Silicon Valley, season 3: CEO Richard learns humility, tech style

Recap While everyone was getting excited about a sexy witch turning into a distinctly unsexy witch over on Game of Thrones, the true nerds tuned in last night to catch the season 3 opener of Silicon Valley – Mike Judge's caustic and hilarious satire on our favorite den of disruption.

It did not disappoint.

It's been nearly a year since we followed the efforts of file-compression startup Pied Piper to survive in the tech jungle, so there were no less than three minutes of quick-flash catch-up, ending and starting with last season's cliffhanger.

Having survived, barely, multiple times, CEO Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch) was robbed from savoring his success when informed by phone he had just been fired at a secret board meeting.

He was, to put it mildly, unhappy and stormed off to give a piece of mind to the "fucking assholes" that had just done so (it's on HBO so you can you use both those words with abandon).

If there was any doubt this season might be the start of the downslope for the show, it was given a stab in the eye by a visual gag within the first 30 seconds: lovable square Jared being ordered to empty a huge bong of smoke and finding a distinctly Jared way of doing so.

Dear deer

Seconds later, angry, speeding Richard sees something in his headlights, slams on his brakes but hits it. "Did I just hit a deer?" he asks his colleague. "No, dammit," replies Erlich (T. J. Miller), getting out the car to see a deer-sized robot with antlers, "fucking Stanford robotics."

"Arr! He's killed the Bambot," complains the robotics graduate. "Fuck your Bambot," replies Erlich as the metal deer comes back to life on its hydraulic legs. He responds by repeatedly trying and failing to take the deer down with swift kicks, prompting several c-word-based outbursts.

The titles begin and we're off to a flying start.

Up to now, Silicon Valley has been a glorious combination of sharp satire on the Silicon Valley scene with its ludicrous wealth and backstabbing VCs, a genuine love of the underdog, and the occasional amazing brilliance that the land between San Francisco and San Jose is famous for.

That's the story. The performances however are what ensure the show doesn't become too clever, or knowing, or snarky.

It's not hard to see how the show may become self-important or worse, self-parodying. And as time goes on, the actors' egos are inevitably going to get in the way of their hapless characters. But based on the first episode, we may be able to enjoy another season before things start falling flat.

This week's main struggle is in how Richard deals with having the company he built from nothing taken away from him.

"I realize this may be bittersweet," the head of VC firm Raviga informs him, "but earlier this evening Raviga decided to officially fund Pied Piper's Series A round at $5m at a $50m valuation. Essentially you have created a company that is too valuable for you to run. You should feel good about that."

It's the perfect Valley put-down. Well done, you have created something we wish to invest in, now we'll decide how to run it. And they want Richard as CTO, asking him to be on the team that decides his replacement. Needless to say, he doesn't take this well but, as with the real Silicon Valley, as ludicrous and unpleasant as it is, there is always a fierce undercurrent of pragmatism.

Richard isn't a CEO, he's a CTO. And a damn fine one. But the ego. The ego doesn't like it.

Stiff upper lip

And that ego leads him to the sharpest piece of satire of this episode: the well-funded Flutterbeam. Richard is offered the CTO job at the startup and he's ready to jump ship out of hurt pride. Then he finds out what the secret project is that Flutterbeam wants him to work on.

Flutterbeam is everything Silicon Valley: open plan offices, ludicrously optimistic young people looking at screens, logos up the wazoo. And the "pretty rad" project? "Compositing perfect 3D holographic mustaches, using depth sensing cameras in a live video chat," explains Richard's would-be boss, "and no one's doing it!"

It's a sharp jab at the countless and utterly pointless projects and features that are undertaken every year in the Valley and, of course, at Google which actually has the option of doing such stupid things in its Hangouts video service.

But as Richard is faced with nine months of work ("just in time for Movember!") to get a fake mustache to appear realistically on people's faces during video chat, he starts waking up to the real world and agrees to at least meet the new CEO of Pied Piper who has now been chosen. And he is the classic old white guy that actually owns a house in Palo Alto rather than pay the world's highest rent prices to live in one room of it.

There's some other sharp satire when the CEO of competitor Google Hooli realizes that although a huge percentage of its employee contracts are essentially worthless, they can actually turn that to their advantage by voiding them, pull back their share options and make money on the deal. Always looking for the green.

And, joyfully, it means that the absolutely useless Nelson "Big Head" Bighetti, having been repeatedly promoted and even flagged up as a potential CEO, is offered a ludicrously huge $20m payoff to leave, no questions asked. Bighetti, who happily admits he is good at nothing, goes from strength to strength. And we love him for it.

All the lonely people

Knowing its audience, the show also slips in some coding humor when work colleagues Dinesh and Gilfoyle decide they want to stay with Pied Piper, and settle on the "dictionary patch" RIGBY – standing for "Richard is great but, you know" – to talk shit about him without feeling guilty.

Example: "RIGBY. I'm actually getting kinda angry. We put in so much work for no pay and now he thinks he's gonna walk out on us. Seriously fuck that guy. Fuck him. RIGBY."

The good news? The new CEO, Jack Barker, is the real deal. When Richard outlines why he doesn't want to take the CTO post under him, the new guy responds by telling him matter-of-factly that that's fine and he'll walk away from the deal. In a dangerous sign of impending maturity descending on Silicon Valley, Jack explains that without the team and a good spirit, there's no point doing it, even with huge sums of money on the table.

And that, right there, is Silicon Valley in all its contrasts. ®