Emmy Spotlight: Silicon Valley

For people of a certain generation, the works of Mike Judge in general, and the film Office Space in particular, are something of a cultural milestone. In fact, Office Space has defined for me (and likely for you, too) my entire approach to corporate culture, and also the restaurant business, and frankly just what it is like to spend the bulk of your waking time doing a job that you, at best, tolerate for a paycheck that, at best, will stretch just far enough to cover your meager expenses. If that sounds terrible, that’s because it is. Welcome to America.

Skewering corporate culture is nothing new, and it wasn’t when Office Space came out either, but I would argue that Office Space does it best, and especially does it best for the office life of the nineties. In mocking the ridiculous complexities of office culture, Office Space also became engrained within our culture. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone born after 1980, give or take, who doesn’t immediately recognize TPS reports, that red Swingline stapler, a case of the Mondays, pieces of flare, or good lord, even a Jump to Conclusions mat. When we’re laughing at Office Space, we’re laughing at ourselves, but we still go to work, day in and day out.

It’s of course too soon to tell if Silicon Valley will become engrained in the popular culture in the same way, but all of the ingredients are there. Silicon Valley tech culture has almost certainly crossed the line into self-parody, in a world where even goddamn Snapchat is worth billions of dollars, and Silicon Valley captures the height of this nonsense more or less perfectly. At the fictional tech company Hooli, the offices are candy colored, with toys and gadgets and distractions galore, and no one appears to actually be doing any work. And as for the “incubator” that houses our heroes’ startup venture, it’s a house owned by do-nothing rich dude Erlich Bachman. This is a world where ideas rule above all else, but even the ideas are empty, one vapid proposal after the next, purporting to “make the world a better place,” even if it’s something really fucking stupid like Human Heater, the gadget that lowers your gas bill by heating up the top layer of your skin using microwaves.

The satire is spot on, then, but it quickly becomes apparent that, like much of Judge’s work, Silicon Valley is two separate beasts, with an equal share of the humor coming from the sort of juvenile, bro-y gross-out humor one would find on Beavis and Butthead or, yes, even in Office Space. Silicon Valley’s greatest strength is in its unfailing ability to land a joke. The season is fairly compact, at only eight half-hour episodes, but each episode is remarkably dense with one-liners, runners, and situational comedy. As great as the satire is, it needs this more functional and reliable brand of comedy to prop it up, and Judge and company have struck the necessary balance. I dare you not laugh at the extended, pseudo-mathematical discussion of “optimal tip to tip efficiency” in the finale episode of the same name (which, you definitely want to read this totally NSFW journal article). It’s as though twelve-year old boys somehow went and got doctoral degrees.

All that said, like any freshman comedy there are issues, though the raw strength of the comedy here suggests that they’ll iron themselves out. Firstly, considering the season’s brevity, it takes forever to really get going with what is a fairly simply plot. It takes until the third episode for the show to catch up with its own promotional materials, and while the pilot is very funny, and lays necessary groundwork about the world of the show, it’s also undeniably heavy on exposition. The characters, similarly, tend to be slightly one-note, though again, that note is often funny. Thomas Middleditch is a fine leading man, playing neurotic yet charming with aplomb, and his Richard is quirky enough to keep from being a boring straight man to the cast of much, much more colorful characters.

Perhaps the best of the regular bunch is T.J. Miller’s Erlich, who is a do-nothing slacker who sees himself as the Woz to Richard’s Jobs (or is that the other way around?). Either way, beyond bluster and bravado he brings nothing to the table as far as Pied Piper goes, and yet it’s precisely those qualities that make him such a memorably funny character. Also great is Zach Woods, who plays Jared as though Richard were on several different types of drugs simultaneously, just this wired, anxious people-pleaser who doesn’t seem to have acquired a single social skill in two-plus decades of life. Woods has been ubiquitous this past television season, with very good reason—his deadpan delivery and knack for physical comedy make him an invaluable part of the ensemble.

The rest of the cast is good for one-liners, or else to bounce lines off the main characters, but they hardly register beyond that, even when the writers give them the occasional B-plot. Again, it’s not that Martin Starr, Kumail Nanjiani and Josh Brener aren’t funny, just that they don’t really serve a purpose as anything other than joke machines. And as long as the jokes are funny, great! It’s not like we love Office Space for its deep, nuanced characterization. But at least when the plot wheels did turn, there was enough to make us care, where about Peter’s relationship with Jennifer Aniston, or Milton’s desire to burn down the office, or what have you. Here, Amanda Crew’s Monica might as well not be on the show at all, and her “romance” with Richard is yawn inducing, seemingly there for demographic pandering and little else. Since she’s practically the only woman on the show, that’s doubly damning.

While we’re talking about the cast, deserving of special mention is Christopher Evan Welch, whose performance as Peter Gregory is delightfully odd, a collection of strange mannerisms and non-sequiturs that feel perfectly emblematic of this bizarre tech culture. Welch tragically died after filming scenes for the first five episodes, and the character is only mentioned for the remainder of the season. It’s a shame we don’t get to see more of him, because he is sublimely hilarious.

So there are certainly some kinks to work out, but at the end of the day, Silicon Valley succeeds in making you laugh, if at nothing else, and for a comedy, especially a freshman comedy, that’s worth at least 80% of the battle. Since they’ll be forced to retool at least partly in the wake of Welch’s passing, I think we’ll see some useful cast shuffling, hopefully some higher stakes and more thoughtful plotting. The raw material is there, it’s just waiting to be shaped into something with a little more, well, shape. That takes time, and it’s time that I’m willing to give.