What I’m Watching: Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley: Season 3, Episode 3 “Meinertzhagen's Haversack” (B+)

Things were plenty awkward before, and now they’re getting downright impossible to watch. Starting with the repeated tours of the same space in which the box would be installed and the news that a Pied Piper engineer would need to be stationed for 24-hour maintenance for a year projected a dim outcome for the new Pied Piper vision that Barker was selling. Richard’s efforts to go over Barker’s head to Laurie backfired badly, mainly because it got Barker upset and inspired him to show Richard how much power he has as the CEO that Laurie isn’t going to remove, taunting him with the threat that he should have killed the king if he was going to shoot him. It’s unfortunate that Richard getting fired as the CEO is exactly why Barker can’t meet the same fate since it would make her look like someone who just fires CEOs. Gilfoyle’s departure was quick and managed to earn him so much recruiter SWAG that he didn’t even know what to do with it, and the one meeting he did bother to take was with Endframe, where he discovered that they were working with the guys from Nucleus to go to market on a product that’s pretty much going to knock Pied Piper out of the competition. I love that the gang hatched a secret plot to build the product that they wanted while pretending to build the box. It’s just a shame that Richard decided to shred the papers at work and managed to slip and promptly reveal the plans to Barker, who is sure to be furious about this subversive attempt and make them pay for it. Making fun of Dinesh’s chain may be the thing to do, but I prefer laughing at him for the fact that the monitors he wanted are now blocking his view.