Silicon Valley season 4 episode 5 review: The Blood Boy brouhaha
For the first time, he effectively realized that he was a shell of his former self. He still had that famous room of Peter Gregory’s mother, but it was basically a part of his larger machine. Nothing was authentic. The man HAD A BLOOD BOY where he was supposedly improving his health in some of the most ridiculous logic ever. It took Richard exposing said blood boy as a fake before Gavin started to realize to what extent everything really was a fraud with him, and nothing was close to what it should be.
The good news for Richard is that before Gavin left to “work on himself,” he ended up signing over the rights to his work to Richard, effectively screwing him over on a fast announcement for the work that the two parties were going to work on. This was both a blessing and also a curse.
Unfortunately, “The Blood Boy” as an episode struggled in doing the one thing that Silicon Valley long has struggled to do — move some of the characters’ lives forward in a fairly substantial way. This show seems to hold on to some sort of bizarre, inexplicable fear that giving the guys some semblance of success will lead to them not being entertaining anymore. To this reviewer, there is still an infinite amount of comedy in seeing what happens when Richard and the rest of these guys gets some money. Imagine what happens if it’s permanent and these guys are tech titans and Monica becomes one of the best venture capitalists in the history of the Valley. Couldn’t this be fun!
Other assorted comedy
The great news when it comes to the episode is that Monica did get in good graces with Laurie once more, as Monica tried to look out for her when realized that she could be subject to a takeover at Raviga. In turn, she doesn’t want to be there anymore, which could mean interesting news for Erlich and Jian Yang, the one person on this show who actually seems to have some element of success.
Meanwhile, Dinesh proved himself SO afraid of breaking up with his hacker girlfriend that he decided that it’d be better to sell her off to the FBI than it would be to face the truth. This is vintage Dinesh, the ultimate coward and a guy so insecure that he wasn’t willing to just take a risk. Having a criminal girlfriend’s a tricky thing, but Gilfoyle did warn him far before it became serious.
Final verdict
Another fun slice of Silicon Valley comedy, but also an imperfect one when you consider the lack of forward momentum. Also, the thought of losing Gavin, one of the show’s best characters, is tough to take even if it comes out of an amusing story that is all about a blood boy as hired help. Grade: B.
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