So what do people feel now that the season is over?
Overall I thought it was great though I wished they had gone with a more original ending than “lone genius triumphing over insurmountable odds after a eureka moment”. The show is better than that.
It will be interesting to see how they deal with the Gregory character. They had the opportunity to write him off in the last episode but it looks like they may keep him as an off-screen character.
Care to elaborate? I found it fairly well written.
This pretty much sums it up for me, too: I like the show a lot (and will miss it), but found the finale plot device to be rather pedestrian.
Nice that they did acknowledge Christopher Evan Welch’s passing–I’d wondered if that might come after his last episode, but doing it this way made sense.
The show got funnier and funnier as the season went on. I really liked it and look forward to a new, probably expanded (in the sense that they will have a bigger company with more characters) season 2.
But he came to his eureka moment as the result of an extremely detailed discussion (with drawings) about how long it would take one guy to jerk off 800 audience members.
Perhaps the conclusion wasn’t original but I’d say the lead-up was pretty damn original.
I loved the whole show and can’t wait for its return 
Best dick joke ever.
The lead-up was outrageously funny but that made the ending all the more disappointing IMO.
Is there any possibility that they get another actor to play Gregory and explain it in the show as Gregory having gotten a plastic surgery? It is the kind of stunt you could imagine Gregory doing. Overall Gregory is a great supporting character and it would be a shame to see him disappear or go completely off-screen.
I thought what might happen once they got deep into the 800 audience members jerk off brainstorming sessions was that Richard would see that what makes them unique in the presentation pool was their hands-on nerdiness. The Nucleus presentation was all style and vague promises.
I thought Richard was going to strip down Pied Piper and then have them all explain it out on dry-erase boards–with real tech speak instead of buzz words. Basically catering to THAT audience there in the room who would have had no problem following along. It would have positioned them as tech nerd working class heroes. I really thought that was the next step since Gilfoyle and the other guy both had these looks like “Ohhh, I get what he’s doing” and the whole team would have come together to “win” rather than it just being Richard saving the day.
That conversation (other than the topic) felt very, very real – I’ve been in systems analysis brainstorming sessions just like that. Mike Judge is getting fed some good info.
Loved the show. Hope it comes back.
I haven’t finished the thread yet so maybe someone already mentioned this- many of the stores in SV (Walmart/Target/etc) have a magnet line at some point in the parking lot so you can’t drive the thing too far from the store (so homeless folks can’t steal them). Being Silicon Valley, the parking lots at these places are huge and often the line stops your cart before you can get to your car way out in the boonies. I’ve had the experience of having to carry some huge thing across a giant parking lot because the stupid magnet stopped my cart. Doesn’t every town have these?
Also, having lived and worked in SV for many many years I couldn’t even finish the first episode. So many douchebags, so realistic. It made me feel whatever is the opposite of homesick. I’m glad others are enjoying it, I just can’t stand any of the characters.
I said the same thing to my wife, though mine weren’t about system analysis. When you are over-tired and over-wired, some of the topics can be strange, and the tangents can be epic.
800 seemed like a way too low an estimate for the penis-having crowd in that auditorium.
I thought that was a great way to end the season. The dick joke was epic, but I also loved Jared’s attempts to pivot, and Richard’s door being kicked in. I’m looking forward to season 2.
I seriously doubt it. Christopher Evan Welch was apparently well loved, and I doubt the show would want to replace him in that way, or would want another actor to do an impression of him. If they brought in someone else to play Peter Gregory after having plastic surgery, the new actor would need to act like Welch, and it would be too weird and distracting and not good.
I imagine that either Gregory will continue to be an offscreen character, with Monica or other lackeys running things and talking to the Pied Piper guys, or Gregory will die offscreen in a suitable billionaire way (like on a safari or something) and a new character will be brought in to run things. You could bring in a different weird character to replace Welch, but you can’t have the same weird Peter Gregory character.
Yeah you are right; no else could play Gregory. It was a great performance and Welch stole every scene he was in.
I was thinking a bit about where the show is likely to go and it struck me that having the product be a compression algorithm was a shrewd idea. On the surface it’s a strange choice because while compression is important it’s not exactly something which is exciting for TV.
But now that the company is going to grow they can take the show in any direction they want since almost everything uses compression. Monica’s pitch to persuade Richard to go with Gregory pretty much spells it out. In future seasons I am guessing the company and the show will branch out into products with much more visual interest and comedic potential.
Self-driving cars is one obvious possibility and they have already set it up but drones and robots would be great too. Maybe even some Elon Musk-type space business. They could also explore other industries with their own idiosyncratic sub-cultures: the music industry, Hollywood; really the possibilities are endless.
FYI the 1st episode is no longer available on YouTube (well, the official one isn’t)
Brian
We watched this over the last couple of days and just loved it. It feels very closely observed, the core guys are hilarious, there’s just enough growth in Richard’s character to keep this floundering group plausible so far, and their commitment to that dick joke in the season finale is inspiring in a weird, sad way. They’ll certainly miss Welch, who was just sharp as a tack in playing Peter Gregory, but I’m glad he got to be in the show. He was great in that role.
This show was so much better than “Halt and Catch Fire.” Maybe because it was less serious?
I thought “Halt” was such a dud. Ugh.
Awesome show
Funniest line of the last episode:
Erlich to female reporter: ‘let me ask you something, how fast do you think you could jack off every man in this room? Well, I know how long it would take me… And I can prove it’
I absolutely loved this show. And the characterizations are spot on. I have known several Gilfoyles, right down to the hair, the attitude, the mannerisms…
And… Best dick joke ever.
I recently decided to watch it on HBO GO, and watched the first episode. Being in the tech field, I caught on to what was happening without too much difficulty, thinking they’ve left out some back story that they’ll flesh out later. Turned out HBO GO presented me with the season finale to watch first. :-/