The whole first season was brilliant. Season two has some great writing too. Russ Hanneman is probably the funniest character I’ve seen on TV. They got so much of corporate culture at tech companies at the time spot-on.
To me the humor started feeling forced, and the storyline became too formulaic. They really needed to give the Pied Piper team some wins, but getting them close to success and then snatching it away worked before, so they just kept following that formula. That gets tiring as a viewer, and fraught with angst. They leaned hard into Richard’s anxiety, and pushed a lot of that emotion onto the viewers, which isn’t enjoyable for me. That’s Ben Stiller, Meet the Fockers type humor, which I have never enjoyed.
I couldn’t get past the first season because it felt like anything that could go wrong did. Are you saying that keeps happening throughout the entire show?
It continued as long as I watched. I stopped watching at the beginning of s5. I didn’t enjoy s4 much at all. S3 had hilarious moments, but was already starting to get to me.
Edit: they have a measure of success during s1, and I think s2. But it always gets snatched away, either by their mistakes, or by someone outsmarting them.
The character arch for poppy becomes very disappointingly annoying later as everything keeps turning into disasters. As the writers seem to start taking on this idea to write in some feminism but seems they haven’t really read up on the subject. They reduce the women characters to very 2 dimensional reactionary characters and cannot possibly figure things out for themselves. Ian becomes the feminist common sense wizard. No woman can get anywhere in the world without a powerful male ceo guiding and pushing them into their power.
There’s worlds difference between nerds in Silicon Valley and Big Bang Theory. Makes you even cringe harder at BBT.
Silicon Valley gets nerds and coders spot on. It’s such a brilliant show for the first couple of seasons.
I can’t watch it, but for completely different reasons than Big Bang Theory. It does its job too well.
The season 1 finale was amazing television.
The whole first season was brilliant. Season two has some great writing too. Russ Hanneman is probably the funniest character I’ve seen on TV. They got so much of corporate culture at tech companies at the time spot-on.
I’m curious - why do you think it dropped off later on? I remember it being pretty consistently great aside from what felt like a rushed wrap-up.
To me the humor started feeling forced, and the storyline became too formulaic. They really needed to give the Pied Piper team some wins, but getting them close to success and then snatching it away worked before, so they just kept following that formula. That gets tiring as a viewer, and fraught with angst. They leaned hard into Richard’s anxiety, and pushed a lot of that emotion onto the viewers, which isn’t enjoyable for me. That’s Ben Stiller, Meet the Fockers type humor, which I have never enjoyed.
Fair enough - I certainly remember elements of that - thank you!
I’m probably about due for a re-watch…
I couldn’t get past the first season because it felt like anything that could go wrong did. Are you saying that keeps happening throughout the entire show?
It continued as long as I watched. I stopped watching at the beginning of s5. I didn’t enjoy s4 much at all. S3 had hilarious moments, but was already starting to get to me.
Edit: they have a measure of success during s1, and I think s2. But it always gets snatched away, either by their mistakes, or by someone outsmarting them.
You do NOT want to watch mythic quest then.
I watched the first season and it wasn’t too bad, sounds like it gets a lot worse?
The character arch for poppy becomes very disappointingly annoying later as everything keeps turning into disasters. As the writers seem to start taking on this idea to write in some feminism but seems they haven’t really read up on the subject. They reduce the women characters to very 2 dimensional reactionary characters and cannot possibly figure things out for themselves. Ian becomes the feminist common sense wizard. No woman can get anywhere in the world without a powerful male ceo guiding and pushing them into their power.