I quite enjoyed the pilot… can’t see the story going anywhere interesting after that.
The main storyline for the second episode concerns Peter Gregory asking Richard for a business plan and a cap table. The business plan lays out a basic blueprint for how you think about the business including how you plan to make it, market it and sell it. The cap table is a list people and the stake they have in the company.
It’s common for tech startups to give out equity (a percentage stake in the company) in return for paying below market or non-existent salaries. The percentage equity given is a big deal and differences of a few fractions of a percentage point can mean millions if a company is sold or goes public.
Ehrlich already has an agreed upon 10% as a condition for joining his incubator but Richard and Zach sit down with the rest of the the team to figure out a baseline equity offer. Both Gilfoyle and Dinesh believe they’re more important to the company than the other person and thus, demands more equity while Big Head makes it clear to everyone that he doesn’t provide enough value to offer any equity to.
Richard stands up to the rest of his team and wants to offer Big Head equity but, meanwhile, Gavin Belson, falsely believing Big Head is more valuable to Pied Piper than he actually is, attempts to damage the team by luring him away with an obscene 600K salary.
Watching it as a Mike Judge production and comparing it to things like Office Space and Idiocracy, I am not sure I liked it. It was interesting, but I wasn’t sure whether it was supposed to be funny or serious. Both I guess. I don’t have HBO so it’s a moot point, but I would probably watch a couple more episodes if I was able. I guess overall the subject matter just isn’t that interesting to me.
Well, believe it or not, yes! Beavis & Butthead was what I’d describe as a low-brow idea in high-brow packaging. Some of the best laughs were from subtle elements, the supporting characters were all surprisingly developed (Daria got her own show!), and the best bits of all were when they MST3K’ed MTV’s music videos!
Fleventy-five isn’t 9 times anything. Fleventy-three is 9 times Bteen though. Though to be fair I had to use my calculator to figure that out.
Which aren’t story and character development.
I disagree again. They weren’t stories but there was more character development during the video commentaries than in the rest of the show. Beavis had this habit of going off on these long strange tangents, and he would occasionally have moments of lucid brilliance, both much to Butthead’s annoyance (Butthead would often have to slap him back into stupidity!)
The second episode was funnier. Still liking this show.
Slow and rather dry with hints of comic brilliance. Andy Daly was great in the premiere and T.J. Miller is holding his own but the remainder of the cast is rather blah. Even the series itself is like watching a documentary about how something is made.
While that’s certainly interesting for people inside of a specific industry, the rest of world doesn’t care as long it gets made. Hopefully the series will overcome this and concentrate on being a comedy or dramadey…or whatever it’s going to morph into.
Right now, unless you are familiar with the the IT world and perhaps the Internet, this one is a snoozer.
I think I’m going to love this show (love Office Space, and didn’t make the connection until reading this thread).
I’m in IT, but not in any leading-edge high-tech way…and live & work in the Bay Area, but not in Silicon Valley. But it feels very real.
In the pilot, I loved that Kid Rock was ignored; and the the bombastic “we’re changing the world” via some arcane techno-babble speech.
And that the response to the stripper was to create a playlist.
And Erlich’s “we all agree, we hate” the new guy.
Brilliant stuff.
And is it just me or does the guy playing the owner of the programmers ‘incubator’ house (the one who gets 10% of anything they make) totally remind you of actor Jason Lee (from My Name is Earl)?
This show gets better and better. I especially loved the entire Burger King->Sesame Seeds->Locusts->Futures market->$68 Million scene because it was just freaking brilliant and sounds like something that probably happened with one of these Super Genius Billionaires in real life.
I just learned the actor who plays Peter Gregory died in real life which is a shame (beyond the normal shame of losing someone that young [48 I think I read]). He is one of my favorite characters on this show.
Nitpick: It wasn’t locusts but cicadas that led him to invest in the Thai sesame seed market.
But I enjoyed the episode with one minor nitpick. The lead character stopped at a store to buy a margarita machine on his way back from visiting the sprinkler company. The machine was in a shopping cart, but he took it out of the cart after buying it and then laboriously carried it out to his car. Why didn’t he just leave the thing in the cart? (Sorry, but this sort of thing bothers me in movies.) And I liked that he figured out the way to appeal to the business guy was to point out that his technology might mean fewer ugly server farms.
That totally bothered me too! But I am well aware that quite often very smart people do some very dumb basic things 
I like the show after 3 episodes. I really liked his friend “Big Head” I hope he’s in the show still.
The ‘no cart’ thing might have been to show how excited and happy Richard was–he was now Strong Enough To Take On The World (or something like that). It was a he-man move from a guy who isn’t usually very he-mannish.
I’m liking the show a lot. I laugh frequently, and feel I’m learning something about a world novel to me (cartoonishly-exaggerated though the ‘information’ no doubt is).
That logo was pretty bad, though.
Nitpick: Indonesian.
“It looks like a guy sucking a dick with another dick tucked behind his ear for later, like a snack dick.”
HBO renewed this show for a second season today.
Last night I watched the four episodes that are available on HBO Go. I like it! I’ve been jonesing for a new, smart, half-hour comedy.
(Although every time I see Kumail Nanjiani it makes me realize that I can’t remember whether Pindar left Franklin & Bash…)
Yeah, I saw that on IMDb while looking up the cast last night. Cancer. 
I wonder how they’re going to handle it on the show.
I hear that he died during filming of the season and that the producers knew of his illness when they hired him on - so perhaps they’ll be having his character make some kind of exit in-show.