HBO’s hit-comedy, Silicon Valley, returned with its third season in 2016 which recently came to its conclusion. Telling the story of a fictional startup named Pied Piper, Silicon Valley has been a satirical look at the lives of the corporates and individuals living in the titular tech-paradise of the world – Silicon Valley, California. While the first two seasons of the show were successfully able to hold themselves as a fresh addition to the comedy genre on TV, with season three, the writers seemed to be running low on content to maintain the feel of the show while it did manage to provide for a fair share of laughs.
The main cast of Silicon Valley
Whether intentional or not, Silicon Valley has so far been a comedic study of the life cycle of tech-startups. Season one depicted the protagonist, Richard Hendricks(Thomas Middleditch), and his friends coming up with a breakthrough idea and season two explored the promotional stage of Pied Piper, all riddled with a never ending series of hurdles as is customary with comedies. In season three, Pied Piper has finally become an operational company and the plot dealt with the events following Richard’s removal from the post of CEO, his attempts at reclaiming the company, and the hardships faced by his team in bringing a final product to the consumers. This limited scope of the plot turned out to be a major deficiency for Silicon Valley.
T.J.Miller as Erlich Bachman had some of the best moments in Silicon Valley season 3
For the most part, it felt like Silicon Valley was beating around the bush. Season three lacked the inventiveness with which the characters and plot were present in the former seasons. Rather, the show followed a repetitive pattern of putting the characters at hard places, then quickly resolving the issue through some random deus ex machina (an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation), and repeating the cycle again before the characters got enough time to heave a sigh of relief. There was not much happening with the plot for the majority of the season which puts season three of Silicon Valley way off from the HBO formula. By the time the show had finally gotten back on track, the season had already reached its final three episodes for which the actual eventful part of the plot was reserved. However, even with the plot’s shortcomings, the show still had plenty of jokes including both situational comedies and one-liners worthy of chuckles.
Silicon Valley provided little or no development to its characters in its latest season and the characters’ status remained more or less throughout. In fact, most of the characters came off as shallow and were mere embodiments of cliché archetypes setup for corporate/techie characters by pop-culture over the years as opposed to how uniquely they were portrayed in the first two seasons. Richard still remained a Zuckerberg-wannabe struggling to deal with ordeals put forward by the Valley. The characters played by Martin Starr and Kumail Nanjiani solely served the purpose of comic-relief, which is ironic since Silicon Valley is a comedy show. T.J. Miller’s Erlich Bachman would have to be the most interesting character in the show this season. Miller got some of the funniest moments in the season and there is not much to complain about his performance. Matt Ross delivered a solid performance as Gavin Belson, the CEO of Pied Piper’s prime rival company, giving room for some fresh humour.
Thomas Middleditch as Richard Hendricks with Stephen Tobolowski
To conclude, season three of Silicon Valley accomplished its primary task of making the viewers laugh but fell short on certain other aspects which had originally set the show apart from the flood of unoriginal sitcoms airing on TV these days. Although the show seemed to rectify its errors towards the later episodes, it was time for season three’s curtain-drop. Silicon Valley has already been renewed for a fourth season set to air next year. Hopefully, the writers will address and resolve these issues when the show returns in 2017.
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