Silicon Valley: Fiduciary Duties First Watch

May 24, 2015 10:14 AM - Season 1, Episode 4

Richard drunkenly promises to make Erlich a board member, which he regrets the next morning. Big Head finds others at Hooli, who like him, have made careers out of doing nothing. Richard struggles to put Pied Piper's vision into words.

Les Chappell as usual does a great write-up of this episode at The A.V. Club:

In the first episode of Silicon Valley, before Pied Piper was the compression algorithm that everyone wanted a piece of, it was just another unsuccessful app with an unsexy premise, ammunition for Erlich Bachman to berate Richard Hendrix with in regular arguments. Case in point, their first discussion: Erlich told him he needed to think more like “Steve,” and after an awkward pause Richard asked which one, to which Erlich replied “Jobs” as if Richard had asked him the name of a mediocre Ashton Kutcher biopic. Richard tried countering with the argument that Jobs didn’t write his own code, and Erlich gave him a look like he’d just shit in the sink. It left a definite feeling that neither one respected the other much: Richard clearly thought Erlich was as much of a poseur as he saw Jobs as, while Erlich was prepared to write Richard off as someone who’d never make it in the industry.

The Jobs/Wozniak parallels, as well as the friction between Erlich and Richard over their expectations for this new company, forms the spine of “Fiduciary Duties.” Like “The Cap Table,” it asks the question of whom Richard should and shouldn’t surround himself with in this new business; except this time it asks Richard if it’s worth keeping around someone who’s a colossal pain in his ass.

This is the final episode with Christopher Evan Welch ('Peter Gregory'), who died on December 2, 2013. From Wikipedia:

At the time of his death, he was filming his scenes as Peter Gregory in the HBO series Silicon Valley, having completed five episodes.[5] Cast members have said Welch's character is not being written out of the show, and that future episodes will have mention of Peter Gregory in tribute.[6] (see link for footnotes)

He is listed in the credits of the remaining four episodes of the first season.

Extremely good obit from The Vulture, with YouTube clips. Another obit from The A.V. Club.

posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome (3 comments total)

The Vulture link is broken, should go here I think?

What a terrible loss. His performance here is great: the pacing and comedy timing of his speech.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 10:44 AM on May 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Fixed the link.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:19 PM on May 24, 2015

Oh man, so sad to hear about Christopher Evan Welch, he was my favorite part of the show so far.
posted by bleep at 9:24 PM on May 24, 2015