Man, it’s good to have Mike Judge back on television. One wonders if he’ll ever again reach the dizzying heights of King of the Hill or Office Space, but Silicon Valley shows that he’s not resting on his laurels, and is more than willing to try something new. Something new for him, at least.
The best, and most charitable, way to describe Silicon Valley‘s debut episode “Minimum Viable Product” is by using the phrase “slow start,” which is a pretty backhanded compliment. But after a pretty strong opening (Kid Rock playing a house party, performing to a mostly nonappreciative crowd of tech geeks), Silicon Valley spins its wheels a bit. We get introduced to our ensemble farely rapidly, but to be honest I didn’t even know that Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch) was the main character until maybe the second act of the episode. Middleditch doesn’t make much of an impression, and while his character Richard is supposed to be unassuming and somewhat awkward, it’s not a good sign when he’s immediately overshadowed by Martin Starr’s Guilfoyle, or Josh Brener’s Big Head (who get maybe twenty lines between the two of them).
I’m rooting for Silicon Valley, though, not just because I’m in the tank for Mike Judge, but because I like the plot very much. Richard, Guilfoyle, Big Head, and Danesh (played by Kumail Nanjiani, who barely registers) all live for free in the “incubator” of an eccentric tech millionaire named Erlich, played expertly by T.J. Miller. Miller is perfect casting, and can induce big laughs from a line as simple as “Who the fuck ate all my quinoa again?” Erlich lets them live there as long as he gets a percentage of any company they found or sell. The crux of “Minimum Viable Product” is that Richard starts a website called Pied Piper with an algorithm that – oh, fuck it, it’s potentially very valuable, okay? And given a choice between selling Pied Piper to billionaire Gavin Belson (Matt Ross, who I hope we see more of) or selling five percent to the eccentric Peter Gregory, he opts to keep the majority of his company, and bring his housemates along for the ride.
The plot has potential, as kind of a comedic take on The Social Network or Jobs (which was unintentionally funny, but that’s fodder for another article). But Silicon Valley is too slow to establish its characters, which would be forgivable in a pilot if it were laugh-out-loud funny, which tonight’s installment isn’t. Don’t get me wrong, Mike Judge on his worst day is funnier than I am on my best, but he does himself a disservice by not moving forward with his plot until the last ten minutes or so.
Silicon Valley is absolutely worth watching. I feel like that last paragraph came off as unnecessarily harsh. Most shows start off slow, and Judge’s particular brand of comedy takes a while to find its footing. But there is undeniable promise in Silicon Valley‘s cast and premise, and I will definitely be tuning in next week.
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