‘Silicon Valley’ season 3, episode 9 review: Jared’s shocking move proves his lie-ability

We’re not going to pretend that Sunday night’s new episode of “Silicon Valley” was the funniest in the history of the show, but we can at least say this: It may be one of the most important in terms of the story. This half-hour really demonstrated the full evolution of Pied Piper as a company from where it started in the pilot to where it is now, as we saw at least a brief period of success for the company: It had 500,000 installs!

Herein lies the problem: While there are a ton of people trying the platform, nobody is really using it. They don’t know how. As advanced as the technology is, Richard never bothered to think of the average consumer, and how they may respond to using something this technologically advanced. There are such a wide array of issues that users have, and unfortunately for Richard, it does not quite seem like he has the answer to many of them. He tried almost everything in this episode, from festivals to advertisements to even a terrible Microsoft Word-like helper, to get people to understand.

Here’s the one issue we had with most of the story — shouldn’t he just hire someone to deliver more concise messaging? There has to be an easier way to do this just with manpower. Ultimately, not having that explanation led to Jared doing quite possibly his most shocking thing in three seasons in paying employees in Asia to boost the numbers, making it look as though they are better than they are. He did the equivalent of buying Twitter followers. Not only that, but he passed Gilfoyle the human lie detector test.

Elsewhere, we had another strong move in this episode courtesy of Gavin Belson and Jack Barker teaming up on the Box, the very idea that Jack had first introduced to Pied Piper. He’s right in that it is hugely viable financially, and it is easily accessible. There were also a few funny moments in here with animals.

We’re not going to say that this was the funniest “Silicon Valley” episode of the year, but we did enjoy what it brought to the table in terms of story. Richard almost gave up, after all, and it took nice-guy Jared being devious to convince him to stay. Grade: B+.

Update: One fun thing we’ve learned since the episode concluded was that Wpromote, the digital marketing agency featured, is actual one that exists in real life. Check it out over here.

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