After last week’s great episode, it was disappointing to see Silicon Valley backslide. I’m going to keep watching this show because I’m invested in the story, but unless things turn around, it’s going to be time to face a hard truth: that the best episodes of Silicon Valley are the ones not written or directed by Mike Judge. I feel dirty saying that.
“Proof of Concept” sees Pied Piper finally going to TechCrunch Disrupt, which as an event name is funny because it means approximately nothing. Everyone has problems, but the episode has most of them.
Jared is worried that Monica is supplanting him at the company. This is a legitimate concern, and Zach Woods plays it well, but tonally it’s a bit inconsistent with what we’ve seen of Jared in the past. Jared may be shy and nonconfrontational, but he’s also competent, and it’s hard to believe that he would have left so much slip through the cracks. In his defense, though, he did just come back from Peter Gregory’s island, where he was stranded for four days. If you’ll remember, this was one of the most promising developments of last week’s “Third Party Insourcing,” a development that Silicon Valley promptly did not follow up on.
Richard has a maddening subplot. A woman is going around TCD saying that Richard is obsessed with her, which leads Richard to try to prove that he’s not, which just makes him look more obsessed. The problem is, we’ve never seen this woman. Her name has never been mentioned, and I doubt she’ll have any more impact on the plot. This subplot is a half-hour setup to a punchline that is just her thinking that Richard and Jared are lovers, after she overhears Jared passionately telling Monica “Richard and I are partners!” Another problematic scene is the return of Big Head, Silicon Valley‘s most useless character. He doesn’t really add anything to the proceedings, so I won’t add any more to this paragraph.
As usual, Erlich gets the best plotline of the night, and TJ Miller almost singlehandedly saves the show. I like that his presentation went off the rails immediately, and that he still dresses like Steve Jobs. Hopefully Silicon Valley will result in a bigger audience for TJ Miller, because he is hilarious.
“Proof of Concept” isn’t a bad episode of TV, so to speak, but it’s one I didn’t particularly like. The plot moves forward, and not everything can be a home run. But Silicon Valley has gotten off to an uneven start, and it’d be nice to see it on surer footing than this.
A Few Thoughts
– I wasn’t crazy about Dinesh and Gilfoyle’s subplot, involving Dinesh “being gay” for Gilfoyle’s code, but I love seeing Martin Starr and Kumail Nanjiani on screen together
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