Underneath the Teslas that roam the manicured streets of Silicon Valley are the graves of hundreds of startups that couldn't quite make it to The Social Network status before they flopped. If startups could bleed (something other than money) the Valley would be painted red.
While we praise those like Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, "nerds" like Steve Wozniak rarely get the praise in pop culture they deserve—and that's something Mike Judge is ready to unmask. One of the best lines during Silicon Valley's premiere last night on HBO comes when the awkward main character, Richard, tells Erlich, who owns the house he lives in, "[Steve] Jobs is a poser, he didn't even write code," to which Erlich says, "You just disappeared up your own asshole, you know that?"
Like Office Space before it, Silicon Valley gives love to the unsung heroes who do the dirty work day in and day out, but have bigger dreams like so many of us do. How many times have you talked to co-workers or friends about wanting to go after that bigger job, or the day you won't have to worry about living paycheck to paycheck? That's one of things that makes Judge's projects (like Office Space and King of the Hill) so popular: the characters are relatable. The men and women who populate his sitcoms are us to a certain degree, or, at the very least, they are someone we know.
Where the characters in Office Space went after that huge payday by using their smarts to manipulate a computer program, the dudes in Silicon Valley use their smarts to build a startup, and as the episode shows, sometimes it's not all about the money. Ok, so we might have some sympathy for the Snapchat guys turning down billions from Zuckerberg after watching this.
Check out the first episode above straight from YouTube.
