Pied Piper went 'Oceans 11' in the latest 'Silicon Valley'
The team’s dream of making Pied Piper the best compression platform continues to disintegrate in Sunday's episode of Silicon Valley as the battle of enterprise box vs. consumer platform rages and the guys realize CEO Jack Barker is their main obstacle to success.
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That f—ing box
When Jack Barker won’t listen to Richard’s objections about building the Pied Piper platform instead of the data enterprise box, Richard goes over Jack’s head to Laurie Bream at Roviga to see if he can get her to fire Jack or persuade Jack to support the consumer platform again.
Laurie speaks to Jack, but it doesn’t work; Amanda tells Richard that Laurie can’t fire Jack without making Pied Piper look like it’s in total disarray.
Meanwhile, disgusted by the idea of building a box, Guilfoyle says he’s quitting Pied Piper and as soon as he changes his LinkedIn status, he’s wooed by several competing companies.
He even meets with the guys who stole part of Pied Piper’s middle out formula and got the rest of it from the former Nucleus employees who reverse engineered the remainder of the formula.
Guilfoyle immediately tells Richard and the team that competitors have their formula and it's time for a new plan.
Plan B: Skunkworks
Skunkworks is Richard’s name for the team’s secret, Ocean’s 11-esque plan to complete work on the Pied Piper platform while pretending to build the box Jack Barker and his crack sales team want.
The guys work feverishly overnight to craft a plan, including Jared’s reminder to act like they hate working on the box in order to fool Jack into thinking they’re still working on that horrible idea.
It goes well until the guys get to the office the next day and Richard trips and the chart titled “Skunkworks” that he was going to shred at the office, falls out of a folder and is picked up by one of the sales guys, who immediately runs to Jack.
An uncomfortable meeting with Jack quickly ensues, where he tells Richard, “If you’re going to kill the king, make damn sure he’s dead.” Caught red-handed, Richard is wide-eyed and stunned, as usual.
Dinesh’s Gold Chain = Comedy Gold
Silicon Valley excels at running gags, but the jokes about Dinesh’s gold chain in this episode provide some of the best and funniest references to date. You know it’s good when Jared gets in on the funny and scores laughs.
Dinesh (somewhat) graciously lets the guys make him the butt of their jokes when he realizes it’ll help company morale.
Will the Pied Piper team be forced to build the box they loathe? Will they still be able to execute some kind of secret plan to keep the Pied Piper platform alive? Will Erlich ever be useful?
The answer to the final question is surely no. As for the first two questions, we have no clue. But the season is certainly shaping up solidly enough for us to stick around to find out.
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Sandra Gonzalez was a Senior Television Reporter at Mashable. A Texas native, she spent almost four years in New York City before leaving the land of superstorms for Los Angeles, where she was introduced to these terrifying things called "rolling earthquakes."Previously, she was with Entertainment Weekly, where she wrote about every show that could fit into her perfectly crafted TV schedule and anything ever touched by Shonda Rhimes.You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @theSandraG
