‘Silicon Valley’ episode 4 review: The funniest chapter of Richard’s journey to date
After a few weeks of trying to allow itself to get to its full potential, we feel like “Silicon Valley” has become the show that we wanted it to be. Namely, it’s hilarious, inventive, meaningful, and a straight-up send-up of life in this crazy industry. Sunday night’s episode was the show’s best by a long run, and also one of the best episodes of any comedy in 2014 so far.
The biggest improvement that the show made first and foremost with this episode is that for the first time, Erlich is a real character! What we mean by that is that he is redeemable, and therefore actually interesting. While he was a complete jerk for most of this show to this point and even tricked Richard while drunk to get on Pied Piper’s Board of Directors, he showed in the sit-down with Peter Gregory at the end of the episode that he is well aware of what is going on. He has the swag that Richard lacks, and can actually communicate his vision in a way that he cannot.
With Erlich now a director on the basis of his own merit for a change, we have to go on here with talking about the fantastic comedy in here. Zach Woods continues to be brilliant from start to finish, and his reaction to not getting invited to the toga party scene was priceless. That entire ordeal was a perfect send-up of what probably happens with these rich billionaires, including having “actors” roam the floor in order to make it look like there are really attractive people there. (Also, we died when Peter called Flo Rida “Florida” without missing a beat.)
There is really next to nothing to complain about in this episode at all. Even watching Big Head stumble around Hooli with nothing to do was very funny, and ironically pretty similar to “Mad Men” this scene. Maybe we could’ve done without the vomit scene, but this is a Mike Judge show. It’s got to work its way in there somewhere. Grade: A.
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Photo: HBO