HBO’s Silicon Valley, which concluded its second season last night, is an unmitigated hit amongst the Valley folk I’ve come to know and respect. As someone who’s lived variations of the show’s comedically dramatized plotlines – investor takeovers, company-threatening lawsuits, sexist bro cultures, etc. – it makes me cringe, chortle, and engage – something precious few shows can reliably accomplish regardless of their subject matter.
This isn’t Hollywood’s first attempt at plating the Valley’s culture and serving it back to us – technology plays an integral role in nearly every piece of primetime “competence porn” – CSI, Law & Order, Scorpion, whatever. There’s always a team of nerds who work with the good-looking people to leverage data and surveillance, and for reasons that should spur any number of graduate theses, Hollywood has adopted a rather borderline approach to civil liberties so it can deliver the bad guy in the end.
But Silicon Valley is the first show that bothered to look under the hood of what we’re making here, and understand it well enough to parody it back to us. For that we’re deeply grateful. Sure, you can pick apart just about everything in the show, but the truth is, it resonates, because it gets the core narrative right: The team making Piped Piper have their hearts in the right place, the villains remind us of the asshats we’ve all dealt with, and the highs and the lows mirror our own struggles with company creation, capital raising, and team and product building.
For the first time, the Valley has a show worthy of its cultural throw weight. And that makes us all feel a bit more understood, and a little more validated. I’m looking forward to Season Three. I hope the guys all move to the city in this next chapter…because that’s where the story is heading after all, right?