Well, it took me way longer to watch the second season of Silicon Valley, much to my dismay, but it was in no way less funny. For a show about technology, I find myself laughing out loud a lot. And as I said in the first season review, if a comedy manages to take something I know nothing about and still make me laugh, they are doing something right!
Anyway, the second season opens up with the Pied Piper group mourning the death of Peter Gregory (in real life, actor Christophe Evan Welch died of complications from cancer), which Gavin Belson still manages to make hostile. Nevertheless, Laurie Bream takes over at Raviga Capital, but the guys decide to shop around on funding. Obviously, floods of offers come in, but then Belson files a suit against Pied Piper, claiming that Richard worked on the algorithm at Hooli, therefore the algorithm is Hooli property. The entire rest of the season is basically spent trying to still prove themselves as a company to get funded despite the suit, and to win the suit of course.
An awful billionaire by the name of Russ Hanneman offers to fund them, but he is all up in their business, more so that he can stay a billionaire rather than the actual tech aspect of Pied Piper. The group deals with him for much of the season, but then Richard finally hits his peak of tolerance and drops him. During this time, Hooli is trying to make their case against Pied Piper by promoting a totally clueless Big Head in hopes to prove that Richard worked on his algorithm there. Big Head’s aloofness is just perfect!
In the quest to get Nucleus out before the lawsuit comes to fruition, therefore totally destroying Pied Piper’s ability to flourish in the market, many Holli employees lie to Belson about how well the platform is coming along, when in actuality, they are months behind and the product they are producing is crap. They further prove this at a failed attempt to livestream a WWE fight. Belson’s neck is on the line and he is trying everything now to really win the suit because then he will have Richard’s algorithm. Seeing an opportunity with how crappy the quality of Hooli’s video is, Gilfoyle announces he’s going to build a server in the garage and they will livestream their own event. The event they have set up is pretty lucrative, but they ruin that on the day of, so instead they stream a condor egg. Nothing much happens until a man goes to remove the camera several weeks later. Honestly, hysterical.
Ultimately, on the day of reckoning after a slipup from Erlich, it is revealed that Richard did work on Pied Piper once while at Hooli when his laptop crashed. The judge at first appears to announce Hooli’s win, but then notes that the suit is nullified because of a non-compete clause in Jared’s contract. In all the chaos of winning the suit, Richard almost doesn’t make it back to the house in time to stop Gilfoyle and Dinesh from deleting all the Pied Piper coding. Luck is on their side in this one instance, because basically in the next breath, Richard has been voted out as CEO by Rivaga’s newly acquired three of five board seats. And that, folks, is where we leave off!
Again, countless laugh out loud moments from this show, but the strongest output from the season belonged to the finale, “Two Days of the Condor.” I will say, as this show goes on and Pied Piper just keeps taking loss after loss, it’s really deterred me from ever wanting to start my own company. Not that I really wanted to in the first place, but still. I can’t wait to see where Silicon Valley takes me next!