Silicon Valley season 5

[up_the_hampipe]

Big soz if there's a thread already, but this returns in a couple of weeks.

Much of the publicity for this season seems to be about TJ Miller not being there. This article gives some juicy "insider" details regarding his departure https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/silicon-valley-confronts-a-darker-side-tech-culture-tj-millers-messy-exit-1092493

Here's the trailer and here's a funny thing someone noticed in the trailer.

[Twed]

Wouldn't expect Mike Judge to be somebody who speaks out against people uncomfortably objectifying women. It's good - Judge is generally somebody who I usually relate to, and knowing he's a decent person on certain matters too makes that feel better.

[up_the_hampipe]

Wouldn't expect Mike Judge to be somebody who speaks out against people uncomfortably objectifying women.

I guess you were a bad Judge of character.

[Z]

Cant be more meh than last season but I don't see it regaining much ground either. The format needed things to push forward and Judge/the writers were clearly never comfortable doing that.

I can't even remember in what way they've written themselves to be back at step 1 at the end of last season.

[Timothy]

No Elrich so probably not good.

[phantom_power]

I think the lack of Erlich might freshen things up. They can't rely on him to make the scene any more. There cast is very talented so should be able to take up the slack

[momatt]

Always good to have more Silicon Valley.
It'll be interesting to see how they deal with Miller leaving.  I think it'll be fine as they'd ran out of things for him to do anyway.  He was sort of redundant.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/silicon-valley-confronts-a-darker-side-tech-culture-tj-millers-messy-exit-1092493

Great article.  The comments are fucking mental though.  Some people seem genuinely upset and offended at...  I don't even understand, half of the arguments are in words they've just made up.

[up_the_hampipe]

Always good to have more Silicon Valley.
It'll be interesting to see how they deal with Miller leaving.  I think it'll be fine as they'd ran out of things for him to do anyway.  He was sort of redundant.

I think they made him redundant on purpose. Wouldn't be surprised if they made his role more insignificant to drive him away.

[momatt]

That's an interesting point, quite plausible.
But his role as their mentor and incubator boss (?) is coming to a natural end as well.  They can't stay in that house forever, it'd just be silly.

[up_the_hampipe]

Of course, but there was plenty to do with him. He's an interesting character.

[momatt]

He often had the best laugh-out-loud moments of a show.  Especially the relationship with Jian Yang.
It came to a point that whenever I was annoyed at something , I wanted to scream 'JIAN YANG' at whoever was around.

I think they'll be alright without him anyway.

[BeardFaceMan]

He often had the best laugh-out-loud moments of a show.  Especially the relationship with Jian Yang.
It came to a point that whenever I was annoyed at something , I wanted to scream 'JIAN YANG' at whoever was around.

I think they'll be alright without him anyway.

Thats part of the problem. Once he was out of pied piper that should have been the end of his storyline. Instead he was under contract and they had to use him, so most of his storylines consisted of him arguing with Jin Yang. I think theyre gonna be able to struggle on without him.

[phantom_power]

Always good to have more Silicon Valley.
It'll be interesting to see how they deal with Miller leaving.  I think it'll be fine as they'd ran out of things for him to do anyway.  He was sort of redundant.

Great article.  The comments are fucking mental though.  Some people seem genuinely upset and offended at...  I don't even understand, half of the arguments are in words they've just made up.

Fuck me, you're not wrong. Sample quote:
"This is an unintentionally funny info-mercial spot for that allegedly new kind of man who is not so much the reformed alpha-male being as he is simply the techno-order conformist, i.e. he who advertisingly corresponds to the totalizing imperatives of our increasingly self-commodification-based society."

[Noodle Lizard]

As much as I hate TJ Miller and never considered Erlich one of my favorite characters, I do feel the show will suffer without him.  His small contributions even to later episodes were among the funniest.  Him confronting Stephen Tobolowsky with a bunch of pre-written "old person" material, his reactions whenever Russ Hanneman doesn't pay attention to him, his delivery of a vitally important plan whilst coughing his lungs out from a bong-hit.  Him dramatically standing up in court to defend Richard and the judge immediately shutting him down is one of the few things to make me actually laugh out loud whilst watching (I'm not a big laugher, on my own).

His becoming increasingly useless and irrelevant was a good running gag which I think could've been pushed further - I definitely feel like his being written out was due to personal conflicts rather than his character running out of steam.  Richard is far duller, and even Gilfoyle and Danesh are fairly repetitive.  I think Jared will probably become more central in Erlich's absence, but that's not necessarily a good thing.  Zach Woods is an outstanding character actor, but it's far less effective when he becomes the focus of the story (see The Office).

Anyway, we'll see.  I think this season will need to take a few different paths in order to maintain my interest.  I haven't disliked a season yet, but they all basically follow the same pattern, and they're running out of things to do with certain characters and have kind of blown their load on any topical satire about the tech industry already.  Looking forward to it, mind you.

[phantom_power]

It is funny because generally the key to sitcoms is stagnation. Things don't move forward so the "sit" remains the same. Steptoe and Son never moved out of the scrapyard. Nothing much changed in Friends bar some relationship tangles.

Now there seems to have been a change where sitcoms like this have to show progress and change. I don't know if this is a sign of the times or just specific to this show, and shows of a similar type

[Noodle Lizard]

It is funny because generally the key to sitcoms is stagnation. Things don't move forward so the "sit" remains the same. Steptoe and Son never moved out of the scrapyard. Nothing much changed in Friends bar some relationship tangles.

Now there seems to have been a change where sitcoms like this have to show progress and change. I don't know if this is a sign of the times or just specific to this show, and shows of a similar type

I'd say something like Silicon Valley is more like a drama which is focused on being funny than a "sitcom".  In terms of presentation (cinematic, complex narrative arcs etc.) and "quality", for lack of a better term.  Really depends on how broad your definition of sitcom is.

[Timothy]

I wouldn't classify Valley as a sitcom. It's more of drama with funny bits.

[arpster]

love this show...looking forward to it, and hoping there's more Russ Hanneman to offset the loss of Erlich...

[BeardFaceMan]

Nah its definitely a sitcom, just one with season long story arcs. I think I've siad it before but I see them constantly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory as one of the running jokes.

[Johnny Yesno]

Is it only me that's not convinced by the idea of a fifth season, then? I loved the show, but the end of season 4 pretty much wrapped everything up, didn't it? Why risk spoiling a pretty much perfect story?

[Timothy]

It's not really a perfect story isn't it? At the end of the last season everything was back to start.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Gah, I want to like this show so much, and it does make me laugh, but i can't get over my hatred of Richard and wish for him to fail, and fail hard. Like Rickety Cricket hard. He's such a childish bully when he doesn't get his own way and I find it too cringeworthy to watch. Which is a shame as Jared's one of the best comedy characters ever created and the rest of the cast are pretty decent too. Ah well, apparently it'll end after season six so at least there's not too long to go now, and hopefully they might even shake things up a bit too. Remind us on occasion why we shouldn't want to see Richard take an acid bath. Then an acid shower, before an all over body acid massage.

Edit: Here's some of Jimmy O. Yang's stand up btw, which amuses as it shows a completely different kind of energy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=9_UyvGIeXW0

[BeardFaceMan]

Those magnificent stallions though.

[up_the_hampipe]

I love Richard's moral descent. I think it's great writing. Much better than the idea of them being the good guys who try to do everything right but get fucked over repeatedly.

[Twed]

Yeah. Nerds are often horrible scribble men under pressure and with power. It's good to have one characterised.

[Better Midlands]

What's the phrase/joke that Miller corrects everyone on (maybe in the last series) - it's something along the line of "It's not dick heads, its dicks head"

It's been on my mind for weeks

[kngen]

Hards-on.

[Better Midlands]

Hards-on.

Thanks

[c]

Hards-on.

I think this is a reference to the obnoxious confirmation bias raddled Apple blogger John Gruber who always insists upon referring to the the new range of iPhones in this way - 'the iPhones 8' and so on. He's your classic techy bully nerd.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

One of his arch-nemeses, Dan Lyons (aka "Fake Steve Jobs"), was a consultant and writer for the show. But Lyons is quite a dick himself, as it turns out he tried to pitch stories to Milo Yannopoulos for Breitbart.
That said, I don't think it's a specific reference to Gruber. Many developers are very anal. The show has Richard obsessed about using tabs vs spaces for indentations in code, up until the point he breaks up with the girlfriend (Bridey Elliott, Chris' daughter) he had finally managed to get.