S05.E08: Fifty-One Percent

[ElectricBoogaloo]

SEASON FINALE!

Quote

The launch of PiperNet finds Monica suspicious of an early success, and the team must race against the clock as their future is threatened. Realizing he's made more enemies than friends, Richard makes a surprising move.

Promo:

[ottoDbusdriver]

Gavin Belson getting screwed over never gets old.  And it turns out he tried to setup Box 3.0 production in the Yukon, albeit unsuccessfully.

Seeing those Box 3.0s powering down, and being left with 3 columns of green glowing dicks is pretty funny -- and the server farm guy just looks over at them and shrugs.

'Kiss my piss' is never going to happen, Richard.  Deal with it already.
 

Edited May 14, 2018 by ottoDbusdriver

[Nordly Beaumont]

13 minutes ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

'Kiss my piss' is never going to happen, Richard.  Deal with it already.

I might use it once to get a reaction... but I was more in love with Jared asking "You want to die today motherfucker?"

[lucindabelle]

It was nice to see them finally, finally having a win. Since I don’t want to see you just rinse and repeat from what we’ve seen before it would be great if next season it could really just be about their success.

[PinkRibbons]

I feel like Thomas Middleditch really had fun this episode. He's just as wild and funny as the rest of the cast but as Richard he has to constantly reign it in. So the dance, the "Kiss my piss", and the epic bowl drop of ice cream were just fabulous.

And while seeing Gavin get screwed is always a treat, I have to say watching Laurie get at least partially screwed was quite satisfying as well.

[niklj]

Richard actually showing some self-awareness?

Richard actually being savvy?

The team actually communicating with each other??

This episode was a win in so many ways. It may not have had as many laughs, but it was very satisfying. Can't wait for next season.

[Ray Adverb]

The season was a great change from the pattern of "Pied Piper starts with a great idea, then it falls apart by the end of the season only for them to come up with some new plan".

 

Did anyone understand the plot?  Why was it so critical for one group to get 51% of the user base?

[Aulty]

Great finale, shame that it was such a short season.

I liked Gilfoyle and Monica teaming up - being a smart and strategic thinking woman who pushes Gilfoyle and Dinesh is a good spot for Monica. Love the Belson-Bezos enemyship. A cameo by Jeff would be funny.

So we will get Yian Jang back? What happened to the money he got in the deal, did he gamble it away? Will the tables be turned next season with Richard as the new Gavin and Gavin as the new Richard?

[hoodooznoodooz]

I liked all the tension in the scene in which Richard returns from jogging, gasping for breath.

Jared: Richard... There’s no easy way to tell you this.

Bighetti: Jin Yiang is moving back into the house.

[MaryWebGirl]

7 hours ago, PinkRibbons said:

I feel like Thomas Middleditch really had fun this episode. He's just as wild and funny as the rest of the cast but as Richard he has to constantly reign it in. So the dance, the "Kiss my piss", and the epic bowl drop of ice cream were just fabulous.

I agree. It was a really different feeling to the character and Thomas did a great job with it.

[Aulty]

1 hour ago, RayAdverb said:

Did anyone understand the plot?  Why was it so critical for one group to get 51% of the user base?

Its like the stock-market, isn't it? Ideally the shares (or the decentralized internet) is distributed between a large number of users, each owning only a teeny tiny part. If you own more than 50% of shares in a company you can control, and potentially destroy, it. The party that owns more than 50% of Pipernet has the power to alter or destroy it.

[DrSpaceman]

Yes I think that was it.  Once you get to 51% you gain the power to alter the program, apps, control by other uses and can just take over the system. 

Which really when you think about it makes for a nice plot for the show but is a bit ridiculous from a programming standpoint.  Richard created it, why would he make it that way? 

What I liked the most was Gilfoyle and Monica working together.  Hope we get to see more of them in the future. 

And yes I hope they get beyond just the company struggling to succeed as they have year after year. 

[carter100]

does anyone know the guitar part when laurie takes them into their new office at end of the show. right before the uncle walt song?

[hurrrz]

From a story standpoint this made no sense. They never would have created pies piper without a tracker of where their customers/users are coming from, so they should've not es a spike in a certain region earlier than they did. The 51%majority thing also didn't make much sense. Any proper company would have  way to kick off/block malicious users. They also could've stopped allowing new sign on until their patch was done. I feel this show is getting really lazy with its writing. It used to be super on point, but now it's just bad. 

[mojoween]

As weird as it is, when they panned over the new Pied Piper office it reminded me of Mad Men’s “Shut the Door, Have a Seat.”

Guilfoyle and Monica have great chemistry, in a friendsy way.  Definitely not romantic.

I could do without Holden (that’s his name, the assistant?).  He doesn’t bring anything to the show.

[Moxie Cat]

1 hour ago, mojoween said:

As weird as it is, when they panned over the new Pied Piper office it reminded me of Mad Men’s “Shut the Door, Have a Seat.”

I was thinking of the episode where Joan takes all the (male) partners to the empty second floor, a season or two later.

Great episode (though these suspenseful ones always kill me!) but I was also thinking that just from a security perspective, it makes no sense to allow one user, or block of users, to be able to shut down the whole company. One of Guilfoyle's trademarks is security - he says that early on in maybe the second episode of the series. He would never have made the system public without blocking average users from having too many permissions. Even Richard was the only person who could enable/disable developers, right? 

Glad the never ending Tesla storyline finally paid off, though I would have liked to see the user base grow because Fiona was still in the system somehow, and activated herself to help Richard and Jared. It would have freaked the hell out of Guilfoyle too!

Edited May 15, 2018 by Moxie Cat

[HollyG]

On 5/13/2018 at 10:29 PM, lucindabelle said:

It was nice to see them finally, finally having a win. Since I don’t want to see you just rinse and repeat from what we’ve seen before it would be great if next season it could really just be about their success.

Yes x 1000. It was so nice to see Richard & the Pied Piper gang come out on top for a change. And as "ottoDbusdriver " said above, "seeing Gavin Belson get screwed never gets old"! 

Loved this episode!

[Mileman]

On 5/14/2018 at 4:57 AM, Nordly Beaumont said:

I might use it once to get a reaction... but I was more in love with Jared asking "You want to die today motherfucker?"

Jared's 0 to 100 in 5 seconds is amazing...

[ruby24]

13 hours ago, mojoween said:

Guilfoyle and Monica have great chemistry, in a friendsy way.  Definitely not romantic.

I wondered about this for a second, but after kind of teasing Richard/Monica the first couple seasons, it seems to me like the show just decided they don't "do" romance at all, so I don't expect anything on that front with anyone, even if it seems like a spark was there.

Edited May 15, 2018 by ruby24

[mojoween]

13 hours ago, Moxie Cat said:

I was thinking of the episode where Joan takes all the (male) partners to the empty second floor, a season or two later.

 

No you are right.  I was thinking of that one, not “Shut the Door, Have a Seat.”  Those are two VERY different episodes, ha.

The only difference is the Mad Men were shown from the back and Pied Piper from the front but the aesthetic still reminded me of MM.

I actually think Pied Piper’s new office looks kinda terrible, TBH.  Too industrial-like.

Edited May 15, 2018 by mojoween

[tennisgurl]

On 5/14/2018 at 6:42 PM, mojoween said:

Guilfoyle and Monica have great chemistry, in a friendsy way.  Definitely not romantic.

 

Yeah, surprisingly, I really like them working together. It was weirdly sweet when Guilfoyle told Monica that he actually liked her. 

It was great seeing them have a real win, especially after they started off in such a crappy place. Richard even admitted that he was an asshole! And everyone worked together, and didnt act like assholes to each other! Things are actually building up! 

I was surprised at how much of this season ended up coming together for the finale. The video game guy, the Tesla subplot, Gavin's Chinese competition and rivalry with every other tech billionaire, the only thing that could have made it better would be Fiona coming back to help them through the internet. 

Plus, I just love watching Gavin getting fucked over. His angry swearing is sweet music to my ears. "Thanks for the ice cream."

[Should Be Working]

Granted, the last few episodes of Season 5 have contained more action, subplot twists, and more wins for PP than most other episodes in the past few seasons. But they still don't deliver a meaningful uptick in show quality. The past few seasons have been so consistently weak, so poorly written, so moribund and unexciting. This sudden burst of activity probably doesn't represent a meaningful deviation from the steady decline from the well-written, directed, and acted first two seasons. In those first two seasons, the characters were skillfully shaped, written, and acted to represent real and relatable people living and working in a rather absurd environment, all possessing solid core competencies and personalities (even Erlich). Scenes could be outrageously funny without wildly distorting Silicon Valley reality or appealing to low-brow humor and using very clever parody (watch Gavin's hologram scene with BagHead in S1E5 for one example).

Since then, the characters have evolved into strange and unlikable caricatures of their original selves (the rarely seen Monica excluded). Now much of the action is highly frenetic, extremely juvenile, totally unsophisticated, uninspired, unfunny, with characters bouncing around scenes like disturbed adolescents instead of seasoned techies. Dinesh and his tedious Tesla obsessions. Richard and his far too obnoxious, anxiety-driven loser persona. Jared with his traumatized manchild routine. Etc.

I know, as bad as it might have become, Silicon Valley is still better than most TV out there.  But this says less about the former than the utterly dismal quality of the latter. At least we have the first few seasons to remember fondly and occasionally revisit. The bar is just too damn low these days.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Launch day:

 

A 51% attack:

[wendyg]

I don't think the show has ever really recovered from the loss of Christopher Evan Welch. For me, he was the best and funniest thing in the first (or any subsequent) season.