Last week, I finished the sixth and final season of Silicon Valley. The sitcom by Mike Judge (aka the creator of Beavis & Butthead) was good, but I definitely enjoyed the earlier seasons more.
Having the main character Richard as an insecure software engineering underling (as opposed to a confident CEO) makes him more relatable for me. The disappearance of TJ Miller’s Erlich Bachman also detracts from the show.
As many other reviewers have noted, the show becomes kinda repetitive in terms of plot; many of the same gags are used over and over. And the show, which finished in 2019, is kinda showing its age. While many of the tech concepts discussed are still relevant (i.e. data privacy), many are outdated (i.e. data compression) and many are missing (i.e. humanlike AI’s like ChatGPT).
As a personal gripe, the show really should’ve included more ABCs and ABCDs in its main roster. (Jian Wang does not count; Dinesh alone is not enough.)
A recent demographics report of San Jose high school Lynbrook shows that out of the 1,942 students that attend, 80.6% are Asian, 8.5% are multiracial, 7.3% are white. Similar numbers show up at all the big tech companies in the Bay. Silicon Valley could’ve been a chance for big entertainment to prominently feature Asian-Americans (aka a minority that’s traditionally been excluded from American TV shows / movies), but they missed out.
