“Silicon Valley” has always occupied a weird space in HBO’s roster of shows. HBO has had a high number of “aspirational” bro-comedies about guys trying to “make it big” in increasingly obscure job fields.
Of course, I’m talking about the much-heckled “Entourage,” but also the fashion start-up “comedy” “How to Make it in America,” and “Ballers” which centered on sports money management–which you may not even know existed until watching the show.
All of those shows had occasional jokes, but were essentially just excuses to watch a group of men try to make as much money as possible. When they succeeded, we might say “Yes!” as though we had accomplished something. It was a little bit like watching a “Shark Tank” episode structured as a sitcom, and the inherent-lameness of “Ballers” and “HtMiiA” and about half of “Entourage” just couldn’t be covered up by how “awesome” the amount of money the fictional characters were making.
“Silicon Valley” goes the other direction–hard.
Over the course of its six seasons, we watched Richard Hendricks and his core group fail more times than you would even think is possible…And then! Right when it looks like all is lost, another rabbit would be pulled out of a hat to keep the plot going. Honestly, it began to stretch credibility the more the series kept going, but Mike Judge (who really is a comedic genius) always believed the enjoyment of the series was watching the smartest guys in the room get pants over and over again, as though high school never ended.
The series finale began with the idea that the Pied Piper core group (three brilliant programmers, Richard’s henchmen-soulmate Jared, and Monica) would finally be rewarded for six agonizing years of ups and downs, becoming “overnight” billionaires after hovering near-insolvency for so long. BUT…of course you knew that was too good to be true…
The question is: if the only real difference between tragedy and comedy is that comedy has a happy ending (as you may learn in the most technical definitions), then does it cheapen the laughs at all to have such a ho-hum, only partially satisfying finale? Maybe…but if “Veep” can score one of the year’s best finales (not saying much though, after “Game of Thrones” missed by a mile) with something so bruise-black, even your darkest anti-hero dramas feel like musicals in comparison–then why can’t “SV” have its Schadenfreude and eat it too?
SPOILERS below for those that want to know what happened to the Pied Piper crew they may have once loved and since given up on (judging by “Valley”‘s diminishing ratings over the years)…
–Hostile soulmates Guilfoyle and Dinesh wound up being the only two of the group who kept working together–leading one of the Valley’s biggest and best security firms. Dinesh even bought a house on Guilfoyle’s street.
–Jared works with the elderly…which sounds about right.
–Richard’s arch-nemesis Gavin Belson becomes an extremely prolific romance novelist, and only slightly less of an asshole.
–Monica (a character the series never knew exactly what to do with) goes to work for a “think tank” that is clearly connected to the NSA.
–Ever-shady Jin-Yang fakes his death and steals Ehrlich Bachman’s identity…again, and possibly even kills the camera crew that finds him deep in some jungle. [Somehow, this seems exactly right.]
–Ehrlich Bachman is referenced several times in this episode, but never seen and it’s unclear exactly what happens to him. [Although it seems more than possible Jin-Yang kills him and steals the millions Bachman made off “Piper Coin.”]
–Morally bankrupt and ruthless VC Laurie Bream winds up exactly where she belongs: prison.
–The incubator house where so much of the series took place is now owned by a family whose daughter is a Stanford student but has never heard of Pied Piper. A satisfying joke critiquing how quickly the Valley moves…and forgets, and the core group seem disappointed that even their failures aren’t memorable. In a mixed-blessing, the group plays “Always blue” the game they closed out the first few seasons with.
–Richard Hendricks is basically unemployable except for a job as an Ethnics professor at Stanford, where his best friend Big Head has been made the Dean (a subtle jab at the ridiculousness of Ivy League colleges catering to anyone who is perceived as extremely successful). In one last screw-up, Richard has (predictably) lost the apocalyptic software he deliberately ruined Pied Piper to prevent getting out there. Uh-oh…
Ultimately, it was fitting that a series that’s really about setbacks and how hard it is to create one of these tech juggernauts (Vincent Chase and Co. never worked this much) had a finale that was largely centered on deliberately-trying to sabotage their success.
Fitting but satisfying? Only if you’ve been prepared for it to end this way, and if you weren’t…well, maybe you’ve been watching a different show all these years. Grade for Series: A- (it really was brilliant)…Grade for Series Finale: B