Tag Archives: Silicon Valley

Ranking the Shows That I Watch – 2014 Edition: 19-16

4 Mar

We’re halfway there. Four more. Young series all. Two debuts, a second year, and a third year, three comedies, and a drama. Let’s go.

Intro here and 43-40 here and 39-36 here and 35-32 here and 31-28 here and 27-24 here and 23-20 here.

19. Brooklyn Nine-Nine – 2013: 16

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Co-created by Parks and Recreation creator Michael Schur and writer Dan Goor, Brooklyn Nine-Nine was more fully formed out of the box than Parks and Rec. While Paks and Rec modeled itself after the Office, Brooklyn Nine-Nine modeled itself after Parks and Rec. Parks and Rec took itself from a shaky at best first season to an excellent second season, and while Brooklyn Nine-Nine started higher, and has remained up to first season standards, it hasn’t quite made that jump. Brooklyn Nine-Nine is, no matter what else, a very solid, funny, and enjoyable show, and I look forward to watching it every week. Andre Braugher is a national treasure who should be kept in a museum when not filming the show for preservation purposes. I mean it as a sign of my high expectations for the show rather than an insult to say that Brooklyn Nine-Niane, while continuing to be good, hasn’t quite become transcendent the way recent similar network comedies The Office, 30 Rock, and Parks & Recreation did at points relatively early in their run. Brooklyn Nine-Nine always has some laughs, but it can be a little inconsistent, it hasn’t always found its own tone, and most of the characters are still working towards really being fully formed. Parks didn’t really hits its heights until the third season though, so I haven’t lost hope for this jump yet, and I’ll continue to laugh away in the meantime.

18. Silicon Valley – 2013: Not Eligible

Silicon ValleyA new entrant on this list, Silicon Valley is a spot on satire of the tech sector and is laugh-out-loud funny to boot. Only in actually watching Silicon Valley did I realize how shocking it was that there hasn’t been a well-regarded satirical take on such an easily parodied industry that has played such an important role in the American cultural landscape for nearly two decades. Silicon Valley takes advantage of this lapse and mines the industry for all its worth. It seems (from external sources including my brother who worked there) that there is lots of truth to Silicon Valley’s portrayal, even if gets some details wrong or exaggerates for comedic purposes. The show definitely has a bit of a woman problem; and while some of that is endemic to the premise of the show (it would be more dishonest realistically to have a group of programmers as split evenly between male and female), dragging the one female character into a romance with the protagonist that doesn’t really fit on screen is forced at best. The characters can on occasion be a little cartoonishly nerd-like, and though the touch is gentle and loving, the nerds-can’t-function-in-society button is hit one too many times. Still, Silicon Valley delivered an extremely promising and funny first season, which gives me great anticipation for the second. Lastly, a moment for the late Christopher Evan Welch who may well have been the break out performer if he wasn’t tragically felled by lung cancer; his venture capitalist Peter Gregory was a delightful weirdo.

17. Fargo – 2013: Not Eligible

Fargo

Fargo began from an unusual idea; creator Noah Hawley didn’t want to remake, or make a sequel or prequel to the much-lauded 1996 Coen brothers movie Fargo. Rather, he wanted to set a similar story in the world of Fargo, keeping the tone and atmosphere that make that film so successful. It was an unusual idea and a bold one (the closest I can think of offhand is Ron Moore’s BattleStar Galactica remake – but that was almost the reverse – the new show appropriated characters and concepts, but changed the tone completely). For the very most part, it worked, and was one of the best new shows of the year. The show deftly married dark humor and riveting drama, created similar analogues to the movie’s characters that were different enough to stand up to the rigor of a TV season where characters have to develop and grow. The four major characters were each entertaining and brought something different to the show, and many of the secondary characters were treats as well, as Fargo made good use of playing comedic actors in more dramatic roles. A couple of plotlines seemed out of nowhere, weaving in and out with no real purpose or resolution, and a couple of the characters felt oddly used, sometimes under, and sometimes over. Still, overall, Fargo brought the most important ingredient to its success consistently; its tone; dark, comedic, with an underlying small town warmth.

16. Veep – 2013: 27

Veep

Veep has been a steady climber in these rankings. I watched its first season, finding it amusing enough to keep up with, but not to make it a must watch immediately – it frequently got pushed below the hoard of other Sunday shows, and was eventually viewed later in the week. The second season was better. All of a sudden, I made more of an effort to watch sooner. The dialogue crackled a little more. The cast seemed to be more familiar with one another’s timing and comic beats – the chemistry between nearly every two-person pair was sparkling. The third season ramped it up another level. It’s easy to see why Veep, a modest comedy which doesn’t go for the loud humor of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the high-concepts of Community, or the emotional depths of Parks and Recreation, hides under the radar, but it’s snuck its way to being one of the best comedies on television. Veep simply put together a season of being consistently minute-by-minute funny.

Tags: , , , ,

Spring 2014 Review: Silicon Valley

7 Apr

The men of Silicon Valley

The humor in Silicon Valley is very different than that of the show it’s paired with after Game of Thrones on HBO, Veep, but the two share a different commonality which makes them an apt pairing: they’re both insider-y takes on very insular communities. Both shows welcome outsiders in to laugh and learn about their community’s peculiar quirks and allow insiders to nod their head at the all-too-familiar world they recognize on screen.

Where for Veep it’s the political arenas of Washington D.C., for Silicon Valley, it’s the tech world of well, Silicon Valley. I’m not anything close to an insider, but even just from having read occasionally about Silicon Valley and stories of the inanity that goes on there, I notice at least some of the shout outs to the absurd eccentricities of the area’s culture, such as the ridiculous company names, the claim that every product no matter how mundane and business-facing makes the world a better place, the reverence towards tech billionaires, and the ludicrously lavish parties.

Of course successfully parodying Silicon Valley is one thing and I’m sure to locals that’s more valuable in and of itself; I have no way to confirm this, but from what I’ve read Silicon Valley is pretty much spot on. But is it funny or enjoyable to outsiders? It is, and it’s warm, and honestly, it’s a story that it’s kind of shocking we haven’t seen yet, considering what a big part of American culture the tech startup world has become since the first dot com bubble of the late ’90s and the rise of Facebook. The only other quintessential bit of startup pop culture in the 21st century is The Social Network, a much more serious reality-based story. Silicon Valley is a lighter tale about the way up, rather than a look back at what went right and what went wrong from the top, but parallels can certainly be drawn between the two.

Silicon Valley stars five twenty-to-thirty somethings. a couple of whom work at a google-esque major tech company (Hooli) during the day and devote their nights towards working on their own startup enterprises at their house, owned by Erlich, an entrepreneur who had a semi-successful startup and sold out for a fair but not ridiculous amount of money. Erlich calls his house an incubator and owns ten percent of each tenant’s company rather than charge rent. Richard Hendrix, our protagonist, has been working a site called Pied Piper designed to help songwriters find out if their songs violate existing copyrights.

The stakes ramp up when a couple of very important people in the tech world – the CEO of Hooli, Gavin Belson, and venture capitalist billionaire Peter Gregory (whose right-on-point TED talk on the dangers of attending college the boys attended earlier) discover that within Hendrix’s worthless start up is a mega-valuable piece of technology, setting off a quick bidding war between the two for Hendrix’s company. Belson offers him $10 million for everything, but Gregory offers him $200,000 for 5% of the company, advice, and the chance to grow it himself. After having a panic attack, and with some persuasion from Gregory’s female employee Monica (I particularly note female because she is pretty much the only woman to appear so far in the show; perhaps that’s yet another accurate rendition of Silicon Valley culture – this show doesn’t even approach passing the Bechdel test).

Hendrix brings all his friends aboard and sets out to start a company.  The quest is then, as Richard expresses when he tries to give a short speech towards the end of the pilot, to build and grow a hugely successful enterprise, and feel good doing it, all while avoiding the dystopian hive mind of Silicon Valley that he and the others are sick of, and which can be as insidious as it is hilarious.

Silicon Alley is a spin on a classic losers/underdogs against the world theme, but there’s one big difference.  There’s not up against the big, hulking, charismatic jocks – instead, Silicon Valley is run by the nerds; the only difference between nerds and gurus are a couple of billion dollars.  The main characters may be classic nerds, but they’re not Big Bang Theory nerds; there’s a fine line between natural awkwardness and uncomfortable no-real-people-are-like-this behavior and certainly in the first episode Silicon Valley stays well to the former side of the line and I have no reason to think that it will deviate from this.

As the credits rolled, I was pretty excited to follow their journey with them. While it doesn’t have the hook of an edge-of-your-seat-gripping drama, it was exceedingly easy to watch, and if there was another episode available at the time I would have popped it on right away.

Will I watch it again? Yes. Networks have reputations that preceed them, and HBO is held to a pretty high standard. Thankfully, this looks like another strong effort. Next episode, please.

Tags: , ,