
HBO comedy “Silicon Valley” – pilot script leaked - mneedham
http://qz.com/44671/hbo-comedy-silicon-valley-is-a-lot-better-than-bravo-reality-show-silicon-valley/
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chops
Holy crap, the overdone continuous scrolling and animation makes that page
almost useless. Scroll a little bit, and suddenly I'm jumped to a different
part of the page. Don't scroll too far up, or it loads the previous article
right in place, and doesn't keep you where you were. Then the top-bar seems to
come down at random.

What a frustrating example of overdoing an attempt at a "rich experience" thus
hindering the user experience of trying to just read the goddamned article.
I'll take the bullshit multipage approach that clickmongers use over this
goofy and unintuitive interface.

~~~
philwelch
You know, one of the eternal downsides of a discussion site filled with web
developers is that whenever you post a link, instead of discussing the actual
content, the top-rated comment is far too often an angry criticism of the
website design itself, followed by tangent about Javascript or something.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
In this case, the website design is so horrible as to render a discussion
about the topic impossible, since the design has made it impossible to _read
the damn thing_.

~~~
Justen
That seems a tad melodramatic..

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mnicole
Have you been to the site? It's not at all navigable on desktops. When you
can't even read the content without being shoved into another section of the
site entirely, it's kind of a big deal.

~~~
philwelch
I managed to read it on a desktop just fine.

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kqr2
_Silicon Valley_ : <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2575988/>

Director & writer is Mike Judge who is known for his animated series _Beavis
and Butthead_ and _King of the Hill_ as well as the classic _Office Space_.

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/>

~~~
yurifury
And Idiocracy.

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/>

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eob
From the article:

    
    
        TANDY: This is it? This is where all the tech billionaires decided to live?
        LANGDON: It can't be. (stops a passerby) Excuse me, is this Palo Alto?
    

Hilarious :)

~~~
philsnow
Unless they were standing outside a whole foods or so, I don't buy the
existence of "passerby"

~~~
spullara
Downtown Palo Alto is very walkable with lots of pedestrian traffic.

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alanctgardner2
A few days ago someone linked to a test for media, where you had to see if two
women have a conversation that isn't about men. I don't know why, but it
really stuck with me, and then I was really disappointed when the two female
characters in this script turned out to be gold diggers.

I'm not trying to argue there should be more women in this show. I'm mostly
just complaining about whoever planted this idea in my head. It may be good,
but it's kind of ruining my enjoyment of pop culture

~~~
Zarel
You're referring to the Bechdel Test.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test>

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malloreon
This sounds absolutely terrible. Hopefully they've made significant changes,
but the stuff included in the OP's link fits with the story beats mentioned in
my link below.

From a review submitted to AICN: "If this script is unchanged as HBO begins
production, it will be one of the worst pilots HBO has ever aired. The draft I
read is dated mid October, so God willing Mike Judge (and other writers John
Altschuler & Dave Krinsky) get their act together. Frankly, I had to re-read
this twice to really take in just how God awful it is.

Even shorter review: Mike Judge drives through Silicon Valley. Once. He then
fills a script with uninteresting stereotypes. It is not funny. At all."

"This isn't Office Space humor of reality/biting sarcasm. This isn't Idiocracy
humor of the absurd. It's like a drive by concept, that in execution lacks any
semblance of humor, because the world they've created isn't believable and the
characters they've populated in it lack any semblance of reality."

link to full review: <http://www.aintitcool.com/node/60283>

~~~
confluence
_> because the world they've created isn't believable and the characters
they've populated in it lack any semblance of reality_

Sounds like the Valley I know and love.

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rdl
SV/startup culture does deserve some skewering. This will probably be awesome.

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mattquiros
The script excerpts make for a good tease, but I generally have a bias for HBO
shows anyway. I think this is going to be interesting, unlike Big Bang Theory
which bored me within the first season.

~~~
coopdog
Big Bang Theory is definitely not a show for geeks.

Now Fringe, there's a show for geeks (warning the science may be slightly
liberal at times)

~~~
thejosh
I really like Fringe because most of the season finales could be the final
season and I'll be OK with it. I actually thought the previous season was the
final season.

~~~
Osiris
2-hour series finale is tonight (Friday). The most disappointing thing is that
it's one of the only Sci-Fi shows on TV right now, and I'm counting the SyFy
channel.

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davidtyleryork
Ironically I think Silicon Valley will appreciate this show so much more than
Bravo's attempt to glamorize it.

~~~
catshirt
seems the opposite of ironic to me

~~~
rdl
It's slightly ironic that SV/tech people will enjoy watching something where
they're somewhat mocked vs. fawned over, I think.

~~~
catshirt
fair point. but, op was contrasting HBOs version with Bravos version, both of
which presumably do a great job of mocking and fawning. which suggests the
proposed source of irony is elsewhere.

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danbmil99
I thought it was that Bravo failed by being "earnest/fawning", ie the opposite
of cynical/ironic

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nwh
That page has a white "loading" overlay that I had to "display:none;" to see
the content. I really hope people stop using them soon.

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lukeholder
your probably using adblocker or ghostery. they dont show you the content
unless you disable them. Scummy.

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look_lookatme
Might be accidental, can be a real pain if you develop media tech (and don't
personally run adblock yourself).

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beagle3
Not opining on how good it is: the script matters less than the execution.

Have you ever watched Coupling? It is an extremely funny British sitcom
(ignoring the 4th season, which is just "funny", but not as good as the first
3 seasons, with the exception of a couple of episodes).

It was also successful in the US. So, an american version with american actors
was made, as is customary (see e.g. The Office, Queer as Folk, Being Human,
etc, etc, etc.)

It had exactly the same texts for the expisodes I watched. It had reasonably
good actors. But it just wasn't funny. I gave it the benefit of doubt. Then
rewatched the british. Still funny. Then the american. Not funny.

(Successful conversions like "the office" go their own way, rather than stay
true to the original)

The best script is useless without a matching excellent delivery. And a lesser
script is still excellent with the right delivery. (Think about how Seinfeld
would look if done by your other favorite comedians who are not
Seinfeld/Louis-Dreyfus/Spadowski et al)

I like Mike Judge's past work. I'm going to wait until I see it executed
before I have an opinion.

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confluence
That script just reminds me this video:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzNRUkl9BoY&list=PL88631E...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzNRUkl9BoY&list=PL88631EE962F32577&index=14)

How I love the Valley.

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danbmil99
Did they really say EAST Palo Alto? Maybe if they're squatting at IKEA.

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redhatter
Hugh Mason from JFDI.Asia and Daniel of This Week in Asia said "startups is
becoming more and more a spectator sport"

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schiang
I might watch if it actually depicts life in SV. I just hope they don't go too
crazy just to get higher ratings.

~~~
raldi
It's a fictional comedy, not a reality show.

~~~
defrost
There's nothing hilarious about 1 million tweets @3:00 am complaining about
your server being down . . . of course if it's somebody elses server, well,
that's comedy gold.

~~~
jychang
You know, if the show actually did have stuff like servers going dow, I am
going to watch the shit out of it.

Dammit, now I'm setting the bar too high in my head.

~~~
rscale
Maybe they'll surprise you by having a bar empty out after CloudCo's North
Virginia datacenter has an outage.

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pavel_lishin
Doesn't work very well with Ghostery, <http://i.imgur.com/tsXZh.png>

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confluence
Does anyone have a link to the actual leaked script? Can't seem to find on
that page (it's scrolling all over the place :)

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rnernento
Can we get a link to the whole script?

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fatjokes
Some geeks look rapey.

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imsofuture
Nope!

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aswanson
Fuck hbo, comcast, et. al. they peaked in the 80s. seriously, what purpose do
they serve? Curators of taste?

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Xymak1y
HBO is running some of the greatest shows these days, wouldn't you agree?

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aswanson
I would agree. I was just expressing rage at comcast more than anything. hbo
was a collateral casualty.

