HBO's new series Silicon Valley takes aim at the real-life location of the same name, mocking and celebrating America's tech hotbed with humor and fictional companies and people.
The first episode premiered last night and I had a chance to watch it following the exciting season four premier of Game of Thrones. I enjoyed the half-hour comedy quite a bit, but what did other publications think? Check out the review excerpts below to get a feel for the show's critical reception, which is generally positive.
USA Today, 4/4: "There are a host of good sitcoms on the air today, but a show that is smart, true, authentic, emotionally resonant and - here's the kicker - laugh-out-loud funny, well, that's a show that's worth using a search engine to find. And that's just the show you're getting from Silicon Valley, the next great comic work from Mike Judge, who already gave us Office Space, Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill."
"In an excellent ensemble, the early standouts are Middleditch, who makes us feel every inch of Richard's fear and elation, and Welch - who, I'm sad to say, died while the sixth episode was being shot, leaving a hole the series will be hard-pressed to fill. But there isn't an actor or character you won't look forward to seeing again, and that includes those you may initially resist. Each is allowed to be right or wrong, each could exist in the world as we know it, and each can be uproariously funny in his or her own way. And really, how great is that?"
The A.V. Club, B: "Things tend to work out for its protagonists in unlikely fashion, and it's usually on its best footing when examining the interplay among a group of guys in their 20s. The series has a terrific cast and solid stable of writers, as well as several directorial ringers (including Maggie Carey and Tricia Brock), but it can never quite overcome that missing tension. It's almost too shaggy for its own good at times. And yet Entourage was pretty good for its first couple of years, at least when there still existed the possibility of Vincent Chase utterly failing, and what keeps Silicon Valley from that fate is that Richard still might completely bomb out. The victories here are small scale, and even when he achieves greatness-or, okay, slightly less mediocrity than usual-it often comes at the expense of his nice guy image. Silicon Valley posits that corporate culture and CEO assholes might be malignant strains on American culture, but it also suggests that in an environment where this much money is floating around, they're an inevitability."
The New Yorker, No Score Given: "The show is well structured, with blunt but effective sitcom beats, and, refreshingly, it isn't an "Entourage"-tinted fantasy. Although the names of all the greats (Brin! Musk! Zuckerberg!) are on everyone's lips, the characters know how those stories end-with a jackpot and a sheaf of bitter lawsuits. The pilot nails both the Darwinian grimness of Silicon Valley-where even a liquor-store clerk complains that his app hasn't been funded-and the way it gets packaged in phony do-gooder-ism."
Roger Ebert.com, No Score Given: "I wish I could say that Mike Judge's new comedy felt half as sharp as Veep. There are times when it promises to live up to its satirical potential as a modern Office Space for the tech movement but it presents viewers with too little to latch on to in terms of character. It improves in that department by the third episode but I've always been hesitant to tell viewers to give a show that much time to develop in today's market of immediacy. And even though it improves, I still find as much about Silicon Valley frustrating as I do funny."
Silicon Valley has some very solid laughs but traffics in stereotypes that feel outdated-the nerd who can't even look at a girl much less talk to her or touch her, the young businessman who literally shakes when faced with career potential....I think Silicon Valley is damaged further simply by being on the same night as two of the current HBO greats. This start-up still has some creative work to do."
