Silicon Valley: Teambuilding Exercise

May 15, 2017 3:57 AM - Season 4, Episode 4

Jared worries about Richard when he reaches out to an unlikely ally; Gilfoyle gets serious about security after Dinesh's latest dalliance; Erlich grows concerned about Jian-Yang's commitment to his app.
posted by noneuclidean (13 comments total)

I like where this is going!

- Jared's "I will kill them knives, I will kill them with guns, I will talk them into suicide" is an all-time favorite.
- Gavin's destruction of his house: golden.
- Dinesh's apparently-uber-competent doesn't even get screen time? Unsurprising.
- Erlich "screws over" Jian-Yang, rides off in a fedora and ugly Corvette, gets the news that he talked himself out of a half million dollars, gets laughed at by beautiful women, AND realizes that he looks like a massive dick in one scene? Delicious.
- Jared giving Richard a backbone in dealing with Gavin? Deserved.
posted by Tevin at 7:07 AM on May 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

I really have to commend the writers on their ability to turn an app that is just eight recipes for octopus into a machine-learning based dick pic detector.
posted by noneuclidean at 8:11 AM on May 15, 2017 [8 favorites]

And I guess I have to hand it to HBO for going a step further and making Jian-Yang's Not Hotdog app available on iOS.
posted by noneuclidean at 9:01 AM on May 15, 2017 [8 favorites]

I saw this tweet saying the most recent episode included web scraping, and would love to know more about the level of technical detail SV went into on that...
posted by brainwane at 9:48 AM on May 15, 2017

Trigger warning: FUCK YOU!

I guffawed.
posted by Justinian at 5:38 PM on May 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

I don't know what it was--typically I really enjoy the sly, subtle, tech or business-based humour on this show--but when Gavin's couch caught fire, I lost it. For whatever reason, it really hit me as a laugh-out-loud funny moment.
posted by sardonyx at 8:11 PM on May 15, 2017

saw this tweet saying the most recent episode included web scraping, and would love to know more about the level of technical detail SV went into on that

Not much, basically Erlich plainly trying to convince various other people to do it.
posted by rhizome at 9:39 PM on May 15, 2017

At the moment I'm getting the most satisfaction from Erlich's poor choices and subsequent comedowns.
posted by tracicle at 11:55 PM on May 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

Looking forward to the future episode where Dinesh has to explain terrabytes of dickpics on his phone and computer to his hacker girlfriend.
posted by kithrater at 1:58 AM on May 16, 2017

Not Hotdog developer timanglade discusses it on Hacker News
posted by dfan at 5:51 AM on May 16, 2017 [3 favorites]

> Jared's "I will kill them knives, I will kill them with guns, I will talk them into suicide"

Jared defnitely got the best lines of this show.

Jared: When you don the skin of the beast, the man within dies.
Richard: What is that? Nietzsche?
Jared: One of the boys at my group home always said that. He died.

posted by ASCII Costanza head at 4:29 PM on May 16, 2017 [6 favorites]

It was a great Jared episode.
posted by rhizome at 5:08 PM on May 16, 2017

One thing I really like about this storyline is it gives Gavin Belson significantly more color. Like, sure, up to now we've known him mostly as a silicon valley tyrant CEO, but until now he's been mostly a caricature. But, this was probably the first glimpse we've seen of him being actually knowing anything about technology in any capacity. Like, if instead of this, we found out that he actually can't even open a Word document, it would have been (albeit a twist) completely believable. Adding to it that he not only is competent, but probably a Richard-level genius as well, adds a lot to his character and fleshes out the story until now more fully. Like a prequel, but without having to go back in time and dealing with Jar Jars. The comparison with Dinesh just a couple episodes ago gives us a glimpse of how that transformation from good engineer to assh*le can quickly take place if the forces of nature work in your favor.

Also, I've been throwing around this "Trigger Warning: F**k you" gif all over the place today.
posted by General Malaise at 6:46 PM on May 16, 2017 [2 favorites]