The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, April 20, 2015 — 5A
‘Silicon Valley’
subverts macho
In season two, the
weirdest workers
become the richest
By HAILEY MIDDLEBROOK
Daily Arts Writer
“For thousands of years, guys
like us have gotten the shit
kicked out of us,” said Rich-
ard Hendricks
(Thomas
Middleditch,
“Splinter-
heads”),
the
twitchy
and
brilliant
pro-
tagonist
of
HBO’s
“Sili-
con
Valley.”
“But now, for
the first time,
we’re
liv-
ing in an era
when we can be in charge and
build empires! We could be the
Vikings of our day!”
His statement, delivered in
endearing nerdiness, speaks not
only to the rise of tech giants in
our culture, but the shift in our
idea of “heroes” — especially
portrayed in media. Stock male
characters (or TV’s “vikings,”
if you will) have forever been
strong, smooth and assertive,
like President Fitz of “Scandal”
or Don Draper of “Mad Men.”
But
in
“Silicon
Valley,”
creator Mike Judge (“Office
Space”) flips TV’s macho char-
acters on their meaty heads —
or, more accurately, gets rids of
them completely. In this world,
the weirdest workers become
the richest bosses, pimply pro-
grammers become overnight
millionaires
and
Kid
Rock
becomes the poorest guy at a
tech kid’s sell-out celebration.
The setting creates a near-
perfect backdrop for comedy:
while the Valley may be the
“cradle of innovation,” it’s also
an adult version of the high
school cafeteria nerd table.
Heated debates aren’t about
NFL rivalries, but over which
Steve (Wozniak or Jobs) played
the bigger role in Apple’s cre-
ation. After-work parties con-
sist
of
cringingly
awkward
small talk, nodding into beer
bottles and slurping delicate
“liquid shrimp” — a far cry from
the raucous, drug-fueled esca-
pades thrown by “Wolf of Wall
Street”-depicted millionaires.
Still, money pulses on the
pristine, color-popping cam-
pus of Hooli, the fictional tech
company à la Google or Apple,
where Richard works in sea-
son one. While staying at the
“Hacker Hostel” with crass
landlord Erlich Bachman (T.J.
Miller, “Big Hero 6”), sardonic
Gilfoyle (Martin Starr, “Adven-
tureland”),
competitive
and
gullible Denish (Kumail Nan-
jiani, “Franklin & Bash”) and
sweet but unskilled “Big Head”
Nelson
(Josh
Brener,
“The
Internship”), Richard designs
“Pied Piper,” an app that allows
musicians to screen their music
for copyrighted material.
Though bland on its sur-
face, Richard’s app contains an
incredible
data-compression
algorithm, which catches the
eye of Hooli CEO Gavin Belson
(Matt Ross, “Big Love”) as well
as of eccentric venture capi-
talist Peter Gregory (Christo-
pher Evan Welch, “War of the
Worlds”).
Suddenly,
Richard
finds himself in a tug-of-war
between the two billionaires,
each with different offers: Bel-
son’s willing to buy the app for
a staggering $10 million dol-
lars; Gregory will invest just
$200,000 — but will only take
five percent ownership of Rich-
ard’s company.
After
talking
to
Monica
(Amanda Crew, “Charlie St.
Cloud”),
Gregory’s
assistant
and the lone female in a male-
driven cast, Richard decides to
keep Pied Piper and build the
company himself. What ensues
is chaos — Richard and his pro-
gramming posse, with the new
edition of the smart but socially
inept Jared (Zach Woods, “The
Office”), must build Pied Piper
from scratch before Hooli out-
does them with its copycat
product, “Nucleus.” Season one
ends with a David and Goliath-
like fight between the rivals at
TechCrunch, a tech competi-
tion. In a frenzy of last-minute
coding, Richard’s team wins,
making Pied Piper the hottest
thing in Silicon Valley.
Season two finds Pied Piper
on the rise, as the team is wined
and dined by venture capital-
ists eager to invest. Along with
their newfound fame, another
change has happened: Peter
Gregory has died in a tragic
safari
accident
involving
a
hippo,
leaving
fast-talking
Laurie Bream (Suzanne Cryer,
“Wag the Dog”) in his place —
adding another much-needed
woman to the scene.
What hasn’t changed in “Sili-
con Valley” is its comedic genius.
Where the show could’ve pla-
teaued after Pied Piper’s mete-
oric rise, it delivers scene after
scene of the team scrambling in
dysfunctional perfection — like
when Erlich states that they’re
“three-foot cocks covered in
Elvis dust,” and Richard blurts
angrily to investors, “I’m a three-
foot cock! I’m covered in dust!”
Elvis-dust-covered
or
not,
Pied Piper isn’t in the clear yet
— Hooli’s rumored to be suing
the company, investments are
murky and Richard still can’t
keep his lunch down under pres-
sure. But despite their grow-
ing pains (or perhaps because
of them), we’re still rooting for
“Silicon Valley.”
A
Silicon
Valley
Season Two
Premiere
Sundays at
10 p.m.
HBO
HBO
“Do you have an app that will shave my mutton chops?”
Lyon Opera Ballet
performs ‘Cinderella’
By COSMO PAPPAS
Daily Arts Writer
Ballet and its practitioners
study the movement of the body
in an artistic context. Danc-
ers train for
the
major-
ity
of
their
lifetimes
to
perfect
this
amazing,
strenuous,
athletic
and
codified form
of movement.
The
Lyon
Opera
Bal-
let,
visiting
Ann
Arbor
this
week-
end for three
nights, weds
the rigorous professionalism of
a world-class ballet company
to creative, spectacular set and
costume design in their produc-
tion of “Cinderella.”
The
Lyon
Opera
Ballet’s
“Cinderella” is a carnivalesque
retelling of the story originat-
ing (in written format) with
17th century Neapolitan writer
Giambattista Basile in his work
of collected fairy tales, the
“Pentamerone,” under the name
Cerenrentola. Charles Perreault
and the Brothers Grimm later
took up the story, the former in
his 1697 “Histoires ou contes du
temps passé” (“Stories or Fairy
Tales from Past Times with
Morals”) under the name ‘Cen-
drillon’ and the latter in their
1812 collection “Grimms’ Fairy
Tales” under the name ‘Aschen-
puttel.’
Featuring toy cars instead of
carriages and rocking horses in
lieu of their breathing counter-
parts, this crowd favorite pro-
duction of “Cinderella” is a tour
de force that would make Walt
Disney blush. All of the danc-
ers are decked out in elaborate
costumes, the most striking ele-
ments being the “fat-cheeked”
baby masks. The production is
set to Russian composer Sergei
Prokofiev’s
score,
composed
during World War II and pre-
miered in 1945. Debuting in
1984, the Lyon Opera Ballet’s
production has been met with
broad acclaim and is a con-
tinuous hit. The company has
performed it annually since its
premiere.
Maguy Marin, the company’s
choreographer, took a radically
unorthodox approach to this
staple of the classical ballet rep-
ertoire.
“Maguy Marin is one of the
very few choreographers in
France very much inspired, if
I can say so, by what we call
German expressionism. So it is
a very theatrical dance,” said
Yorgos Loukos, the artistic
director of the company, in an
interview with The Michigan
Daily. “And what she wanted to
do was not like a classical ballet
with beautiful girls dancing on
points and boys and princes and
all that. She wanted to make a
real theater almost in an Ori-
ental way with huge costumes.
Everybody is like puppets.”
Loukos explained that the Lyon
Opera Ballet prides itself on its
international presence and team.
With an emphasis on the commis-
sion and performance of contem-
porary ballet, they have performed
works by renowned choreogra-
phers Trisha Brown, William For-
sythe and Lucinda Childs.
With this emphasis on theatri-
cality and exaggeration, dancers
are faced with the challenge of pre-
senting the same level of nuance,
precision and expression without
their traditional means like their
faces or their exposed limbs.
“It is like a very strange theater
for children,” Loukos said. “The
dancers, you don’t see their bodies.
They have strange bodies and all
that. So it is a very theatrical thing
and it works very well. I’m not sure
the dancers like to do it, since they
have masks, big hats and wigs.”
But it would be negligent to
reduce this performance to the
gimmick of costume and the
consequent “knockabout pan-
tomime.” For every measure of
“childlike wonder” that this show
brings to the table it has the cru-
elty and sophistication to match.
The Lyon Ballet Opera’s pro-
duction of “Cinderella” is one
that aims to unite the emotion-
al experience of remembering
childhood and the coming of
age and to cull methodological
insights from many different
kinds of theater.
“It is a very sophisticated
work
theatrically
speaking,”
Loukos said. “It is a very full and
rich approach of what theater is
together with music and move-
ment. It’s definitely our biggest
success ... We’ve done it for thirty
years from Moscow to Beijing,
and from Toyko to New York,
again and again.”
Ann Arbor will be lucky as the
only city in the country this
year to see the Lyon Opera Bal-
let’s innovative, exciting and
thoughtful presentation of this
canonical work of ballet.
Lyon Opera
Ballet:
Cinderella
Friday, Apr.
24 - Sunday
Apr. 26, 2015
Power Center
$34-$54, limited
half-price student
tickets available
“It is like a very
strange theater
for children,”
Loukos said.
EVENT PREVIEW
TV REVIEW