But also: jokes. PiperChat is dead. After Dinesh’s new incarnation of PiperChat went down in flames spectacularly last week, the gang must pick up the pieces in “Intellectual Property.” For Dinesh that means enduring Gilfoyle’s taunts and living in fear that Gavin Belson will have him assassinated. For Erlich it means somehow figuring out how to actually develop a “Shazam for food.” Most importantly, however, Richard gets started on what will presumably be his life’s work: building a new internet – a better one this time, connected freely through everyone’s mobile devices. To do so will mean making friends with Gavin, the man who already has a patent for that very concept.
4. The Grocery Store
“Maybe I just drop this one, move on and become some pathetic, fucking task rabbit, you know?” This is an unfortunate line that Richard utters while he and Monica are shopping at a Whole Foods-esque grocery store. It’s unfortunate because Richard and Monica are surrounded the aforementioned “task rabbits” – dozens of dead-eyed assistants wearing lanyards and picking up food for their respective boss or ridesharing customers. Silicon Valley often does its best satirizing the “real” Silicon Valley with big, ridiculous, showy scenes. This, however, is one of the better subtle ones they’ve ever done. It’s barely a sight gag but rather a standard walk and talk that happens to be set in hell, itself.
3. Bighead the professor/guest lecturer
Bighead is almost like a reverse Job. He just kind of aimlessly wanders around life without a care in the world and somehow in the process gains countless riches, accolades and honors. His newest venture is guest lecturer position at Stanford. He initially applies to be a student, which does not go well. “Pretty solid C’s in all of your C.S. classes but really a lot more incompletes than anything,” the admissions officer says about his transcript. “Yeah a lot of those classes were at 11 a.m. so…” Of course, then the admissions person remembers seeing Bighead on the cover of Wired and suddenly he’s accepted into the University. Though he doesn’t realize it’s as a guest lecturer until he sits down for what he assumes is his first day as a student.
1. “They say that after Alan Turing got chemically castrated he was a lot less annoying.”
Andy Daly finally got his leading man due on his wonderful Comedy Central series Review. Still, Silicon Valley is a wonderful reminder that Daly is a as a comedic assassin (not unlike his assassin character Krombopulous Michael in Rick and Morty). His job is to just walk onscreen briefly, comedically murder everyone onscreen then walk off. His character on Silicon Valley, known only as “Doctor” is one of his best. This time around instead of disturbing Richard with stories of tech exec suicides, he just exasperatedly sighs through most of Richard’s legitimate sleep and stress issues. It’s important for the show to establish that Richard is stressed. It’s also important to the show to keep us laughing and thanks to the Doctor the opening scene is the funniest in “Intellectual Property.”
