Silicon Valley: Intellectual Property

May 8, 2017 5:10 AM - Season 4, Episode 3

Richard pushes himself to the brink of sanity while trying to move ahead with his next big idea; Erlich finds Jian-Yang unwilling to help with his comeback; Monica sets a trap at Raviga to improve her standing with Laurie; Dinesh goes on a date; Big Head enters the world of academia; Gavin's future is suddenly uncertain.
posted by noneuclidean (15 comments total)

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. I want Gavin to be an outsider, desperate for revenge against Jack. I'm pretty sure he'll be willing to put aside his beef with Richard to work together on NuInternet (for the time being) to pursue that grudge with Barker to Jackson Hole and back. There's so much potential for this team-up.

Disappointing that the new woman introduced in this episode is a love interest, however, I liked the direction of Dinesh and hers relationship. It would be super if she was an ultra-competent hacking friend the team could rely on for help from time to time and not end up as a spurned lover who wrecks shit. I'm not optimistic, but you never know.

Monica getting sneaky! I so badly want her to destroy Ed Chen. That first episode really was setting up some unlikely partnerships, and I'm hopeful that she can work her magic to make Erlich's project not terrible.

I like where things are going.
posted by Tevin at 7:20 AM on May 8, 2017

It would be super if she was an ultra-competent hacking friend

But that could be just Gilfoyle messing with Dinesh's head, as usual.
posted by dhruva at 7:28 AM on May 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Anyone have a translation of Ed Chen and Jian Yang's discussion in Mandarin?
posted by aabbbiee at 7:51 AM on May 8, 2017

Here's a translation from Reddit:
Ed Chen: Jian Yang, this is really important. You need to give us a successful app.
Jian Yang: There isn't one. We haven't even made a demo.
Ed: You haven't made one? Why?
Erlich: Boys, boys, let's speak in English. It's the law.
Jian: I wanted to do octopus recipes.
Ed: Octopus recipes?
Jian: All I hear is "I'm a big fat fucking asshole."
posted by aabbbiee at 9:40 AM on May 8, 2017 [7 favorites]

"You're a professor at Stanford?!"
"No, that would be crazy. I'm a guest lecturer at Stanford."

Watching Big Head constantly manage to fail upwards, Big Gulp in hand, will never not crack me up.
posted by Itaxpica at 11:24 AM on May 8, 2017 [13 favorites]

If Josh Brener keeps this kind of thing up, he could be the next Charles Grodin, which I would LOVE.
posted by rhizome at 12:05 PM on May 8, 2017

I love that they're making a show explicitly about the fact that idiots can and do fail up every day and this is what it looks like and these are the consequences and this is real-ass shit. I love that we have this show with which we can acknowledge that together as a society.
posted by bleep at 1:38 PM on May 8, 2017 [5 favorites]

Not to mention those consequences being a result of soapy bullshit feuds between executives.
posted by rhizome at 3:59 PM on May 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

I love that Big Head said he had experience with image recognition but nobody took him seriously. He'll end up being the key to making SeeFood work, right? The way that Ed Chen turned around Monica's trap was also great.
posted by jimw at 5:04 PM on May 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

I bet Jian-Yang's octopus recipes are going to be awesome.
posted by mullacc at 5:28 PM on May 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Blue Flowers!
posted by Catblack at 5:52 PM on May 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

lol "octopus recipes" is where my Mandarin fell down. Which is... understandable, I guess? I really do not like octopus.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:08 PM on May 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

I think on any other show I've​ ever watched, Big Head would end up being the key to making SeeFood work. On this show, though? I don't think so. I think he's genuinely incompetent.
posted by potrzebie at 12:45 AM on May 9, 2017

I do think Bighead plays a role in SeeFood. And also that Richard's play with Gavin ultimately fails and he uses SeeFood to deploy his distributed internet.

With wacky consequences.

But I do like that Richard and Gavin will get to use each other here.
posted by uncleozzy at 2:38 AM on May 9, 2017

Looking back over the arc of the series, it's clear that Pied Piper is a running thread through the fall of the great Gavin Belson. It makes sense that Richard and Gavin have a future together, trying to out-maneuver their shared enemy of Jack Barker, and yet this show continually dangles narratives in front of the audience and then snaps them back just as fast. So I have no idea where it will go from here, and that's fine. Honestly it doesn't even occur to me that there is a series-long narrative arc until I step back and think about it. Versus other shows, where if I can't remember every single part of every episode that came before it in all six prior seasons, I'm almost certainly missing some crucial plot point. Personally I could watch these characters keep up a metaphorical maypole dance for another ten seasons and I'd still be disappointed to see it end because it's just fun, narrative arc or no.
posted by aabbbiee at 8:53 AM on May 9, 2017 [2 favorites]