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Silicon Valley - Season 2 of the hilarious Mike Judge comedy series - HBO Sundays

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It wasn't an option. They were literally about to fold when Russ got two. At the time they had a majority because Monica was with them. Her having to vote with her company after they bought seats catches them off guard.

You could work it into the deal that if Russ ever sells his shares his extra seat reverts back to the company.
 
- Warming Glow: The Inside Story Behind The Music Of ‘Silicon Valley’
As Season 2 comes to a close, we had the great privilege of speaking to Rudy Chung, one of the show’s music supervisors. Chung, who oversees the show alongside Jason Alexander and is part of the larger music supervision company Hit the Ground Running, reflects on what he calls the “nerd swagger” of Silicon Valley’s music and the variety of artists included in each episode (Sade! Spoon! Crazy Town!). He also weighs in on the very apt choice of song for the finale’s closing moments, hips us to the coolest upcoming releases, and guesses what kind of bizarre stuff Jared, also known as “effeminate k.d. lang,” would have on his personal playlist.
 
You could work it into the deal that if Russ ever sells his shares his extra seat reverts back to the company.

Makes sense. Also makes sense that Richard didn't think of that. Hell the seats probably should have reverted as soon as the checks weren't coming in. This is part of why Richard's a bad leader on the business side.
 

oatmeal

Banned
See, having a real problem like Richard being canned so they can take over operations is a problem that MAKES SENSE.

Richard doing stupid shit, or Russ putting a tequila bottle on a delete key because the writers are dicks are not.

Good finale.
 

Ruruja

Member
This YouTube coverage of E3 at 1080p60 has got me thinking of Pied Piper haha.

They got to around 300,000 viewers too.

Finale was okay, glad they didn't delete the data.
 

Slacker

Member
so it was basically youll vote like me or else type deal? i kind of thought that but wasnt 100%

We can assume that's the case. Previous board members were Richard, Erlich, Reviga (voted by Monica as per Richard's agreement with Laurie), and two board seats operated by Russ and his girlfriend. Reviga bought Russ out, gaining majority control. We don't know if Monica had to be threatened or was convinced voting Richard out was in the best interest of the company. Tune in next year to find out!
 

hohoXD123

Member
This YouTube coverage of E3 at 1080p60 has got me thinking of Pied Piper haha.

They got to around 300,000 viewers too.

Finale was okay, glad they didn't delete the data.

Exact same thought. The scene of the servers burning makes me think of GAF post-TLG/FF7 remake
 

dork

Banned
Ok one thing they really need to fix about this show...something bad doesnt ALWAYS have to happen to these guys. Literally anytime something good is about to happen..NOPE. Its so predictable now. Just let them have one good thing happen....
 

Grinchy

Banned
They are purposely writing the bad-thing-leads-to-good-thing-leads-to-bad-thing scenarios so that we, the audience, feel as stressed and frustrated as the main character.
 
D

Deleted member 1235

Unconfirmed Member
Overall I enjoyed this season, but I feel there's some stuff that's getting repetitve and some poor writing to boot. The scene with the two women chatting about Bighead felt laughably forced, then you have Richard kicking his keys into the gutter, Gilfoyle coming up with the crazy idea once again that everyone contemplates, etc.
cmon, that was obviously the joke.... every stupid thing that could possibly happen. A wheat beer with a slice of lemon... but not this bruised lemon maybe get another one, up high. etc etc. it was so ridiculous it was funny.

great ep, loved the whole season.
 
cmon, that was obviously the joke.... every stupid thing that could possibly happen. A wheat beer with a slice of lemon... but not this bruised lemon maybe get another one, up high. etc etc. it was so ridiculous it was funny.

great ep, loved the whole season.
them going back for another lemon was a hilarious image
 

Alpende

Member
Quite liked the finale. The scenes with Richard and his mess ups were kind of lame, the keys going into the sewer and such. But then again, the crew stalling and going back for lemons was pretty good. Maybe it was all intentional but I didn't see it that way when I watched it.
 

aku:jiki

Member
The best part about the stalling sequence was that Erlich had a different bong depending on where they were and when they were picking lemons he was using a watering can as a bong.
 
I loved the episode. It's not as good as it can be, but it's definitely good.

I could do away with the whole guy who was in an accident and was going to drink piss as I don't find it funny. I mean some things around it are funny, but the thing itself is not.

I also kinda wish that they didn't end it in a cliffhanger(s) with Raviga and Baghead.
 

kiguel182

Member
Richard is as incompetent as you can get as a CEO. Glad he was fired. He is the weakest character by far so I can't really feel anything when things go bad for him.
 
A couple of quotes from this:
You’ve thrown a big wrench in the works for Richard. What happens to him now? He still has a board seat, and he owns part of the company, right? Where do we find him next season?

Honestly, Alec and I had one conversation about it that was maybe a minute long. We were so trying to get this season done that we’ve barely even talked about it. But there is plenty of real life stuff to draw from here. There are different ways that that’s handled. It happens all the time. Raviga now has the right to hire whoever they want as CEO because they can outvote the others. And it is most likely going to turn into some kind of ugly battle.

Do you see him as an outsider trying to fight his way back in next season?

Yeah, that’s one way to go. We’ve got our work cut out for us. We put that in there not knowing exactly where we were going to go with it. I really don’t have an answer. The situation is, he’s only got one seat and Erlich [T.J. Miller] is his friend, but they can be outvoted on anything. He still owns a big piece of it, though. So he could get rich or other things can happen. People can fight their way back in, like you say. That’s one way to go. We shall see.

The episode ends with Erlich (T.J. Miller) asking the question: “And what about me?” What does this mean for Erlich and the rest of the Pied Piper crew? Do they remain together while trying to figure out a way to undermine the new CEO and bring Richard back into the fold?

They are people who own a share of it, but they don’t have to work on it. And a new CEO would have to figure out does he or she want them involved at all? It’s one of those things, like: What exactly do you own here? There’s the algorithm and there’s the people. Sometimes companies are bought for the people involved more than the tech, and sometimes they’re bought for the tech itself. And that’s something we can explore in the new season. What’s Pied Piper? Is it worth what it’s worth because of the algorithm or because of the people? That’s a question that people have.

Well, Laurie seems more interested in the technology than the people of Piper, whom she views as screw-ups.

There could also be something to the way that Dinesh and Gilfoyle handled that crisis situation and all those people out of their garage. That might be of some value. Sometimes you see the founders pitted against each other in interesting ways. The draft before that had a meeting and Richard being self-deprecating about how much he screwed up and kind of realizing that he’s just spelling out what a horrible CEO he is.
The arbitration verdict has a surprise twist [in which the judge rules that Hooli would own Pied Piper’s underlying IP because Richard worked on it using a Hooli computer, but Hooli’s illegal employment agreement with Richard cancels that out]. Did you guys tinker with different outcomes on that case in the writers room?

Originally, we talked about a thing that happened to me and some other people at MTV—I think Dan Cortese had a similar thing—where their contract with us was so aggressive that it actually violated labor laws. So I was able to get out of it. This is what I remember hearing. And then Jonathan Dotan, our consultant on the show, looked into legal things that happened, and this seemed like a really interesting one, because the contract violated Jared’s right to work, not Richard’s. It’s an interesting thing that the contract was so aggressive about, “You’re not allowed to hire anybody from this company,” but it violates Jared’s rights, making that contract invalid. From fairly early on in the season, that’s how we were going to end it. That seemed like a really interesting thing to all of us. And it’s a real thing. We had more stuff that we cut out with the judge complaining about his commute. He’s a guy who can’t afford to live in Palo Alto anymore, so he’s got to live way down in Gilroy or something and he commutes. He’s already irritated with tech people, and here’s this huge company—the companies get very arrogant and they ignore California labor laws, and judges love to just go, “Hey! Over here! You may be a billionaire, but we’re the law. You can’t do that.”
 
A few quotes from this interview:
Executive producer Alec Berg has said that the conceit of the show essentially requires the guys to always be underdogs. How difficult is it to keep them failing over and over again?

When we first started to write the show, it seemed like it was going to be very difficult to keep them underdogs. But then we started really going into the tech world — interviewing people, hearing their stories — and there were so many instances of people that almost became billionaires and now they’ve got nothing. It just happens every day up there. So there are plenty of failure stories to draw from because it’s the norm. I don’t want to frustrate the audience, but as long as we keep it interesting and funny, I think it’s going to be fine. I kind of liken it to Charlie Brown. If he ever met up with the red-haired girl or Lucy let him kick the football, it’d just be kind of over. It’s good that in the last episode they are victorious for a little while before it’s left hanging. They have to have small victories to keep them going.

But then Richard gets that awful call telling him that he’s no longer going to be CEO of his own company. Is that the central conflict we can expect to see played out in season three?

Yeah, that’s the setup of next season. There’s this thing that just happened at Twitter actually with Dick Costolo stepping down. That sort of thing happens a lot. It was interesting when we first did the thing where Russ Hanneman (Chris Diamantopoulos) has the two board seats. People started going, “Oh, now I see. There’s three board seats out there…” It was interesting to see them try to predict what they thought we were going to do, but I didn’t see anybody predict what we really did — so hopefully we weren’t predictable.
Did you get advice from real people in the tech world when you were writing this past season?

I’ve been corresponding with Mark Cuban. That has been going on since after the first season. I’ve kind of gotten to know these people a little more this time around, like Jeremy Stoppelman of Yelp. I went up there and I met him after the first season.

Do you think any of them will want to make an appearance in the show at some point, the way you’ve done with Evan Spiegel, Michael Arrington and others?

The thing about the tech world is that there aren’t that many people who viewers can recognize. It’s a handful of people — Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk. Also, they’re billionaires. They don’t need the money, so why would they do it? Just for fun? We’ve reached out to a lot of these people and sometimes they are interested, but ultimately they just say that there are too many downsides to it.

Who’s your dream cameo?

It’s a tie between Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. It would be really cool to get Zuckerberg, just because he’s sort of a quintessential tech guy. He’s created something that everybody on Earth uses, a movie was made about him. It would just be cool to get him in the show. But we did have the Winklevoss twins, so maybe he’ll hate us and never be in the show now. (Laughs.)
 

kiguel182

Member
What Pied Piper have is barely a product.

I know this is a TV show and all but you can't build an entire service with three programmers.

They have amazing tech. Richard brings nothing to the table besides that.

Hooli had the good product but lacked the tech. Them not merging because Richard wanted to do his thing (whatever that was) is when I realised he is an idiot.

Gavin on Pied Piper is actually not a bad thing at all.
 
Gavin acted like a complete absolute douchebag on the last episode. Like, even moreso than usual. Don't want him anywhere near Pied Piper in the next season.
 
Gavin acted like a complete absolute douchebag on the last episode. Like, even moreso than usual. Don't want him anywhere near Pied Piper in the next season.
xm6KsT1.jpg
 

Catdaddy

Member
The best part about the stalling sequence was that Erlich had a different bong depending on where they were and when they were picking lemons he was using a watering can as a bong.

That whole scene was one of the funniest and clever moments I've seen in a long time. I really wish it was longer than 10 episodes/year, but if it were may lose some of the charm.
 

big ander

Member
Enjoying the post-finale interviews with Judge, though I'd also like someone to get Berg. This seems like his show as much as Judge's.

edit: ^hah yes the watering can bong was fantastic.
Quite liked the finale. The scenes with Richard and his mess ups were kind of lame, the keys going into the sewer and such. But then again, the crew stalling and going back for lemons was pretty good. Maybe it was all intentional but I didn't see it that way when I watched it.

Honestly it's not even a maybe, that was blatantly the joke. That all this comically contrived delay was happening for Richard while the guys were delaying the nuke over a prolonged toast
What Pied Piper have is barely a product.

I know this is a TV show and all but you can't build an entire service with three programmers.

They have amazing tech. Richard brings nothing to the table besides that.

Hooli had the good product but lacked the tech. Them not merging because Richard wanted to do his thing (whatever that was) is when I realised he is an idiot.

Gavin on Pied Piper is actually not a bad thing at all.
I mean 1) that's kinda the joke that they're such a makeshift company 2) these posts appear as if you're watching the show as if it's real life and you're a tech blogger covering it and offering your take on what the real companies should do to be successful which is really odd?
 

kiguel182

Member
Enjoying the post-finale interviews with Judge, though I'd also like someone to get Berg. This seems like his show as much as Judge's.

edit: ^hah yes the watering can bong was fantastic.


Honestly it's not even a maybe, that was blatantly the joke. That all this comically contrived delay was happening for Richard while the guys were delaying the nuke over a prolonged toast
I mean 1) that's kinda the joke that they're such a makeshift company 2) these posts appear as if you're watching the show as if it's real life and you're a tech blogger covering it and offering your take on what the real companies should do to be successful which is really odd?

lol this has nothing with looking at it as if it's real. The show establishes itself in pretty real rules. Like one of the "points" of the show is how it's an accurate portrayal of Silicon Valley.

Like every show things have to make some sense. What I say about Richard would be the same as criticising a Game of Thrones character for a dumb decision. Of course it isn't real but within the show it's dumb and it breaks my suspension of disbelief.

Richard makes dumb decisions and with him at the helm Pied Piper makes no sense as a company.

If I sound like a tech blog is because well, this is a show about tech that deals in part with how start ups and tech companies work.
 

Ke0

Member
Yea honestly, Richard would make a very poor CEO. You kind of have to be ruthless and damn near sociopathic to be CEO most of the time. Richard is way too emotional and honestly...naive. It's like his character believes the world is a fair and just place.
 

jimforspeed

Neo Member
Agree. It's a very natural continuation. PP got saved by Richard's fuckups quite a few times. It would be a matter of awaiting the next big fuckup that would kill the company. This outcome though puts a lot of possible angles on the show, although maybe it would indeed be better to keep it for S3E01 and end this in a good tone. Great show.
 
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