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Thursday, July 6, 2017
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS
TV REVIEW
HBO
‘Silicon Valley’ ended its fourth season this past Sunday
‘Silicon’ Season Four finale
bids goodbye to Bachman
Finale pleases with comedy, disappoints in goodbye to Miller
The success of any “Silicon
Valley” episode has always started
and ended with its characters. When
the characters are connecting, the
show’s jokes seem to build off of each
other and produce a constant stream
of laughs, à la the earlier Season Four
episode
“Intellectual
Property.”
Conversely, when the characters are
out of sync, the show’s gags struggle
to land, as shown in another Season
Four episode, “The Patent Troll.”
Fortunately for “Silicon Valley,”
it has an outstanding cast that
almost always appears to be in
concert with one another to create
on-screen hilarity, and the show’s
Season Four finale “Server Error” is
no exception. The episode fittingly
concludes the series’s exceptional
fourth season that featured an
effective balance between low-brow
humor and critical character and
plot progressions.
One of “Silicon Valley”’s more
shocking developments this season
has been the extent of Richard
Hendricks’s (Thomas Middleditch,
“The Final Girls”) transition to a
shrewd entrepreneur at the expense
of his moral code. Over the course
of the season, Hendricks has turned
from a somewhat naïve executive
of a fledgling video chat company
to the visionary CEO of a bold
start-up seeking to revolutionize
the internet. Hendricks’s turn has
been characterized by deceitful
and cutthroat business maneuvers,
which are highlighted in “Server
Error” when Hendricks coldly
rejects Gavin Belsam’s (Matt Ross,
“American Psycho”) partnership
proposal by telling Belsam, “I
think basically you’re just a server
company now, and we intend to
make servers obsolete, so… in the
end, I’ll be the one devouring you.”
“Silicon Valley”’s stunning finale
also sees Hendricks’s affair with Dan
Melcher’s (Jake Broder, “In a Day”)
wife come to light. The series has
teased a revelation of Hendricks’s
short-lived sex romp with Liz
(Leisha Haley, “The L Word”) in
previous episodes, so its emergence
in the finale isn’t unexpected. Rather,
what was unexpected was the affair
itself, which always seemed to be
too outrageous for Hendricks, to the
point it infringed on believability of
the affair. Instead, the real function
of Hendricks’s cuckoldry was to
serve as a barometer of his personal
transformation to an unscrupulous
entrepreneur.
Hendricks’s newfound persona
takes center stage in “Server Error”
and figures to be a significant piece
of the show’s storyline next season,
too. However, “Silicon Valley”’s
fifth season will test the series, as
it tries to recover from the exit of
Erlich Bachman (T.J. Miller, “Office
Christmas
Party”),
which
was
bungled in “Server Error.”
As
the
crass,
pot-smoking
landlord of Pied Piper, Bachman has
become the source of much of the
series’s ridiculous style of humor.
His constant schemes against Jian
Yang (Jimmy O. Yang, “Patriot’s
Day”) throughout Season Four
provided
“Silicon
Valley”
with
utterly hilarious scenes, including
Yang’s
hilarious
impression
of
Bachman in “Intellectual Property.”
Despite
being
such
a
crucial
character,
Bachman’s
exit
was
rushed and poorly executed even
in the little amount of time it was
given. While it was funny to watch
Belsam negotiate for Bachman to
smoke opium in Tibet for five years,
it was an underwhelming finish for
such an integral character on the
show.
While
Bachman’s
exit
will
profoundly disrupt “Silicon Valley,”
the series has such a stellar cast of
veteran comedians that it should
be able to sustain its overwhelming
success. The show’s main stars —
Middleditch, Kumail Nanjiani (“The
Big Sick”), Martin Starr (“Freaks and
Geeks”), Josh Brener (“In the Loop”)
and Zach Woods (“The Internship”)
— continue to shine due to their
superb chemistry. “Silicon Valley”
is also boosted by the expanding
roles occupied by Hoover (Chris
Williams, “Curb Your Enthusiasm”)
and Ed Chen (Tim Chiou, “Love Is
All You Need?”). Williams especially
emerged in this fourth season
because of his eccentric blend of
naïve obedience to Hooli. With more
scenes of Williams and Chiou on the
series, “Silicon Valley” will make
viewers accept, albeit not forget,
Bachman’s departure.
‘Lake’ is a vivid
story collection
BOOK REVIEW
With the opening sentence in
the first of his new collection of
short stories “The Girl of the Lake,”
Bill Roorbach catapults us back
into the world of middle school
adventures: “Bobby Mullendore
was sick of sixth grade, especially
without his best friend Jack B., plus
it was spring.” In a move as old as
time, Bobby forges a note and skips
school for several days in a row. He
spies on a neighboring estate in his
spy gear and gets caught. Terrified
at
first
by
the
commanding
personages around Harbinger Hall
(also the title of the story), Bobby
meets the old man who owns it; he
begins giving Bobby lessons on his
days off from school, starting with
Russian history but quickly moving
on to other subjects. In a few pages
that function as a montage, we
see Bobby grow up and follow in
the footsteps, in a way, of that old
man, but the story ends with a
simple, elegant twist that leaves
you questioning what you think
you know.
The rest of Roorbach’s stories
operate the same way, sketching
simple vignettes with refreshing
clarity. In “Kiva,” a self-admitted
“omega” boy tries with all his
might to win the heart of the alpha
girl; his father tries to help him,
and explains that he must not
try to imitate the behavior of the
alpha males, but rather learn how
to win her over in other ways (so
naturally, he tries to learn how to
do a french braid). His father takes
the two of them and the girl’s two
sisters out on a picnic, where more
than a few people decide to take a
chance on a sexual encounter, in a
bizarrely rapid succession.
“Fall” peels back the layers of
sentiment you can find yourself
wrapped up in when someone
dies, and you feel emotions more
complicated
than
just
grief;
“Some Should” details the utterly
unpredictable direction a blind
date with a priest — a sinner just the
same — can go in (and this one has a
shout-out to the Residential College
at
the
University).
“Princesa”
shows the ridiculousness of older
men fawning over younger famous
ingenues, a story that borders on
absurdism.
The narrators of these stories
feel
like
stenographers.
The
dialogue is pulled straight from
real life, revealing feelings so
recognizable that reading the
stories feels like a heady case of
déjà vu; it’s bittersweet. They cover
how quickly things can change
in the life of the schoolyard, the
cooling of passion between two
people who always swore they
would stay in touch, the kinds
of inconceivable back stabbings
that romantic unravelings can
lead to, the intricate forms that
betrayal can take in the worlds of
art curatorship and community
theater, and what it looks like
when two people fall in love, if not
at first sight, then at first rashly
constructed plan for a future
together. Roorbach has pushed
the short story form to its limits,
somehow molding worlds with
depth in only a few pages each
time, making them breathtaking in
their simplicity.
SOPHIA KAUFMAN
Daily Book Review Editor
“The Girl of
the Lake”
Bill Roorbach
Algonquin Books of
Chapel Hill
June 27th, 2017
Roorbach’s recent collection weaves
stories of intense emotion and simplicity
Reading the
stories feels like a
heady case of déjà
vu; it’s bittersweet
CONNOR GRADY
Daily Arts Writer
“Silicon Valley”
HBO
Season Four Finale