Silicon Valley (TV series)

Silicon Valley
Season 1 intertitle
Genre	Comedy
Created by	Mike Judge John Altschuler Dave Krinsky
Starring	Thomas Middleditch T.J. Miller Josh Brener Martin Starr Kumail Nanjiani Christopher Evan Welch Amanda Crew Zach Woods Matt Ross Suzanne Cryer Jimmy O. Yang Stephen Tobolowsky Chris Diamantopoulos
Opening theme	"Stretch Your Face" by Tobacco
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	5
No. of episodes	46 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers	Mike Judge Alec Berg John Altschuler Dave Krinsky Michael Rotenberg Tom Lassally
Producer	Jim Kleverweis
Camera setup	Single-camera
Running time	28–30 minutes
Production companies	Judgmental Films Altschuler Krinsky Works Alec Berg Inc. 3 Arts Entertainment HBO Entertainment
Original release
Network	HBO
Release	April 6, 2014 (2014-04-06) – present

Silicon Valley is an American comedy television series created by Mike Judge, John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky. The series focuses on five young men who founded a startup company in Silicon Valley. The series premiered on April 6, 2014 on HBO, and the fifth season premiered on March 25, 2018. On April 12, 2018, it was announced that HBO had renewed the series for a sixth season.

Cast

Main

• Thomas Middleditch as Richard Hendricks, a college dropout and ex-coder at tech giant Hooli, Richard quits his job to pursue his Pied Piper compression application. The company initially starts out as a simple data compression platform, but when this, and a videochat that Dinesh created with the algorithm fails, Richard pivots toward creating a new, decentralised internet, called Pipernet. For the most part, Richard is timid and quiet, and does not have much of a temper, but when he finally reaches his limit, is prone to extreme explosions of anger. Richard is constantly struggling with the demands of the business world, preferring instead to disappear into the coding of his application, but realizes that as CEO he must do more. Throughout most of the series, Richard is determined to make Pied Piper a company different from the soulless Hooli and the narcissistic, megalomanic Gavin Belson, but as the series progresses, it becomes clear that the many trials and tribulations of trying to get his business to succeed have made him bitter, petty and ruthless, in much the same vein as the man he once sought to distinguish himself from. This is exemplified in the season 5 premiere, wherein Richard uses Gavin's tactic of spending large amounts of company money and resources to bankrupt two weaker, recently merged companies, not just to acquire their coders, but primarily to get petty vengeance on the two CEOs, who had tried to screw him over. Richard has also grown more impatient and disrespectful towards his friends, even dismissing Gilfoyle without fear.
• T.J. Miller as Erlich Bachman (seasons 1–4), a narcissistic entrepreneur who founded an innovation incubator in his home after the purchase of his airfare collator Aviato. Under the incubator agreement, Erlich owns 10% of Pied Piper, and is later appointed to the company's board of directors after Richard realizes how important Erlich is to the business. Erlich is a frequent user of marijuana. It is revealed in the season 2 finale that Erlich no longer codes because of severe carpal tunnel syndrome. Despite being relatively unsuccessful in his own entrepreneurial ventures, he is a competent public speaker and negotiator, and is often seen as the "face" of Pied Piper. At the end of season 4 he travels to Tibet after misreading an invitation Gavin Belson sent to Richard. Gavin later abandons him at a hut after finding out about the Hooli-con scandal. Erlich is now missing and presumed dead, leaving Jian Yang to inherit his house by faking Erlich's death using the ashes of a dead pig.
• Josh Brener as Nelson "Big Head" Bighetti, a former tenant of Erlich's incubator and Richard's best friend who also works at Hooli. He is clueless and impressionable, but still manages to acquire significant influence as a result of the struggle between Hooli and Pied Piper. After work on Pied Piper commences, Big Head is offered a huge raise and promotion by Gavin Belson to help Hooli develop its copycat software, Nucleus, out of spite and because Richard was forced to limit his staff. He is continually promoted so rapidly that buzz develops about him, and he ends up on the cover of Wired magazine. He is later removed from the Nucleus project due to his lack of technical knowledge, and has absolutely no responsibilities at Hooli. He was later promoted further to make it appear that he was the actual creator of Pied Piper while working at Hooli, but he is unaware of this. After a disastrous binding arbritration with Pied Piper, Gavin makes Big Head redundant and pays him $20 million in severance, which he blows through very quickly when Erlich tricks him into entering into a business arrangement with him. Big Head then buys a majority stake in PiperChat following the sale of a technology blog he and Erlich owned. Due to his poor business skills, his father takes over control of his share on his behalf. In season 4, Big Head takes a position as an Computer Science instructor at Stanford University.
• Martin Starr as Bertram Gilfoyle, a LaVeyan Satanist network engineer and Canadian illegal immigrant, until he successfully applies for a visa after Dinesh puts him under pressure. Gilfoyle credits himself as an online security expert, and as such is responsible for system administration and server configuration at Pied Piper. Gilfoyle often plays cruel pranks on Dinesh, but the two do appear to be friends despite this, with the two often bonding over their shared moral ambiguity. Like Dinesh, Gilfoyle is acerbic and sarcastic, but in contrast, highly apathetic, sardonic and brutally honest. He acts as the systems architect of Pied Piper. While usually calm and collected, it is revealed in season 5 that Gilfoyle is afraid of Artificial Intelligence taking over humanity one day. Gilfoyle has also grown slightly less confident and more complacent to Richard and Monica but is still freely dismissive of Dinesh and Jared.
• Kumail Nanjiani as Dinesh Chugtai, a talented programmer specializing in Java originally from Karachi, Pakistan who is typically the victim of Gilfoyle's embarrassing games and pranks. Dinesh exhibits an acerbic and sarcastic personality towards everyone on the team, and often behaves in a callous and amoral manner, such as when he plots the death of a man who was dating the girl that he liked. Dinesh is also shown to be especially materialistic and unsuccessful with women. Dinesh always seems to run into bad luck, such as losing opportunities with women over Java code to opportunities for recognition.
• Christopher Evan Welch as Peter Gregory (season 1), the billionaire founder and CEO of Raviga Capital as well a 5% equity owner of Pied Piper after his $200,000 investment. Gregory is extremely brilliant but socially inept, eccentric and unpredictable, once delaying a crisis business meeting to sample Burger King products for eight hours in order to identify a potential new investment. Welch died after the fifth episode of season 1 was completed, but the character remained present off-screen for the remainder of the season. Gregory later died in the season 2 premiere.
• Amanda Crew as Monica Hall, an employee of Raviga Capital and associate partner under both Peter Gregory and later Laurie Bream. Monica is often charged with engaging with clients on a more personable and approachable way than either Gregory or Bream are, and as such forms a bond with Richard after she convinces him to launch Pied Piper on his own. Her interactions with Richard subtly imply a mutual romantic attachment which, though rarely explored, is often a deciding factor whenever major decisions arise, such as Richard's decision to go with Raviga over Hooli, Monica's persistence in keeping Pied Piper on board whenever Laurie considers dropping them and, later in the series, Monica's willingness to side with Richard at the cost of losing favour with Laurie. In season 4, she leaves Raviga to partner with Laurie at her new VC firm. By this time, Monica's relationship with Richard has become strictly professional and business-like, presumably having realised that her previously close relationship with him has led to her getting badly burnt in her career. She is also confident enough to talk down to Gilfoyle. It is also revealed that she was married but had her marriage annuled after 3 months.
• Zach Woods as Donald "Jared" Dunn, an ex-VP of Hooli who quits the company in order to join the Pied Piper team as its CFO and business advisor. Like Richard, Jared is meek and reserved, but gains confidence as the series progresses and the company's success necessitates it. He is also exceedingly optimistic, selfless and thoroughly devoted to Richard, sacrificing his high-paying and financially secure job at Hooli to lend his business expertise to Pied Piper. His birth name is Donald, but his former boss, Gavin, once referred to him as Jared, and the nickname stuck, despite the Pied Piper team knowing it's not his real name. He is frequently disrespected by the other employees of Pied Piper, aside from Richard who often defends him, though he tends to be oblivious of this or too awkward to actually understand the insult. Over the course of the series, Jared drops bits and pieces of his considerably dark backstory, such as being the product of a forced adoption to finding his biological father in the Ozarks. In season 5, after realizing his trust and loyalty to Pied Piper, Richard promotes Jared to chief operating officer.
• Matt Ross as Gavin Belson (recurring season 1, starring season 2–present), the chief executive officer and founder of tech giant Hooli, who embodies the soulless corporate culture that Richard is desperate to avoid with Pied Piper. Belson constantly spews forth pseudo-philosophical rants to his employees, who remain enamored with his work, but comes across as seeming intelligent and kind-spirited. In season 2, Belson launched a lawsuit against Pied Piper, claiming that it was developed on Hooli company time and using company resources. Historically Belson and Peter Gregory were friends but later became business rivals, and interactions between the two of them became awkward as a result. Gavin's hubris and vindictive streak is often the root cause of many of Hooli's problems, such as the failure of Nucleus, the constant slew of PR disasters and his decision to take over PiperChat with no due diligence, which causes his temporary eviction from the CEO of Hooli in season 4. He gets back to his function at the end of the season, firing the new CEO Jack Barker. In season 5, despite knowing of Richard's plans for his new internet, Gavin intends to push the sale of Hooli's Box 3. He later learns that Jian-Yang has recreated Richard's new internet and plans to acquire it.
• Suzanne Cryer as Laurie Bream (season 2–present), the replacement for Peter Gregory at CEO of Raviga Capital, and later co-founder of Bream Hall Capital with Monica. Like her predecessor, Laurie is highly intelligent and socially inept, but appears to rely more on tangible metrics than Peter. Her business-centric approach is what leads her to terminate Raviga's investment into Pied Piper after Belson's lawsuit is announced, as well as selling Pied Piper as its reputation is severely damaged after Jared's deceptive practices. Little is known about her personal life, but in Season 4 she is pregnant with her fourth child. Despite her difficulty with connecting with people, Laurie considers Monica her best friend.
• Jimmy O. Yang as Jian-Yang (recurring season 1, starring season 2–present), another tenant of Erlich's incubator, and the only person who lives there that is not involved with Pied Piper in any capacity. He speaks broken English but slowly and with a heavy Chinese accent. He and Erlich have frequent disagreements, and during Season 3, Episode 2, after finding out how difficult it is for a landowner to evict a tenant, Jian-Yang decides to take advantage of this and live rent-free in Erlich's house for a year. Jian-Yang often insults and makes prank calls to Erlich, and takes a sadistic enjoyment in tormenting him. In Season 5, he takes advantage of Erlich being missing in Tibet by claiming him to be deceased in order to assume ownership of the incubator and Erlich’s 10% stake in Pied Piper, kicking the Pied Piper team out of the house and replacing them with his Chinese friends. He later plans to copy the best American tech companies for the Chinese market and moves back to China to create "New Pied Piper", but is found on the brink of bankruptcy by Gavin Belson. Gavin discovers Jian-Yang has recreated and modified Richard's new internet project that it is not restricted by Richard's patent and offers Jian Yang to acquire his project.
• Stephen Tobolowsky as Jack Barker a.k.a Action Jack (recurring season 3, starring season 4), briefly the CEO of Pied Piper after Richard was voted out. Later he becomes involved with Hooli on their Endframe Box, though is later demoted by Gavin. Subsequently, he became CEO of Hooli after Gavin Belson was fired, but was shortly removed after he was held hostage by Hooli plant workers in China.
• Chris Diamantopoulos as Russ Hanneman (recurring season 2–3, starring season 4, guest season 5), an unpredictable, selfish and bizarre billionaire investor who provides Pied Piper with their Series A. In the fourth-season premiere, he agrees to fund Richard's 'new internet' project. Richard ultimately does not go with this funding offer, choosing instead to partner with Gavin Belson.

Recurring

• Aly Mawji as Aly Dutta/Naveen Dutt (seasons 1–3), a Hooli coder who bullies Richard and Big Head. He is charged with working on Nucleus as a lead engineer.
• Brian Tiechnell as Jason Winter (seasons 1–3), a Hooli programmer who bullies Richard and Big Head. He is also charged with working on Nucleus as a lead engineer. He along with Aly quits Hooli after being fed up with Gavin's antics.
• Jill E. Alexander as Patrice (seasons 1–3, 5), a Hooli employee. She is fired by Gavin after showing distaste towards his animal abuse.
• Andy Daly as Dr. Crawford, a Silicon Valley doctor whom Richard regularly sees.
• Ben Feldman as Ron LaFlamme, Pied Piper's young, laid-back but competent outside counsel.
• Gabriel Tigerman as Gary Irving (seasons 1–3), the human resources manager at Hooli.
• Bernard White as Denpok, Gavin's sycophantic spiritual advisor.
• Matt McCoy as Pete Monahan (seasons 2–4), a disgraced former lawyer who represents Richard, Erlich and Pied Piper at the binding arbitration of the Hooli lawsuit.
• Jake Broder as Dan Melcher (seasons 1, 4), a former TechCrunch Judge who is kicked out after he beats up Bachman for sleeping with his wife. He later returns in season four as the CTO of an insurance company.
• Alice Wetterlund as Carla Walton (seasons 2–3), a programmer and friend of Gilfoyle and Dinesh's who joins the Pied Piper team.
• Chris Williams as Hoover (season 3–present), head of security at Hooli.
• Annie Sertich as C.J. Cantwell (season 3), a tech blogger. Erlich Bachman buys her blog after she is coerced into revealing Big Head was her source. Later the blog is bought out by Gavin himself after she hears about Gavin's illegal dumping of an elephant in the San Francisco Bay.
• Haley Joel Osment as Keenan Feldspar (season 4), the developer of a VR headset who tries to buy out Pied Piper. When Richard rejects the deal, he signs with Hooli.
• Tim Chiou as Ed Chen (season 4), a venture capitalist that works at Raviga who currently serves as the firm's Managing Director.
• Emily Chang appears as herself, interviewing various characters.

Plot

Main article: List of Silicon Valley episodes

Season	Episodes		Originally aired
			First aired	Last aired
1	8		April 6, 2014 (2014-04-06)	June 1, 2014 (2014-06-01)
2	10		April 12, 2015 (2015-04-12)	June 14, 2015 (2015-06-14)
3	10		April 24, 2016 (2016-04-24)	June 26, 2016 (2016-06-26)
4	10		April 23, 2017 (2017-04-23)	June 25, 2017 (2017-06-25)
5	8		March 25, 2018 (2018-03-25)	May 13, 2018 (2018-05-13)
6	7		October 27, 2019 (2019-10-27)	December 8, 2019 (2019-12-08)

Season 1

Richard Hendricks creates an app known as Pied Piper which contains a revolutionary data compression algorithm. Peter Gregory acquires Pied Piper, and Richard hires the residents of Erlich Bachman's business incubator including Bertram Gilfoyle and Dinesh Chugtai along with Jared Dunn, who defected from Hooli. Meanwhile, Nelson "Big Head" Bighetti chooses to accept a substantial promotion at Hooli instead, despite his lack of merit for the job.

Gavin Belson instructs his Hooli employees to reverse engineer Pied Piper's algorithm and develops a copycat product called Nucleus. Both companies are scheduled to present at TechCrunch Disrupt. Pied Piper rushes to produce a feature-rich cloud storage platform based on their compression technology. At the TechCrunch event, Belson presents Nucleus, which is integrated with all of Hooli's services and has compression performance equal to Pied Piper. However, Richard has a new idea and spends the entire night coding. The next morning, Richard makes Pied Piper's final presentation and demonstrates a product that strongly outperforms Nucleus and he is mobbed by eager investors.

Season 2

In the immediate aftermath of their TechCrunch Disrupt victory, multiple venture capital firms offer to finance Pied Piper's Series A round. Peter Gregory has died and is replaced by Laurie Bream to run Raviga Capital. Richard finds out that Hooli is suing Pied Piper for copyright infringement, claiming that Richard developed Pied Piper's compression algorithm on Hooli time using company equipment. As a result, Raviga and all the other VC firms retract their offer. Richard turns down Hooli's buyout and accepts funding from Russ Hanneman, though Richard quickly begins questioning his decision after learning about Hanneman's mercurial reputation and his excessive interference in day-to-day operation.

Belson promotes Big Head to Hooli [xyz], to make people think he created the compression algorithm and Richard stole it to create Pied Piper. Belson agrees to drop the lawsuit in favor of binding arbitration to prevent the press from finding out about how bad Nucleus is. Due to a clause in Richard's Hooli contract, the lawsuit is ruled in Pied Piper's favor. Raviga buys out Hanneman's stake in Pied Piper, securing three of Pied Piper's five board seats. However, they decide to remove Richard from the CEO position due to previous incidents.

Season 3

After a failed stint with Jack Barker as CEO of Pied Piper, Richard eventually regains his CEO position. Richard hires contract engineers from around the world to help construct their application platform. Big Head receives a $20 million severance package from Hooli in exchange for non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements. Big Head uses his money to set up his own incubator and Erlich partners with him. However, because of their spending habits, they declare bankruptcy, and Erlich is forced to sell his stake in Pied Piper to repay the debts. Gavin Belson hires Jack Barker as the new head of development at Hooli.

After release, their platform is positively reviewed by members of the industry. However, only a small fraction of the people installing the platform remain as daily active users. Meanwhile, Jared secretly employs a click farm in Bangladesh to artificially inflate usage statistics. An anxious Richard reveals the source of the uptick at a Series B funding signing meeting, leading to the deal being scrapped. Laurie no longer wishes for Raviga to be associated with Pied Piper and moves to sell majority control to any investor. Erlich and Big Head are able to buy control of the company after an unexpected windfall from the sale of a blog they bought. Pied Piper now prepares to pivot again, this time to become a video chat company, based on the sudden popularity of Dinesh's video chat application which he included on the platform.

Season 4

Richard steps down as CEO of Pied Piper, and instead begins working on a new project: a decentralized, peer-to-peer internet, that would be powered by a network of cell phones without any firewalls, viruses and government regulations. Gavin Belson is removed as CEO of Hooli after an incident involving COPPA violations from when he seized PiperChat. Jack Barker takes his place as CEO. Gavin leaves Palo Alto and goes to Tibet.

Laurie and Monica form their own VC company, Bream-Hall. Big Head becomes a lecturer at Stanford University's Department of Computer Science. Erlich gets into business with Keenan Feldspar, whose VR headset is the Valley's latest sensation. However, Erlich is left out of a signing deal and is abandoned by Feldspar, leaving Erlich disillusioned. Erlich then goes to Tibet to meet with Gavin. While Gavin eventually returns home, Erlich stays.

Richard gets into business with FGI, an insurance company, who uses Pied Piper for their data storage needs. After a crisis involving FGI's data storage, the team discovers that the decentralized internet is a working concept after the data from their Pied Piper server had backed itself up to Jian-Yang's smart refrigerator, as Gilfoyle used some of the Pied Piper code when he was trying to hack it, which in turn connected itself to a network of other refrigerators like it and distributing the data. Gavin offers a very generous acquisition deal to Richard, who turns it down and decides to be funded by Bream–Hall.

Season 5

In the fifth season, the Pied Piper team gets new offices and hires a large team of coders to help work on Richard's new internet. Meanwhile, Jian-Yang tries to prove Erlich is dead so he can become the owner of all his former property, including the idea incubator and the 10% share of Pied Piper. Richard promotes Jared to be the new chief operating officer for Pied Piper, and Jian-Yang goes to China to build a rip-off of Pied Piper.

Bream/Hall forces Richard to team up with Eklow, an AI team, and Pied Piper puts together a group of developers. After an issue with the AI, Richard loses his development deal with Eklow, and instead he decides to use Gilfoyle's idea to create a cryptocurrency for Pied Piper. After Monica figures out that Laurie plans to make Richard sell ads for his decentralized internet, she leaves Bream/Hall and joins Pied Piper.

After unimpressive results to their cryptocurrencies, Pied Piper is distraught when Laurie teams up with a wealthy Chinese manufacturer named Yao, who originally was helping Belson steal Jian-Yang's Pied Piper patent, but instead used it for his own plans. Yao and Laurie add users to Pied Piper's network via a large number of phones, and prepare for a 51% Attack against Pied Piper. Richard asks Belson to put the software onto his Signature Box 3 in order to stop Yao and Laurie, and Belson does so, but betrays Richard by instead teaming up with Laurie and Yao to delete Pied Piper. Instead, one of the developers that previously left Pied Piper, returned at the last second with the users for a new video game that stops the 51% Attack, and Pied Piper can release their de-centralized internet in peace.

Production

Mike Judge, co-creator of Silicon Valley.

Co-creator and executive producer Mike Judge had worked in a Silicon Valley startup early in his career. In 1987 he was a programmer at Parallax, a company with about 40 employees. Judge disliked the company's culture and his colleagues ("The people I met were like Stepford Wives. They were true believers in something and I don't know what it was") and quit after less than three months, but the experience gave him the background to later create a show about the region's people and companies. He recollects also how startup companies pitched to him to make a Flash-based animation in the past as material for the first episode: "It was one person after another going, 'In two years, you will not own a TV set!' I had a meeting that was like a gathering of acolytes around a cult leader. 'Has he met Bill?' 'Oh, I'm the VP and I only get to see Bill once a month.' And then another guy chimed in, 'For 10 minutes, but the 10 minutes is amazing!'"

Filming for the pilot of Silicon Valley began on March 12, 2013, in Palo Alto, California. HBO green-lit the series on May 16, 2013.

Christopher Evan Welch, who played billionaire Peter Gregory, died in December 2013 of lung cancer, having finished his scenes for the first five episodes. The production team decided against recasting the role and reshooting his scenes; on his death, Judge commented: "The brilliance of Chris' performance is irreplaceable, and inspired us in our writing of the series." He went on to say, "The entire ordeal was heartbreaking. But we are incredibly grateful to have worked with him in the brief time we had together. Our show and our lives are vastly richer for his having been in them." In the eighth episode of season 1, a memoriam is made in his honor at the end of the credits roll. The character of Peter Gregory was not killed off until the premiere of Season 2.

The show refers to a metric in comparing the compression rates of applications called the Weissman score, which did not exist before the show's run. It was created by Stanford Professor Tsachy Weissman and graduate student Vinith Misra at the request of the show's producers.

Clay Tarver was named co-showrunner in April 2017 alongside Mike Judge and Alec Berg, also serving as an executive producer. In May 2017, it was announced that T.J. Miller would be exiting the series after the fourth season.

Reception

Critical response

Season		Critical response
		Rotten Tomatoes	Metacritic
	1	94% (53 reviews)	84 (36 reviews)
	2	100% (19 reviews)	86 (9 reviews)
	3	100% (17 reviews)	90 (15 reviews)
	4	97% (31 reviews)	85 (10 reviews)
	5	100% (12 reviews)	73 (5 reviews)

Silicon Valley has received critical acclaim since its premiere. Metacritic, a website that gathers critics' reviews, presents the first season with an 84 out of 100 Metascore based on 36 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Similarly, Rotten Tomatoes presented the first season with a 94% "Certified Fresh" rating and an average score of 7.94 out of 10 based on 53 reviews, with the critical consensus "Silicon Valley is a relevant, often hilarious take on contemporary technology and the geeks who create it that benefits from co-creator Mike Judge's real-life experience in the industry."

Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter said "HBO finds its best and funniest full-on comedy in years with this Mike Judge creation, and it may even tap into that most elusive thing, a wide audience." Matt Roush of TV Guide said "The deft, resonant satire that helped make Judge's Office Space a cult hit takes on farcical new dimension in Silicon Valley, which introduces a socially maladroit posse of computer misfits every bit the comic equal of The Big Bang Theory's science nerds." Todd VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club said "It feels weirdly like a tech-world Entourage—and that's meant as more of a compliment than it seems." Brian Tallarico of RogerEbert.com praised the jokes of the series but commented on the slow progression of the character development in the first two episodes and the reliance on common stereotypes in technology, including "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." He goes on to state that the lack of depth to the characters creates "this odd push and pull; I want the show to be more realistic but I don't care about these characters enough when it chooses to be so."

David Auerbach of Slate stated that the show did not go far enough to be called risky or a biting commentary of the tech industry. "Because I'm a software engineer, Silicon Valley might portray me with my pants up to my armpits, nerdily and nasally complaining that Thomas' compression algorithm is impossible or that nine times F in hexadecimal is 87, not 'fleventy five' (as Erlich says), but I would forgive such slips in a second if the show were funny." Auerbach claimed that he used to work for Google, and that his wife also worked for them at the time of the review.

The second season received critical acclaim, and has a score of 86 out of 100 based on nine reviews from Metacritic. On Rotten Tomatoes, the season received a 100% rating with an average rating of 8.3 out of 10 based on 19 reviews. The site's consensus reads, "Silicon Valley re-ups its comedy quotient with an episode that smooths out the rough edges left behind by the loss of a beloved cast member."

Its third season received critical acclaim. On Metacritic, the season has a score of 90 out of 100 based on 15 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". On Rotten Tomatoes, the season received a 100% rating with an average rating of 8.5 out of 10 based on 17 reviews. The site's consensus reads, "Silicon Valley's satirical take on the follies of the tech industry is sharper than ever in this very funny third season."

The fourth season received critical acclaim. On Metacritic, the season has a score of 85 out of 100 based on 10 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". On Rotten Tomatoes, the season received a 97% rating with an average rating of 8 out of 10 based on 31 reviews. The site's consensus reads, "Silicon Valley's fourth season advances the veteran comedy's overall arc while adding enough new wrinkles -- and delivering more than enough laughs -- to stay fresh."

The fifth season received generally positive reviews from critics. On Metacritic, the season has a score of 73 out of 100 based on 5 reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, the season received a 100% rating with an average rating of 7.3 out of 10 based on 12 reviews.

Other reactions

Elon Musk, after viewing the first episode of the show, said: "None of those characters were software engineers. Software engineers are more helpful, thoughtful, and smarter. They're weird, but not in the same way. I was just having a meeting with my information security team, and they're great but they're pretty weird—one used to be a dude, one's super small, one's hyper-smart—that's actually what it is. [...] I really feel like Mike Judge has never been to Burning Man, which is Silicon Valley [...] If you haven't been, you just don't get it. You could take the craziest L.A. party and multiply it by a thousand, and it doesn't even get close to what's in Silicon Valley. The show didn't have any of that."

In response to Musk's comments, actor T.J. Miller, who plays Erlich on the show, pointed out that "if the billionaire power players don’t get the joke, it’s because they’re not comfortable being satirized... I’m sorry, but you could tell everything was true. You guys do have bike meetings, motherfucker.” Other software engineers who also attended the same premiere stated that they felt like they were watching their "reflection".

In January 2017, in an audience interaction by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, Gates recounted the episode in Silicon Valley where the main protagonists try to pitch their product to different venture capitalists reminding him of his own experiences.

In conference talks, Douglas Crockford has called Silicon Valley "the best show ever made about programming". He goes on to cite the episode "Bachmanity Insanity" to illustrate the absurdity of the tabs versus spaces argument.

Accolades

Year	Ceremony	Category	Recipients	Result
2014	SXSW Audience Award	Episodic	Mike Judge	Won
	4th Critics' Choice Television Awards	Best Comedy Series	Silicon Valley	Nominated
		Best Actor in a Comedy Series	Thomas Middleditch	Nominated
		Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series	Christopher Evan Welch	Nominated
	66th Primetime Emmy Awards	Outstanding Comedy Series	Silicon Valley	Nominated
		Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series	Mike Judge for "Minimum Viable Product"	Nominated
		Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series	Alec Berg for "Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency"	Nominated
		Outstanding Art Direction for a Contemporary Program (Half-Hour or Less)	Richard Toyon (production designer), L.J. Houdyshell (art director) and Cynthia Slagter (set decorator) for "Articles of Incorporation"	Nominated
		Outstanding Main Title Design	Garson Yu (creative director) and Mehmet Kizilay (designer/lead animator)	Nominated
2015	72nd Golden Globe Awards	Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy	Silicon Valley	Nominated
	67th Writers Guild of America Awards	Comedy Series	Silicon Valley	Nominated
		New Series		Nominated
	19th Satellite Awards	Best Musical or Comedy Series		Nominated
		Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy Series	Thomas Middleditch	Nominated
	67th Directors Guild of America Awards	Outstanding Directing – Comedy Series	Mike Judge for "Minimum Viable Product"	Nominated
	5th Critics' Choice Television Awards	Best Comedy Series	Silicon Valley	Won
		Best Actor in a Comedy Series	Thomas Middleditch	Nominated
		Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series	T.J. Miller	Won
	1st Golden Maple Awards	Best Actress in a TV Series Broadcast in the U.S.	Amanda Crew	Won
	67th Primetime Emmy Awards	Outstanding Comedy Series	Silicon Valley	Nominated
		Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series	Mike Judge for "Sand Hill Shuffle"	Nominated
		Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series	Alec Berg for "Two Days of the Condor"	Nominated
		Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Comedy Series	Brian Merken for "Two Days of the Condor"	Won
			Tim Roche for "Sand Hill Shuffle"	Nominated
		Outstanding Art Direction for a Contemporary Program (Half hour or less)	Richard Toyon (production designer), L.J. Houdyshell (art director) and Jenny Mueller (set decorator) for "Sand Hill Shuffle"	Won
		Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series (Half-Hour) and Animation	Ben Patrick (production mixer), Elmo Ponsdomenech (re-recording Mixer) and Todd Beckett (re-recording mixer) for "Server Space"	Nominated
2016	73rd Golden Globe Awards	Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy	Silicon Valley	Nominated
	68th Directors Guild of America Awards	Outstanding Directing – Comedy Series	Mike Judge for "Binding Arbitration"	Nominated
	20th Satellite Awards	Best Musical or Comedy Series	Silicon Valley	Won
		Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy Series	Thomas Middleditch	Nominated
	68th Writers Guild of America Awards	Comedy Series	Silicon Valley	Nominated
		Episodic Comedy	Clay Tarver for "Sand Hill Shuffle"	Won
	2nd Golden Maple Awards	Best Actress in a TV Series Broadcast in the U.S.	Amanda Crew	Nominated
		Newcomer of the Year in a TV Series Broadcast in the U.S.	Amanda Crew	Won
	68th Primetime Emmy Awards	Outstanding Comedy Series	Silicon Valley	Nominated
		Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series	Thomas Middelditch for "The Empty Chair"	Nominated
		Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series	Mike Judge for "Founder Friendly"	Nominated
			Alec Berg for "Daily Active Users"	Nominated
		Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series	Dan O'Keefe for "Founder Friendly"	Nominated
			Alec Berg for "The Uptick"	Nominated
		Outstanding Production Design for a Narrative Program (Half Hour or Less)	Richard Toyon (production designer), Oana Bogdan (art director) and Jennifer Mueller (set decorator) for "Two in the Box", "Bachmanity Insanity" and "Daily Active Users"	Nominated
		Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Comedy Series	Tim Roche for "Daily Active Users"	Nominated
			Brian Merken for "The Uptick"	Nominated
		Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series (Half Hour) and Animation	Todd Becket (re-recording mixer), Elmo Ponsdomenech (re-recording mixer) and Ben Patrick (production mixer) for "Bachmanity Insanity"	Nominated
		Outstanding Casting for a Comedy Series	Jeanne McCarthy, Nicole Abellera Hallman and Leslie Woo	Nominated
	7th Critics' Choice Television Awards	Best Comedy Series	Silicon Valley	Won
		Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series	T.J. Miller	Nominated
	Television Critics Association Awards	Outstanding Achievement in Comedy	Silicon Valley	Nominated
2017	21st Satellite Awards	Best Musical or Comedy Series	Silicon Valley	Won
		Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy Series	Thomas Middleditch	Nominated
	69th Primetime Emmy Awards	Outstanding Comedy Series	Silicon Valley	Nominated
		Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series	Jamie Babbit for "Intellectual Property"	Nominated
			Mike Judge for "Server Error"	Nominated
		Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series	Alec Berg for "Success Failure"	Nominated
		Outstanding Casting for a Comedy Series	Jeanne McCarthy, Nicole Abellera Hallman, Leslie Woo	Nominated
		Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series (Half-Hour)	Tim Suhrstedt for "Success Failure"	Nominated
		Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Comedy Series	Brian Merken for "Server Error"	Nominated
			Tim Roche for "Success Failure"	Nominated
		Outstanding Production Design for a Narrative Program (Half Hour or Less)	Richard Toyon (production designer), Jaclyn Hauser (art director), Jennifer Mueller (set decorator) for "Success Failure", "Terms of Service", "Hooli-Con"	Nominated
		Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series (Half Hour) or Animation	Elmo Ponsdomenech (re-recording mixer), Todd Beckett (re-recording mixer), Ben Patrick (production mixer) for "Intellectual Property"	Nominated

Home media

The complete first season was released on DVD and Blu-ray on March 31, 2015; bonus features include audio commentaries and behind-the-scenes featurettes. The second season was released on DVD and Blu-ray on April 19, 2016; bonus features include six audio commentaries, a behind-the-scenes featurette, and deleted scenes. The third season was released on DVD and Blu-ray on April 11, 2017; bonus features include deleted scenes. The fourth season was released on DVD and Blu-ray on September 12, 2017; bonus features include deleted scenes.

Broadcast

In Australia, the series premiered on April 9, 2014, and aired on The Comedy Channel. In the United Kingdom, it premiered on July 16, 2014, and aired on Sky Atlantic, while also being available on internet view-on-demand services such as Blinkbox. In New Zealand, the series airs on Sky, on the SoHo channel.

External links

• Official website
• Silicon Valley at IMDb
• Template:Tv.com show
• In-universe websites: Pied Piper, Hooli, Code/Rag, Aviato, Homicide, BreamHall