
Reviews for Mike Judge's "Silicon Valley" on HBO - wikiburner
http://www.metacritic.com/tv/silicon-valley
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poolunion
I'm really looking forward to this show. I trust Mike Judge will deliver based
on the quality of Office Space and Idiocracy.

They've done a great job casting the show. It's a great list of funny
actors(Martin Starr), improv(Zach Woods), and comedians(Thomas Middleditch,
Kumail Nanjiani and TJ Miller). Kumail Nanjiani and TJ Miller are two of my
favourite comedians.

Kumail has a video game podcast with his wife Emily called "The Indoor Kids".
[http://www.nerdist.com/podcast/the-indoor-
kids/](http://www.nerdist.com/podcast/the-indoor-kids/) His standup special
Beta Male is available for $5 here
[http://ccdirect.comedycentral.com/watch/kumail-nanjiani-
beta...](http://ccdirect.comedycentral.com/watch/kumail-nanjiani-beta-male)

TJ Miller's Special is $5 here [http://ccdirect.comedycentral.com/watch/tj-
miller-no-real-re...](http://ccdirect.comedycentral.com/watch/tj-miller-no-
real-reason)

Here they are in a couple "This is not happening" sets on youtube. Kumail
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNpRMfiwwlM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNpRMfiwwlM)
and TJ
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf9N5AWprG8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf9N5AWprG8)

It's pretty tragic that main character Christoper Evans Welch died while in
the middle shooting the show. As a result they ended up having to change the
show drastically.

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curiousDog
Can't wait. Mike judge is just straight out Genius.

~~~
area51org
He's pretty smart, but he's also a guy who knows how to get his hate on. I
haven't seen the new show, but I'm concerned that it's going to be an
uninformed hatchet job. Mike once worked as a developer, but he knows little
or nothing about Silicon Valley and how it works (he's from Texas and has
never lived in California). My fear — and I hope I am proven wrong — is that
the show will be based on all the misinformed stereotypes and presumptions
that outsiders have about how technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship
work in the bay area.

~~~
Avshalom
>is that the show will be based on all the misinformed stereotypes and
presumptions that outsiders have

So your fear is that it will be like every TV show about anything, ever.

Silicon Valley is not so special that it deserves or needs some particularly
higher standard accuracy.

~~~
burntroots
His actual fear is it that he won't be able to suspend the necessary disbelief
to enjoy it. You see the same thing from anybody who has specialty knowledge
and sees it misrepresented on TV. They know what they're seeing is wrong, so
it breaks the illusion. A great example is my buddy's wife. She's an MD and he
loved to watch House. She could never get into it because every time they
skewed medical facts to fit the story, she knew.

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walshemj
Ok someone should run a book on how soon into the show the common "nerd"
tropes are used :-)

Just mentioning DnD is always good a for a few laughs :-(

Having said that C4 did this a few years ago with "Nathan Barley" \- one of
the people being parodied actually worked at the same company that I did.

Will it be as good as the IT crowd though?

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blinkingled
I can't tell if I should be excited that Mike Judge is coming out with
something new or downright hateful that I now have to almost certainly
subscribe to HBO for whatever price the provider sees fit.

People like him should really follow Louis C K's example and make everything
available over the web DRM free for a reasonable price. I can't think of a
reason they would need HBO or FOX to make things happen. (On a second thought
- Louis C K stand ups are one man show mostly but still for serials there must
be a ton of independent investors willing to invest in the new model of
delivering entertainment. There's Kickstarter even :))

~~~
meritt
And until HBO offers even a semi-convenient way for me to pay, I'll just
pirate their content like I always have.

~~~
balls187
I know the head of the HBO team here, and I asked him about that topic.

HBO has no incentive to offer streaming only subscriptions. Cable companies
pay top dollar to offer HBO content, because putting HBO on a TV package
increases the subscription to that package. Like For ever $1 cable companies
pay for HBO, those cable companies make $3 from TV packages.

He said that HBO basically prints money, and does not give a damn.

~~~
nightski
That's fine, we'll just wait. Currently I just use a relative's account. But
the day will come when cable companies are not able to afford these premiums,
it is only a matter of time.

~~~
balls187
> But the day will come when cable companies are not able to afford these
> premiums, it is only a matter of time.

I think this is the most likely outcome. Though with the big failure of
municipal internet access, I think cable companies will still be relevant,
perhaps just as dumb-pipes, and not content providers.

~~~
inthewoods
What evidence can you present that cable companies are becoming less powerful
or relevant? All I see is cable companies consistently increasing their power
vs. content providers. The latest example being the Netflix/Comcast deal with
Netflix paying Comcast. But there are others: Comcast bidding for Time Warner
Cable, Verizon FIOS household numbers stalling (they're still a player but not
taking much share). They're also becoming more vertically integrated - so
buying more content companies themselves.

My take is that until there is another viable internet pipe to the home -
wireless or fiber optic - the cable companies will continue to be relevant and
powerful. Controlling the last mile to the consumer is just too powerful,
especially when you look at how difficult and costly it is to do a new network
at scale.

~~~
balls187
I think you just argued my point:

> I think cable companies will still be relevant, perhaps just as dumb-pipes,
> and not content providers.

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booruguru
Based on the commercials, I'm afraid this is going to be any broad comedy with
cheap laughs...like The Big Bang Theory. Big I did like Office Space,
Idiocracy, and bits of Extract so I'll give it a chance.

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kclay
After presenting at the last TC disrupt last year me and my business partner
was contacted by someone planing the show. They wanted to use our material and
or us as extras when they recreated Disrupt. Not sure what happened but we
lost contact with them. Been waiting to see how this show turned out.

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spb
HBO's certainly been doing everything they can to promote it in Seattle:
[https://twitter.com/stuartpb/status/444271882066350081](https://twitter.com/stuartpb/status/444271882066350081)

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dreamdu5t
People at startups look more like MTV Real World celebs and than the awkward
geeks they are portrayed as in this series. Watching it I felt like Mike Judge
is really out of his element in terms of being able to satirize something he's
only familiar with through news articles.

More often it's catered food or food trucks - not ramen noodles.

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gum_ina_package
I wonder who's reviewing this show? Techies like ourselves, or HBO's
mainstream audience?

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gyardley
It says exactly who's reviewed this unreleased show right on the linked page -
five television critics writing for five different publications.

