0428_SILICONVALLEY_EP4
WEB HED: SD Times Blog: ‘Silicon Valley’ Episode 4: TOGA,
TOGA
WEB BLURB: The gang goes to a toga party; Erlich and Richard
channel their inner Jobs and Wozniak
WEB KEYWORDS: Silicon Valley
By Rob Marvin
Nothing in “Silicon Valley” is quite what it seems. Episode four,
“Fiduciary Duties,” sends the Pied Piper gang to a toga party
that—like most of the tech visionaries and lustrous companies
depicted in the series—is really just a gleaming façade.
As he walks into venture capitalist Peter Gregory’s lavish toga
party the night before a “big picture” meeting about the future of
his startup, Richard is busy pretending he has a clear vision for
Pied Piper.
“Animal House” this toga party is not. When two beautiful women
walk up to a dumbfounded, bed sheet-clad Richard, Dinesh and
Gilfoyle, their amazement turns quickly to self-pity. The women
work for a startup that sources actresses to parties to liven them up
by making conversation with guests and “being interested in
them.” Turns out “anyone over a 7” at the party is probably paid to
be there, and “anyone under a 3” is a guest.
In anywhere but Silicon Valley, a party like this would sound
strange.
The toga party simply served as impetus for this episode’s bigger
theme, though: Richard and Erlich’s relationship echoing Steve
Wozniak and Steve Jobs. It turns out that one-liner from the pilot
actually carries some weight. At the party, Richard blacks out and
drunkenly asks Erlich to be a Pied Piper board member, a decision
he immediately regrets.
The next afternoon during Erlich’s impromptu Pied Piper company
photo, Richard breaks the news to Erlich that he changed his mind.
Erlich tries and fails to dramatically take off his Steve Jobs
turtleneck before storming off in a huff, leaving Richard and Pied
Piper’s business manager Jared to get ready for the “big picture”
meeting.
But as the requisitely sleazy lawyer drawing up Pied Piper’s LLC
paperwork (“Mad Men’s” Ben Feldman) smugly explains to
Richard, his startup needs both halves on the brain: the Jobs and
the Wozniak. Of course the lawyer buries his wisdom in a smarmy
grin as he plays his guitar “signed by Sergey and Larry” while
explaining “Ying and Yang” to Richard, who tries in vain to
enlighten him that it’s “Yin and Yang.”
“A lot of guys come in here, they can do all the engineering stuff
but they get hung up on technicalities,” the lawyer said. “They just
tell you what their vision for the company is. Those guys are so
[expletive deleted].”
In the bathroom of Peter Gregory’s office before the “big picture”
meeting, Richard finds himself having a full-blown panic attack
that ends with him pants-less—his slacks soaked in the sink—on
the bathroom floor amid Jared’s clumsy attempts to calm him
down.
When Richard walks out wearing Jared’s slacks, his head a jumble
with an abstract vision for his company about to make a tonguetied fool of himself in the meeting, Erlich is there, ready to be the
Jobs to Richard’s Wozniak.
“Today’s user wants access to all of their files, from all of their
devices, instantly,” Erlich tells Gregory in his on-the-fly speech in
the meeting. “That’s why cloud-based is the Holy Grail. Now
Dropbox is winning, but when it comes to audio and video files,
they might as well be called Dripbox. Using our platform, Pied
Piper users would be able to compress their files to the point where
they would truly be able to access them instantly. We control the
pipe, they just use it.”
Pied Piper has its Jobs and Wozniak: Richard to develop the ideas,
and Erlich to express them. This episode was all about Pied Piper’s
dynamic, and why you need the technical mind and the salesman to
make a startup work—though in true “Silicon Valley” fashion, it
took a strange toga party, bad drunk decisions and a panic attack to
get there.
“You’re my Wozniak,” Erlich tells Richard. “I will always be
there...” just as Richard, the residual effects of his panic attack
returning, promptly projectile vomits directly onto Erlich’s shirt.
Odds & Ends
–Peter Gregory’s deadpan “Thank you, Florida” to rapper Flo
Rida’s introduction at his toga party was hands-down the funniest
one-liner of the show thus far.
–Speaking of Gregory, the late Christopher Evan Welch continues
to be the show’s comedic MVP. Gregory’s entrance to the toga
party, carried in on a red velvet golden chair sporting a Julius
Caesar outfit and a stone-faced stare, was picture-perfect.
–In a show about awkward programmers, business manager Jared
Dunn is the king. “The Office” alum Zach Woods has upped his
uncoolness factor by a pair of wet, undersized slacks. As Dinesh so
succinctly put it, “He’s the least cool guy I’ve ever met.”
–Big Head (Josh Brener,) had a great side plot this episode,
becoming one of Hooli’s “unassigned” after the Nucleus
brogrammers realize he knows absolutely nothing about
compression algorithms. He meets a group of other Hooli castoffs,
sitting around playing hacky sack and getting paid for it because
their contracts keep them employed. They’re the tech world’s
version of untouchables.
–We found out that Peter Gregory and Hooli CEO Gavin Belson
were onetime partners and friends before they were professional
rivals. It won’t be the last we hear of that back-story.
–Dinesh and Gilfoyle remain the show’s comic relief duo,
continuing to steal every scene they’re in. It’s time to bump these
guys up past a couple of one-liners an episode.