SILICON VALLEY S01E01 REVIEW

Silicon Valley premiered last night on HBO, so I'll write a couple of words about it.

Synopsis:

Richard lives in a Silicon Valley incubator with four other geeks and works for a global tech company Hooli; his own project develops very slowly, until two billionaires, Peter Gregory, who hates college education (I'm with him on that, by the way), and the founder of Hooli, Gavin Belson, find out about the algorithm he wrote that allows to compress files without any data loss. Naturally, they want in, and Richard must decide, which offer he would accept.

In may ways, it's like Better Off Ted meets The It Crowd, only without the awkward romantic relationships (well, at least for now, I definitely sensed the potential love story between the lead and the college-hater assistant) and any normal people. The series portrays the ridiculousness of the tech world, populated with the suddenly rich social freaks, who can't think of spending cash on anything better than a performance by Kid Rock (!) at their party. 

The tech world is divided. On the one side there are billionaires driving exceptionally narrow cars and talking to the spiritual advisers. On the other side - the nobodies, the guys who have gotten the shit kicked out of throughout all their lives, the guys who do not want to change the world, or even get rich, for that matter; they just want to make it happen, without fully realizing what it is.

The acting is exceptional and is essential to the show. Most of the jokes are funny just because of the tone and the facial expressions. And of course, the creators couldn't not introduce the typical American comedy character - the insensitive doctor. Only here, on top of delivering the usual anatomical jokes, the doctor is pitching his patients with his app idea.

The episode ends with Richard's speech about how he doesn't want his company to turn into any other "corporate cult", and that was probably the funniest part of the show. We've seen it all before; the most dramatic example is, of course, Google; the company, famous for fighting "the evil" (i.e. Microsoft), has turned into... well, whatever it is now.

So, whether you love or loathe the tech world, this show is definitely worth checking out.