Silicon Valley

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Mr Sausage
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:02 pm
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Re: Silicon Valley

#26 Post by Mr Sausage » Wed May 07, 2014 12:27 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:I just find it odd that you're defending that article at near-absurd lengths rather than contributing your opinion of the show if you've seen it. Beyond that, Mr Sausage, I don't know what to tell you.
I don't really believe you find it odd that I'm arguing over the validity of an argument, because it's something I would do, and I do it here frequently enough. I also don't believe that's why you came in here to complain.

I like arguing with Andre Jurieu. He always makes great points. I'll probably continue to talk about this with him if he feels like continuing it. I am not bothered that you don't like this.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Silicon Valley

#27 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed May 07, 2014 12:58 pm

Believe me, I didn't expect you to be.

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swo17
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Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
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Re: Silicon Valley

#28 Post by swo17 » Tue Jun 16, 2015 1:47 am

Anyone still watching this? Mike Judge's increased involvement is encouraging and the show can be quite funny at times, but good grief, pretty much every dramatic conflict stems from one of the Pied Piper guys being completely inept, whereas nearly every resolution comes from a stroke of dumb luck. It can be a little maddening to watch.

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Mr Sausage
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:02 pm
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Silicon Valley

#29 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Jun 16, 2015 8:52 am

swo17 wrote:Anyone still watching this? Mike Judge's increased involvement is encouraging and the show can be quite funny at times, but good grief, pretty much every dramatic conflict stems from one of the Pied Piper guys being completely inept, whereas nearly every resolution comes from a stroke of dumb luck. It can be a little maddening to watch.
I tapped out after the first four episodes. Thought of trying again but was told the lone female addition wasn't a techie, she just slept around for career favours. So I stopped there.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Silicon Valley

#30 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Jun 16, 2015 9:39 am

Wait, who are you referring to? A female programmer now works for their team, and there's a female venture capitalist in place of Christopher Evan Welch's character - I'm doing the best to jog my memory as to this third (or "lone") female addition but am coming up blank.

Swo, as for the show, I agree with you. This season had some very high points, but did not feel nearly as cohesive as last season (and considering some of the behind the scenes tragedy, I'm sure re-establishing their footing was harder than one might've realized). Leaning on suspense and dumbing down the two lead characters was indeed an unfortunate way to go, considering how everyone seemed to be figuring things out at a certain point and it's difficult to imagine them taking such a major step back in terms of maturity and understanding what they need to do to run a company - Starr and Nanjiani's characters are now the smartest in the room, and Pied Piper would be wiser to have them running the show than Middleditch and Miller's characters - not sure that's something that feels entirely realistic. I'm still optimistic for the third season though, and glad this show's been so successful.

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Professor Wagstaff
Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2010 11:27 pm

Re: Silicon Valley

#31 Post by Professor Wagstaff » Tue Jun 16, 2015 10:20 am

No character like that on the show. Maybe the person who told you was thinking of Halt and Catch Fire?

I've enjoyed the show for the most part, but the fact that the plot progresses in fits and starts has frustrated me. The show has a Gilligan's Island quality for me when I watch because I don't expect much to develop from week to week. Rather, I go into an episode wondering how the Pied Piper team will screw up and take two steps back.

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Mr Sausage
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:02 pm
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Re: Silicon Valley

#32 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Jun 16, 2015 11:14 am

Something about a tech conference and a woman using sex to get code, among other gender sterotypes? I don't know, I heard this second-hand a while ago.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Silicon Valley

#33 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Jun 16, 2015 11:21 am

Erlich has casual sex at a tech conference with the wife of one of the judges who'll control Pied Piper's fate toward the end of the first season, but I don't really recall that having anything to do with getting code from anyone. I feel like the show has had a pretty healthy gender balance considering that it's about a largely young male dominated field.

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PfR73
Joined: Sun Mar 27, 2005 6:07 pm

Re: Silicon Valley

#34 Post by PfR73 » Tue Jun 16, 2015 11:38 am

That was a subplot Season 1 Episode 7; a woman making a cupcake-related app flirts with Dinesh & Guilfoyle to get them to help her write code. But, she's not even the only female character in that episode, and the subplot is more about the Dinesh/Guilfoyle interaction.

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swo17
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Re: Silicon Valley

#35 Post by swo17 » Tue Jun 16, 2015 11:48 am

In any case, there were some great plotlines addressing this very criticism this season, like how thrilled OJ was that the most qualified person for the new programming position was a woman, or how eager he was for she and Monica to become best friends.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Silicon Valley

#36 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Jun 16, 2015 12:00 pm

That guy fucks. He fucks.

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Andre Jurieu
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:38 pm
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Re: Silicon Valley

#37 Post by Andre Jurieu » Tue Jun 16, 2015 12:34 pm

Even the most prominent female cast member, Monica (Amanda Crew), has been presented as competent, professional, and shrewd throughout the past season. They make it obvious that she's attractive, but they don't ever imply that her professional status is highly correlated to her sexual promiscuity with work-place superiors. She certainly possesses far more business savvy than Richard or Erlich.

Honestly, there have been multiple episodes this season where Richard's naive nature has gotten overwhelmingly frustrating. I just wish he would learn some lesson that would carry over even into the next episode, but he returns each week as gullible as ever.
Professor Wagstaff wrote:No character like that on the show. Maybe the person who told you was thinking of Halt and Catch Fire?
Would they be referring to Cameron? That seems rather harsh considering she appears to be the most competent character - at least in terms of coding and perceiving advancement - on that show as well.

ianungstad
Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2005 9:20 pm

Re: Silicon Valley

#38 Post by ianungstad » Tue Jun 16, 2015 2:08 pm

Silicon Valley is pretty mediocre. I stopped watching a couple of episodes ago. They had to retool the whole show after one of the cast members suddenly passed away from lung cancer. (The owner of the Hooli rival; "burger king" guy.) It's never managed to bounce back.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Silicon Valley

#39 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Jun 16, 2015 2:34 pm

ianungstad wrote:I was not impressed with the blatant product placement for Burger King in last week's episode. Overall; Silicon Valley is decent. Not exactly essential viewing.
ianungstad wrote:Silicon Valley is pretty mediocre. I stopped watching a couple of episodes ago. They had to retool the whole show after one of the cast members suddenly passed away from lung cancer. (The owner of the Hooli rival; "burger king" guy.) It's never managed to bounce back.
I used to think you worked for AMC, but now I'm more inclined to think it's for Wendy's.

And I'd hardly say they had to retool the show - they came up with a really clever way of concealing it last season, and this season his death was handled quite well also. Christopher Evan Welch was perhaps the 5th or 6th lead, it's not as if they couldn't work around it. Seems like a really strange thing to attribute the quality of the show to.

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Murdoch
Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2008 11:59 pm
Location: Upstate NY

Re: Silicon Valley

#40 Post by Murdoch » Mon Dec 09, 2019 11:24 pm

This show went under the radar in its latter half but I think the final two seasons were very good. While the common plot trajectory remained of the Pied Piper guys stumbling across some huge success, only for some sudden wrench to be thrown in immediately to cause conflict, I found it less frustrating recently. Perhaps it's because the show started reaching further into the ethics of its industry, with Richard's values often cast into doubt as he's presented with a golden opportunity for financial success but the questionable morality around the success gives him pause. There's the game programmer who uses Richard's tech to datamine users, the Chilean entrepreneur offering blood money to bankroll Pied Piper, the finale in total.

The series remained flawed, namely with Monica who even by the last season had very little to do outside of play an occasional voice of reason. The writers threw her a bone in the last few episodes, having her attempt to join a Women's in Tech conference only to be outshined by her younger protege. But despite this last ditch effort to give her depth, she remained a rather hollow fixture of the series whose only character arc was becoming a slightly more selfish person.

That said, this series will be an interesting time capsule of the industry in ten or so years. Much like how Office Space hit home for its blanket satire of corporate America, Silicon Valley successfully captured a time in American business of great selfishness and confusion. From its first episodes, the show was great at capturing the contradiction of the industry - how even the most obscure new advancement is sold as a world-changing revolutionary breakthrough in tech, yet most of the creators behind them often offer mere vaporware that exists solely to attract investors. Judge and Berg were tasked with the difficulty of capturing this industry in total, which is a massive endeavor to take on given how tech changed over the course of this series' run (and how much it became an integral part of American and world politics since 2014), but I think they managed a sweeping indictment of an unregulated business often naive to its long-term implications.

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