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The AV club calls it "incisive satire" (while comparing it [favorably] to Entourage). Some people in the real Silicon Valley are not happy about it.
April 7, 2014
Here, HBO is letting you watch the whole first episode of Mike Judge's new series "Silicon Valley."
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20 comments:
I made it through 50 seconds.
It's not meant to be an accurate portrayal, but more along the lines of the Big Bang Theory with the roles as characters.
I spend about half my time out there and I got a kick out of it. The pomposity of attributing luck to skill was spot on.
This was intended to be completely comedic while the earlier "Betas" limited run series on Amazon was more of a straight satire.
Eric Schmidt of Google had a cameo.
I watched it last night (because it came on after "Game of Thrones") and liked it enough that I'll watch the next episode.
I have to laugh at the provincialism of Hollywood types. No one of the 30 somethings had ever been to Burning Man? Hell, I'll be 70 May 6th and am an ex-Air Force officer and fighter-pilot who is a rock-ribbed conservative who has never done drugs and doesn't smoke, and even I'VE been to Burning Man amongst all the lefty drug-addled crazies out on the Calif desert playa.. (PS: The wimmins is easy pickin'..)
I watched (listened to) Carolyn Crawford on the Big Bang instead.
Why is that worth my time and this thing isn't?
Probably because it has some promise of a future.
Prof. Crawford doesn't have a man's easy intuition about how things go together but does okay.
Compare the earlier John Barrow lectures.
I wouldn't buy hbo to watch it - but it was good and we already have hbo for Game of Thrones.
I love the Paki. He is hilarious as the cable dude in Portlandia.
I am loving Rupaul's drag race.
the fishy drags are fierce.
No thanks. Doc Martin and Foyles War are better.
I didn't think it was awful but if I was sober when I watched it I definitely would not have made it passed Kid Rock, not that I hate him, but it's just so obvious of a celebrity co-opting irony insertion in order to bring hipness of "now" into the scheme of things that ultimately will only lead to the lameness of "then," which isn't even sad, just empty. But I gave it a half-hour and maybe it's the booze talkin' but I would definitely watch the 2nd episode if HBO puts it out for free on youtube. No offense to Mike Judge.
Seems to me that I saw this plot on one of the Amazon Original series streaming videos last year called "Betas". But two minutes into this gawd-awful clunker and I was gone.
HBO has had some strange "programming gafs" - pun intended.
Watched it - fitfully amusing. I spent 15 years in the Valley, part of that time managing money for the head of Stanford's EECS department and working at a startup. The milieu was not quite right -- the kids didn't sound as interesting as our geeks, which is what Elon Musk was trying to say. The lack of any recognizable scenery (no Googleplex, Stanford, Moffett Field, etc.) was noticed. Another problem was the implausibility of a radically better new lossless compression algorithm (information-theoretic issues make that about as likely as a perpetual-motion machine.)
"Another problem was the implausibility of a radically better new lossless compression algorithm (information-theoretic issues make that about as likely as a perpetual-motion machine"
Yeah, I don't know if that was supposed to be ironic, or what. But I saw that in an ad for the series and just rolled my eyes.
Ideocracy looked more like a world that would have been created by people who watch MSNBC to me than FOX. but I guess Judge wouldn't want to be genuinely transgressive, just fake transgressive in pushing the party line.
I guess to work as irony, it would have to be clear to everybody except the main characters and maybe their investors that this idea of a radically better form of lossless compression was, let's just say to be fair, highly unlikely. That would make for some comedy.
Razorsharp ... Kid Rock has the hipness of 'now'?
I would call that an ironic cameo as he is completely irrelevant to modern music. He is only relevant to 50 year old white men, not exactly hip or now.
South Park as already done the definitive satire on Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO5sxLapAts
What else is there to say?
I noticed that minorites and women were under-represented. Somebody get word to Jesse Jackson that they didn't get the message about disparate impact.
The show may be a market signal. I have trouble imagining going short on any stock because of all this liquidity, but some tech valuations are quite unrealistic.
I thought it was good. Better than the commercials for it.
One attraction it shares with "Entourage" is the peek inside a rags to riches lifestyle, which probably dates back to the movie Wall Street. Didn't Stone express surprise when young people came up to him and said, after watching the movie, rather than a cautionary tale they wanted to be Bud Fox?
It's pretty accurate, and the writers say it picks up a bit after the first show. I'll watch it -- it follows GoT,so I'm already there.
Thing is, the younger guys are now more likely to be in the city, not out in Mountain View (hence all the bus craziness going on here).
This would have been much more accurate if they'd all met up at The Creamery, or at one of the Google bus stops, or something. The younger techies are way more hip and urban than those guys. Still, it was pretty amusing all in all.
i loved it.
i will add it to my TV rotation. thanks, prof!
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