The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
 Fall 2018 — 3D

‘Silicon Valley’ finds itself again in 
its fifth season, after a rough patch

As someone who grew up in 
Silicon Valley, the HBO show 
of the same name always felt 
uncannily more like a documentary 
than a comedy. From the get-
go, “Silicon Valley” has been an 
astute satire of the Valley, a place 
where obscene amounts of money 
and 
a 
somewhat 
overzealous 
sense of self-importance produce 
an 
idiosyncratic 
environment. 
Ironically, the show has been 
enthusiastically embraced by the 
very demographic it relentlessly 
pokes fun at. Walk into any 
startup office or CS building at any 
university and you’ll find that our 
(speaking as an engineer) affinity 
towards the show’s humor is not 
entirely dissimilar to a 12-year-old’s 
towards toilet humor. Guaranteed 
guffaws at popular sound bites such 
as “this guy fucks” or “middle out” 
illustrate how “Silicon Valley” has 
transcended into being a possibly 
niche, but still hilarious cultural 
icon.
Nonetheless, I was quite worried 
going into season five. Season four 
was easily the series’s weakest, 
with Pied Piper going frustratingly 
nowhere during the course of 
the entire season and Richard 
Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch, 
“Kong: Skull Island”) going from 
lovable awkward nerd into a 
character that was at too many 
points simply painful to watch. The 
satire still had its edge, but it seemed 
like the show’s magic was just about 
running out. Was the show just 
overstaying its welcome?

Thankfully, the beginning of 
season five has me cautiously 
optimistic. We find the team 
without Erlich Bachmann (T.J. 
Miller, “Deadpool”) for the first time 
after a disappearance in Tibet, and 
although Erlich is one of the show’s 
most notable characters, I wasn’t 
quite miffed by his departure. By 
the end of season four, he was just 
a cheap source of crude humor, a 
deadbeat who had little relevance 
to the plot or progress of Pied 
Piper. It turned out that T.J. Miller 
in real life was becoming a bit too 
much like the character he played, 
forcing the writers to strand him in 
the mountains. Oh well. Anyway, 
season five sees the group move 
into a new office, and throughout 
the course of the first few episodes, 
welcome a large group of engineers.
And to that I say: finally! Pied 
Piper is finally actually making 
some progress. One of the aspects of 
season four that was so frustrating 
was the feeling that the show 
didn’t have to be quite so cyclical. 
The possibilities for conflict and 
comedy with a larger team as Pied 
Piper expands are limitless. While 
Richard is still hopelessly unfit 
as a motivator and CEO (an early 
scene has him give a ridiculously 
cringeworthy speech to his new 
employees), he shows glimpses of a 
Silicon Valley staple many viewers 
of the show are expecting to pan 
out: the transformation from being 
a brilliant, dopey coder to a ruthless 
businessman, 
aka 
Hooli 
CEO 
Gavin Belson (Matt Ross, “Captain 
Fantastic”).
Belson is brilliant as ever, with a 
renewed zeal to destroy the upstart 

Pied Piper. The show continues 
to excel at his characterization as 
well as incorporating new gags, 
including a recurring bit that 
involves three new coders the team 
dubs “stallions, each one more 
magnificent than the last.” Each 
time the stallions are mentioned, 
sentimental music plays while the 
camera pans to three disheveled 
engineers rubbing their eyes while 
squinting at their laptops. While 
Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani, “The Big 
Sick”) and Guilfoyle (Martin Starr, 
“Spider Man: Homecoming”) have 
not developed as much as I would 
like, their interactions are as snide 
and petty as ever, and characters 
such as Laurie Breem (Suzanne 
Cryer, “The Cloverfield Paradox”) 
remain as perfect imitations of some 
of Silicon Valley’s more unusual 
personalities. Jared (Zach Woods, 
“The Post”), one of the show’s most 
intriguing characters, continues to 
drop some truly disturbing lines, 
which leads me to think he grew up 
in a weird cultist/Neo-Nazi family.
Meanwhile in Erlich’s absence, 
Jian Yang (Jimmy O. Yang, “Crazy 
Rich Asians”) takes over and hatches 
a plot to “inherit” his wealth. While 
Jian Yang is hilarious in short 
bursts, it is worrying that the show 
has set him up to potentially be a 
main villain of sorts. At the moment, 
he still feels stuck as a caricature.
“Silicon Valley” is back, sort of. 
Early on, season five is encouraging, 
actually stimulating the idea that 
Pied Piper will grow and encounter 
a new set of problems. However, as 
I stated before, I remain cautiously 
optimistic.

Lorde brings pure magic to Detroit 
as the ‘Melodrama’ tour continues

In the never-ending whirlwind 
of bar and club shows, it’s easy 
to forget the magic that occurs 
alongside the detail and attention 
given 
to 
full-scale 
concert 
productions. Lorde’s show on 
Wednesday night at Detroit’s 
Little Caesars Arena was truly 
nothing short of pure magic.
Before her set, Lorde received 
some fantastic support from the 
inimitable queen of indie rock, 
Mitski, and explosive hip-hop duo 
Run The Jewels. With an early 
set time, Mitski unfortunately 
played to a half-empty arena 
while seats slowly filled, but was 
nonetheless spectacular, with a 
set that included the anthemic 
“Your Best American Girl” and 
closed with the scathing “Drunk 
Walk Home.” Run The Jewels 
played most of their hits like, 
“Call Ticketron” and “Stay Gold,” 
upping the rhythm and energy of 
the crowd in preparation for our 
Lorde and savior to take the stage.
Within a matter of seconds 
into her opening song “Sober,” 
the entire arena was transformed 
into Lorde’s own dreamscape, 
a 
transmutable 
playground 
for her to share her deepest 
secrets and darkest emotions. 

Background dancers flooded the 
stage when necessary to set the 
scene — an intimate party during 
“Homemade Dynamite” and a 
sensual dance between lovers 
during “The Louvre.” All at once, 
Lorde left everything and nothing 
to the imagination with settings 
as personally subjective as needed 
but altogether objective in their 
presentation.
Lorde 
herself 
transformed 
throughout 
the 
performance, 
starting the show with a sleek 
black outfit, changing midway 
through the show on stage into 
a flowing pink gown that she 
then later exchanged for flared 
red bottoms with a matching 
ruffled top. Lorde took the crowd 
through the emotions of her 
music with these expertly timed 
changes, reflecting the deftly 
planned setlist. Melding cuts from 
Melodrama and Pure Heroine 
together, Lorde presented a young 
and intense love broken down to 
the sweet innocence of intimacy, 
eventually bringing us to a spiteful 
but 
reflective 
post-breakup 
independence.
This is the artist of a generation 
at her most affecting, most genuine 
and truly most breathtaking. 
Her show was both a visual 
and auditory spectacle, blended 
perfectly into a story deeply and 

universally resonant. Prefacing 
“Ribs” off of Pure Heroine with 
“This is a song I wrote when I 
was 16,” she reminded the crowd 
of her former outlook as a teen, 
tracing the messy path to young 
adulthood with an incredibly 
perceptive eye. She took the time 
to thank the crowd for being 
with her, reflecting on the fact 
that she was once writing her 
songs alone in a bedroom without 
ever imagining she’d be sharing 
them with arenas full of people. 
Lorde also interposed a gorgeous 
cover of Frank Ocean’s “Solo” 
between “Writer in the Dark” and 
“Liability,” reflecting on her own 
efficacy in the messy melodrama 
of life through these three tracks. 
“Supercut” had the entire crowd 
screaming along, reminiscing on 
the purest, happiest moments of 
life scattered throughout the dark.
If Lorde’s performance showed 
us anything, it’s that we truly do 
not deserve an artist with such 
overwhelming talent. Without the 
words to do her justice, I’ll leave 
you with this: Few artists are able 
to so magnificently capture acute 
emotion the way Lorde has with 
her music, and her performance 
follows suit in a way that is so 
immersive 
and 
tangible 
it’s 
almost impossible not to feel the 
melodrama.

DOM POLSINELLI
Senior Arts Editor

SAYAN GHOSH
Daily Arts Writer

HBO

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