While two of the other subplots work fine as amusing distractions (Gilfoyle being the illegal immigrant instead of Dinesh isn’t enough of a twist for such an old saw story, but the arc’s total running time is shorter than a commercial break; T.J. Miller tripping balls is just inherently funny, if largely pointless), the truly distracting one involves Peter Gregory discovering Burger King. There’s an efficiency here that makes sense: we need to see Peter’s brilliance in action instead of just hear people talking about it all the time, and the monologue breaking down how BK led him to a smart investment proves just that. Also: making a show ain’t cheap. Paying the bills with product placement is something you have to do sometimes*, but considering this is HBO, maybe the whole thing could have been avoided entirely if the cast of Game of Thrones just went without a crafts service table for an hour.
*Mike Judge is no stranger to fast food playing a big role in his projects, as Idiocracy plugged Carl’s Jr. constantly. The difference is that Idiocracy was able to have its Carl’s Jr. money and laugh at it too, by using the franchises’ inclusion in the film as an example of invasive corporate social control. There’s no such thumbing the nose at Burger King here, and the image that’s stuck out in my mind is that final shot of the two guys Peter saves with his investment, hungrily chowing down on some BK like they hadn’t eaten in a week.
It’s a plotline that gets by more on the strength of the actor carrying it than the actual material itself (it is great that Christopher Evan Welch gets something of a showcase for himself finally), which is pretty much the running theme throughout “Articles of Incorporation.” Well, that, and the much more interesting idea of the guys paying the price for adopting personalities that aren’t their own. Richard pretending to be a big shot gets, then loses him the name Pied Piper, but he learns to modulate the persona enough with his own personality to convince Arnold to sell him the name back. Erlich thinks he can be the next Gavin Belson, but his drug trip (which links into the ridiculous hype video for Nucleus that starts the episode) shows that being a tech guru requires more than just a bag of goldcap magic mushrooms. Even Gilfoyle’s dedication to being an outlier in society ties into this running thread, what with the Department of Immigration not really caring if you call yourself a “citizen of the world.” Even if the stories on their own are a little underwhelming, at least they’re all of a piece.
“Articles of Incorporation” is certainly the weakest of the three episodes so far, more amusing than outright hilarious, and more dependent on clichés than one would expect, given the more surprising previous two episodes. Then again, just because this is a cable show doesn’t mean Silicon Valley needs to be rewriting the rules of comedy storytelling. It’s okay if the show keeps delving into familiar story structures, so long as it puts enough of its on spin on familiar tropes to make them feel new. “Articles of Incorporation” didn’t have quite enough of that tonight, but a cast this strong can sell me on a whole lot less.
- Stray Thoughts
-“Time is a sphere,” says Erlich, which no doubt instantly led to someone instantly creating a True Detective Season 2 meme with T.J. Miller and Matthew McConaughey.
-Despite my bias towards anything Martin Starr or Kumail Nanjiani have to say, Zach Woods is the real MVP of the night, as Jared has the OSX Lion’s share of great lines tonight. The whole episode could have just been Jared pitching terrible backup names for the company and I would have been satisfied.
-Hooli is still hard at work on their Pied Piper clone, but it’s okay because…reasons. Richard seems confident the older version of the algorithm he gave them is just a shade of what he’s got now, and we’ll just have to take his word for it. Much as the show’s satire makes great use of everyone fighting over control of a thing that no one really understands, it makes writing around that thing much easier when you don’t have to define what it is.
