‘Silicon Valley’ season 3, episode 4 review: How Gavin Belson saved Pied Piper (sort of)
If there was ever an episode of “Silicon Valley” that crammed in quite a bit of content, it is the one that aired on HBO Sunday night. Over the course of this hour, we saw the end of EndFrame as a company, Richard Hendricks suddenly being interested in building a better box, and then ultimately a situation where there was no box at all … and then there was also no Jack Barker. Heck, there’s barely now a Pied Piper company.
Ultimately, the turning point here was Gavin and Hooli purchasing EndFrame for the price of $250 million, bringing their technology on board to crush Pied Piper once and for all. In doing so, he put a price on the software, which led in turn to Laurie cleaning house, realizing that the platform was infinitely more profitable than what they were messing around with previously. Everything, whether it be Jack’s agreement with Richard over the box to them starting to get excited about making the best possible product, didn’t really matter once the chips fell in the direction that they did.
Was the storytelling perfect throughout? We wouldn’t say so, since you can question why someone as successful as Jack would leave if he genuinely thought that platform was more profitable. Why not work with the engineers to make it something that could be successful? We have to think that a guy like this would swallow his pride. We’re also not sure how the whole “no CEO” thing is going to work for the time being, since the company probably does need some leadership.
Despite some loops that the story threw us in, it was entertaining. It wasn’t as funny as the saga of Dinesh and the chain, but funny nonetheless. The best part of the episode in terms of comedy was Gavin not recognizing that some of EndFrame’s employees were people he recently fired, or his spiritual advising manipulating him over a parking space.
Also, Big Head’s still around; now, Erlich wants to work with him on a competing incubator. There’s something fun about his storylines, even if they rarely ever feel like they are altogether weighty to the show overall. We’d say that while the story of this episode was at times a little over the place and we’re shocked Barker is already gone, this is probably still the second-best episode of the season just because idealist Richard is back. Grade: B+.
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