Round Two: Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber: Season 1, Episode 2 “X to the X” (B+)

After dropping “cab” from the company’s name so that they could flout certain rules, Travis isn’t letting anything stop him from succeeding. The introduction of Fred Armisen’s car-seizing public servant in Portland felt like an old-fashioned villain eager to take down the criminals and have a good time doing it, and unfortunately for him, they figured out a way to bore him into giving up by setting him up with ghost cars and ensuring that all of his colleagues had just as much difficulty. Having Bill be on the ground with Travis and advising him on a regular basis might have helped to rein him in, but instead Travis is hosting elaborate events with a communications team ready to bat away press and then laughing off a $25 million bill to deal with all the damage that they have to pay given his penchant for just going ahead and paying whatever fines come along. That’s obviously not a sustainable model, and the end of this episode introduced an entirely new issue, that of competitor Lyft, which has long been regarded as a company that treats its drivers better even if the service provided to consumers is practically the same. The way Travis painted his breakup to his mom was starkly different from how it happened in reality, and the idea of buying her a place so that he could keep the space where he thinks best feels like someone who isn’t at all ready to roll with change, which is surely going to be his downfall when someone tells him he can’t do something and he can’t figure out a way to strong-arm them.