richard is the least likeable person on the show and the least funny.
 
I think the show is too unfocused. It seems at conflict at time on what the show wants to be. Sometimes you see shades of it being a semi-serious tech drama (Social Network lite) other times its kinda slightstick and seriously goofy. It also looks expenisve as fuck, which is probably why they dragged that tech convention set over two episodes. Its one of the few shows I follow, and thats because I like it. But i'm not in love with it yet. It had some major highs, which made the lulls all the more glaring. Hope Season 2 is a lot better.
 
Sexism and racism you say?

I knew there was a reason I liked this show.

Hey, how about homophobia? After all, the jerking off of men by other men is played for laughs in the last episode. Go for the trifecta.
 
Big-E said:
The budding romance seems so forced in this. It doesn't help that Richard is the least likeable person on the show and the least funny.
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Weakest part of the show right now. Doesnt help there was absolutely no natural build up or chemistry between the two.
 
Show definitely grew on me since I first watched it. Definitely got a lot more comedic as the season progressed. Any word on when Season 2 will be out?

I actually enjoyed 'Betas' as well aside from the annoying main character but unfortunately that show got canned after the first season.
 
I think those articles make some good points. Some excerpts:

Shaneus said:
Junkee.com: Why Season One of Silicon Valley Was A Huge Disappointment
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The tech industry’s infamous lack of women and open hostility towards women should have provided easy pickings for Judge to write a smart show with good politics. And yet, there are no lead women characters on Silicon Valley. The only recurring female character, beautiful (of course) and personable Monica, is an assistant to a socially-inept male executive, and in the finale she is set up as a trophy love interest for Richard, despite the two characters never really expressing attraction to each other before now.
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Silicon Valley has taken the traditional, token approach to racial diversity. Much like The Big Bang Theory, the characters are all white except for the token brown guy. Dinesh is actually one of the wittiest and most likeable characters, but Silicon Valley goes the extra mile to ruin everything by including a recurring minor Chinese character (played by comedian Jimmy Ouyang), who speaks confused, incomprehensible English and contributes absolutely nothing to the plot. Jian Yang (I had to look up the character’s name on IMDb because of how minor he is) is perhaps the grossest stereotype throughout the series, appearing only to speak seemingly random statements — “Yes, I eat the fish” — that apparently function as punchlines.
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The thing about making a satirical television show is that it needs to actually satirise something.

It’s not enough for a program that sets itself up as satire to simply mirror the word’s problems. Realistic it might be; satirical it isn’t. There needs to be an element of subversion and judgement on the status quo. There needs to be critique. As it stands, Silicon Valley is essentially endorsing the lack of gender and racial diversity that inhabits the tech world.
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roosters93 said:
The Boring Sexism of HBO's 'Silicon Valley'
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Adding a few more women to the show wouldn’t just make it more representative—a show that included a piercing take on some of the ugly sexism that female engineers face would probably be funnier too. Watching “Silicon Valley,” it seems the greatest effect of Silicon Valley sexism and gender disparity is how hard it makes it for these guys to hook up with women. The jokes’ target is the pathetic, emasculated dudes, sex-starved nerds busy with dick-measuring contests—not the troubling system they’re a part of. Instead of skewering the tech world, the show merely reproduces its toxic mythologies.
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i'm not sure if i mind that it's not challenging the status quo politically - it's not a very flattering look at tech culture and i don't think it endorses it - but i think that it's not a good first season. they don't have much more than a few nerd jokes and occasional pokes at the empty vanity of silicon valley and i liked the show less and less as the season progressed as it became less about richard as a potentially interesting dramatic character turning his back on a fortune (he's just really boring) and more of a stupid, bland comedy (jared being driven to a random oil rig for example). it's not really their fault that their best character's actor died, which is tragic as he was so good, but compared to party down and freaks and geeks the show wastes the brilliant martin starr and all the ulrich and richard stuff just feels like a bad apatow film. actually most of it feels like a bad apatow film, the finale was so predictable and the relationship stuff with monica made me groan (i definetely agree that this is bad when it comes to writing women).
 
The thing about making a satirical television show is that it needs to actually satirise something.

It’s not enough for a program that sets itself up as satire to simply mirror the word’s problems. Realistic it might be; satirical it isn’t. There needs to be an element of subversion and judgement on the status quo. There needs to be critique. As it stands, Silicon Valley is essentially endorsing the lack of gender and racial diversity that inhabits the tech world.
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I agree that satirizing gender and racial disparity is a sadly missed target, but this almost makes it sound like there isn't much satire in the show to begin with. The show has been filled with it from the beginning, just at different targets.

Both articles make good points, I think.
 
Show was fairly funny before the last episode and then it just goes bananas for the last episode. The pivoting segments where Jared pitches his alternate company ideas are god tier comedy.
 
RatskyWatsky said:
I think those articles make some good points. Some excerpts:
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they actually touch on a lot of this in the show. The scene in episode 1 (I think) when Gavin Belson is looking out the window talking about how every group of programmers looks the same. Then there's the scene when they walk into the conference and Monica says something like "it's 5% women" and Gilfoyle says something like "it's a meat market". There's other but you get the point. I think the show is very self aware.
 
HenryGale said:
GAF is crazy.

This show is fucking hilarious, and the finale was amazing.
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I think most people agree. A couple articles were posted about how the show's not progressive enough or whatever (haven't read them) and a few people chimed in in agreement, but most people here seem to like it.
 
HenryGale said:
GAF is crazy.

This show is fucking hilarious, and the finale was amazing.
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You should know better than to take the opinions of outliers and equate them to the general GAF consensus. That's the kind of thing that can you get you banned in certain situations. Tread carefully!

There are some people who have militant standings about certain things, they always pop into threads to thread shit. Just ignore them and eventually they'll disappear.

I mean, really, can you take someone who says The Big Bang Theory is good in any way? They're obviously joke posters/trolls.
 
Aselith said:
Show was fairly funny before the last episode and then it just goes bananas for the last episode. The pivoting segments where Jared pitches his alternate company ideas are god tier comedy.
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"Which one? Which one? Which one?"
So good. Jared is one of my favorite characters. Actually, I like most of the characters in this show. They all seem to add something worthwhile.
 
Yeah they do. And lots of people weren't so keen on Erlich, but I think its been obvious for a while that the company needs him.
 
I think this show is incredible. I just watched the finale and... fuck. It's really impressive and makes me happy. While I don't know about the technical feasibility of the plot device there the
Weismann score and the middle-out compression algorithm
, I have to hand it to Mike Judge and his writers for putting something great together. Season 2 can't come quick enough.
 
D4Danger said:
they actually touch on a lot of this in the show. The scene in episode 1 (I think) when Gavin Belson is looking out the window talking about how every group of programmers looks the same. Then there's the scene when they walk into the conference and Monica says something like "it's 5% women" and Gilfoyle says something like "it's a meat market". There's other but you get the point. I think the show is very self aware.
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They touch on that in the article too:

It’s not like Judge is unaware that tech has a bad rep when it comes to women. In two separate episodes, the characters directly address women’s under-representation: Monica warns the guys that TechCrunch is a “vortex of distraction” with women making up only 15% of attendees, to which Gilfoyle, awed, replies, “it’s a meat market”; and then there’s the party thrown by Pied Piper-backer Peter Gregory, in which he resorts to hiring actresses to play women guests. It’s baffling, really, that a series can at once be so aware of inequality, and yet continue to do nothing about it.
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Silicon Valley was a little slow to get started, but I felt it found it's footing after a couple of episodes and I really enjoyed it. Looking forward to next season, hopefully next season will be 10 or 12 episodes instead of 8.
 
RatskyWatsky said:
I think those articles make some good points. Some excerpts:
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I don't know if I agree with any of this.

Usually, I'm all for better representation of women and minorities on television, but I think that criticism is actually kind of lost on a show like Silicon Valley -- based on the real Silicon Valley, where women and minorities ARE sorely underrepresented. It's kind of true to life in that sense.

Also, if the writer of this article doesn't think the show is satirizing anything because it didn't shoehorn in women and minorities and make that it's focus, then I can only assume this writer doesn't know shit about the tech world or the culture surrounding it--because Silicon Valley was insanely successful as satire of the tech industry. From literally the opening scene this show poked fun at the bloated egos of socially inept dweebs who would have been obscure, lower-middle class cubicle dwellers in a bygone age, but are now thrust into an insanely tech-driven world where their skills can grant them a level of wealth and social status they're completely unprepared for. Dorky guys who think they're solving the greater world's ills with better data processing algorithms when a significant portion of the planet still doesn't have regular access to the internet. How the rapid growth and ease-of-accessibility in tech has led to a new class of douche--the "brogrammer". Silicon Valley was scathing satire in this regard. And that's what it was going for.
 
royalan said:
I don't know if I agree with any of this.
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I mean, I think a lot (not all - I think the homophobia charge is absurd) of the points are actually pretty irrefutable.

royalan said:
Usually, I'm all for better representation of women and minorities on television, but I think that criticism is actually kind of lost on a show like Silicon Valley -- based on the real Silicon Valley, where women and minorities ARE sorely underrepresented. It's kind of true to life in that sense.
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Just this past week, Google released its employee data, revealing that women are only 17 percent of its technical employees are women. These numbers are bad, but by “Silicon Valley” standards, they’re astonishingly high. If we’re to believe the show, the tech world is two percent female; in the real world, according to one study, tech companies employ an average of 12.33 percent women. Female programmers do exist, and a better show would feature one (or even two). Satire doesn’t lose its oomph when it injects a little progressivism.
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It’s not enough for a program that sets itself up as satire to simply mirror the word’s problems.
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royalan said:
I don't know if I agree with any of this.

Usually, I'm all for better representation of women and minorities on television, but I think that criticism is actually kind of lost on a show like Silicon Valley -- based on the real Silicon Valley, where women and minorities ARE sorely underrepresented. It's kind of true to life in that sense.

Also, if the writer of this article doesn't think the show is satirizing anything because it didn't shoehorn in women and minorities and make that it's focus, then I can only assume this writer doesn't know shit about the tech world or the culture surrounding it--because Silicon Valley was insanely successful as satire of the tech industry. From literally the opening scene this show poked fun at the bloated egos of socially inept dweebs who would have been obscure, lower-middle class cubicle dwellers in a bygone age, but are now thrust into an insanely tech-driven world where their skills can grant them a level of wealth and social status they're completely unprepared for. Dorky guys who think they're solving the greater world's ills with better data processing algorithms when a significant portion of the planet still doesn't have regular access to the internet. How the rapid growth and ease-of-accessibility in tech has led to a new class of douche--the "brogrammer". Silicon Valley was scathing satire in this regard. And that's what it was going for.
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Agreed 100%
 
Knowing Judge I could easily see some commentary on sexism in later seasons if it keeps going. KotH wasn't bereft of it due to some experiences with Peggy, Luanne and Connie Jr. I feel like he'd need to establish a female character from the onset that's not just in the periphery to make it really hit home though. That's my two cents.

/shrug
 
RatskyWatsky said:
I mean, I think a lot (not all - I think the homophobia charge is absurd) of the points are actually pretty irrefutable.
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I'm not denying that women and minorities are sorely underrepresented in the real Silicon Valley, and that this is reflected in the show. My point of contention with the article is that I don't think Silicon Valley fails as satire because it doesn't tackle that specific issue.

It’s not enough for a program that sets itself up as satire to simply mirror the word’s problems.
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But using comedy to mirror the world's flaws is exactly what satire is, and that's exactly what Silicon Valley did. That they didn't take on this particular issue the author of the article is concerned with isn't a poor reflection of the show itself.

It's not a situation like GIRLS, which billed itself as being representative of the lives of average New York City women, but then treated minorities like a thing you only occasionally walk by on the street.
 
royalan said:
I'm not denying that women and minorities are sorely underrepresented in the real Silicon Valley, and that this is reflected in the show. My point of contention with the article is that I don't think Silicon Valley fails as satire because it doesn't tackle that specific issue.
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I think the "failure as a satire" thing was mainly targeted towards the show's treatment of women and minorities - not at the show as a whole:

Its failures are very real, but Silicon Valley does have some genuinely funny moments. I love that the tech never seems to work when it should (Peter Gregory’s driverless car; Hooli’s holographic communicator); the overzealous pitches about changing the world (“because if we can make your audio and video files smaller, we can make cancer smaller”); Erlich’s obsession with Steve Jobsian, over-the-top presentation techniques, and Peter Gregory’s unwavering eccentricity.
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royalan said:
It's not a situation like GIRLS, which billed itself as being representative of the lives of average New York City women, but then treated minorities like a thing you only occasionally walk by on the street.
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Was Girls billed as being representative of the lives of average New York City women though? I thought it was always presented as a "Sheltered Rich White Girl Millennial New York Misadventure Show" from the beginning.
 
Aselith said:
Why is the Indian guy the painfully shy virgin in both of these shows? Silicon Valley copied from the GOAT sitcom.
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I think Dinesh is loosely based on Kumail Nanjiani himself. I listened to Kumail on a podcast tell the story of how he hadn't touched a girl at all until he was 17. I believe Dinesh told that same story on the show.
 
HenryGale said:
GAF is crazy.

This show is fucking hilarious, and the finale was amazing.
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Yep. It took me about half the season to warm up to it and it does have issues (see; forced romance, stereotypical asian kid) but on the whole I thought it was a very solid start with some spectacularly funny moments.
 
A better show would feature one or two female programmers? That bit made me laugh. We're watching a show about a bunch of dudes living together who start up a company. Should Judge have written the show in such a way that Richards first order of business was hiring women to meet some sort of quota? Maybe we should add the token strong female (programmer) to the token black/Indian guy from now on.
 
Yeah this stuff is pretty ridiculous. Judge is making the show he finds funny. He isn't trying to make any statement here and he isn't obligated to do anything.I feel that just because they aren't including a lot of woman on the show doesn't mean it's deliberate sexism. And if it that's hindering someone's enjoyment for the show then I feel bad for you son. I got 99 problems etc.

#SexistRapReference

For real though. I just don't like how everything has to be so overanalyzed, especially a show as purposely silly as this one. I'm kind of glad there's no token female in the show. I feel that if you don't have a good idea for something then it's best to leave it out rather than to shoehorn it in to appease some people. I'd find the latter more offensive than omitting a female character.
 
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