[For Silicon Valley “Bachman’s Earning’s Over Ride” or any other recaps on Fetchland, assume the presence of possible spoilers.]

HBO Summary:
Bachman’s Earning’s Over Ride. Erlich struggles to come clean to Richard; Richard must make a difficult choice.

“Bachman’s Earning’s Over Ride” circles around confrontations and Erlich Bachman’s dignity. In fact, it’s a lot like a chain reaction with one character confronting another and then they confront another character and so forth all the way around until the issue gets resolved with closure in the end. This aspect of Silicon Valley gives it a refreshing stance in a world filled with cliffhanger TV. Each episode encapsulates a major challenge and then resolves it with little remainder and override. So, although the same Silicon Valley story keeps moving forward, it’s always fresh – which is more than one can say about the Vanity Fair Summit dinner salad Richard abandons in the episode.

We open on Erlich and Richard’s Bloomberg News interview about the Pied Piper launch. It’s taken off like a rocket with more than a hundred thousand installs in only the first ten days. Richard has trouble with the confrontational style of a public interview but the real confrontation is actually happening behind the scenes. It’s in the back of Bachman’s mind that he still hasn’t told Richard about his cashed-out shares and Monica calls to confront him about it. She insists Erlich tell Richard ASAP because she doesn’t want to be complicit in this lie. But Erlich’s all about attending the Vanity Fair Summit dinner that night. Funny thing is, Richard doesn’t care about the photo shoots and parties. He’d rather Erlich was the face of the company. So, this too is part of Bachman’s motivation to keeping the secret hidden.

Next Jared enters the incubator wearing a tailor-made Pied Piper varsity jacket. As Dinesh and Gilfoyle leave to get coffee they get Jared to give them the heinous jacket. Then at the coffee shop Gilfoyle wears it to embarrass Dinesh, saying he’s a suicide bomber of humiliation, happy to go down as long as Dinesh goes with him. It backfires, though when coffee shops peeps are impressed by his Pied Piper jacket. It’s the hot new company! Everybody’s talking about it! So, then Gilfoyle pivots to pretend he doesn’t know Dinesh, causing him further humiliation.

Next we see Jared and Richard interview a guy for the Pied Piper head of PR. He’s the confrontational one and asks if everything at the company is cool. He saw a paper on Laurie’s desk the day before that showed a big chunk of Pied Piper stock being sold. It made the potential PR guy wonder because an insider selling a load of stock right before the big launch is cause for alarm. Richard then assumes the seller was Monica because she was the only one who didn’t like the Beta test. He confronts her so she tells him the truth about Bachman’s selloff. So, In the BIG confrontation Richard confronts Erlich and says he’s going to have to issue a press release now because the ten percent sale sends a message to Silicon Valley that there’s something funky at Pied Piper. Bachman’s bummed because now nobody will ever take him seriously again. When Richard talks to Dinesh and Gilfoyle about it they, surprisingly, don’t a hundred percent agree with Richard. So, he writes the press release but says he won’t publish unless word gets out on the street about Bachman’s selloff.

Pissy Richard then confronts Erlich with a “last rent check” and says they’ll be moving out of the incubator. He also replaces Bachman’s board position, promoting Jared. This sends Jared into a tailspin of mixed emotion. He’s a salad spinner of sensitivity. Still, even with all this shaming… Richard lets Bachman attend the Vanity Fair Summit dinner later that night. When Richard’s checking in for it he finds out Erlich attempted to sell only half his shares but Laurie prevented this and, using Pied Piper contractual particulars, forced him to sell them all. Richard then sees Laurie at the Summit dinner and finds out she also fucked Bachman thanks to a detail in the contract that allowed her to set her own price for the shares. So, although Erlich was going to get five million for half the shares from the original buyer, Laurie found out exactly what Erlich owed for his debts and paid him only that much for all of his shares. Thus, Bachman’s completely broke now.

Meanwhile Erlich gets a voicemail from the tech blog he half owns saying they heard rumors about “serious ugliness” at Pied Piper. So, to protect the company he outs himself on the blog as the “dumbest guy in tech” and in the process doubles down on earning Richard’s empathy. So, in the end Richard gives Erlich the still-open job as head of PR. As his first order of business in PR, Bachman calls his tech blog to tell them Hooli’s now selling Pied Piper’s app in their online store, a big win for the company. But in the process Erlich finds out that the “rumors” about ugliness at Pied Piper were actually just about Jared’s jackets. He’d outed himself over nothing.

Bachman makes a circle from indignity to dignity and back again in this episode as a result of all the confrontations he’s forced to face for his legendary bad behavior. “Bachman’s Earning’s Over Ride” works like a cleansing ritual for his character and makes us wonder, is Erlich Bachman the Jamie Lannister of Silicon Valley? Nobody knows if he’s a villain or a hero but it certainly seems like at the very least he’s on the Hero’s Journey. Maybe he’s on a path from villain to hero, as many theorists suggest about Jamie’s narrative arc. Either way, he’s a helluva lotta fun to watch along the way.

–Katherine Recap

[For Silicon Valley “To Build a Better Beta” or any other recaps on Fetchland, assume the presence of possible spoilers.]

HBO Summary:
To Build a Better Beta. Dinesh worries about his lack of friends; Monica considers how to deliver criticism.

“Build a Better Beta” is all about trust issues and feedback. It asks questions about how important both are; and the answers, while mixed, ring true for all the characters. The episode opens with Richard and Dinesh debating whether to launch the Pied Piper Beta. Dinesh wants to because it’ll ease the process of debugging for him if other people (Beta testers) provide feedback. Richard, always Mr. Cautious, says it’s not ready. But then he finds out Gilfoyle’s coder girlfriend already checked it out and thinks the Beta’s rad as-is. So, they send it out for a Beta test among people they know and trust. Thus, issues about trust abound. Gilfoyle trusts no one (the girlfriend thing was “just a transaction”) and thus offers his Beta invite codes to the rest of the team while, unsurprisingly, Jared easily has too many trusted friends to invite and ends up using Gilfoyle’s codes as well as his own.

Speaking of trust issues, thanks to Jared’s audit, Erlich finds out Big Head’s business manager embezzled Bachmanity money, supposedly allocating 70% for taxes and then moving it to pay his other clients. Turns out this is likely the “real reason” why they went broke so quickly. Although, at the rate they were burning through Big Head’s settlement, Bachmanity likely wouldn’t have lasted much longer. But there’s certainly no way to become profitable if you’re bleeding internally at a 70% rate. When confronted, the business manager admits he doesn’t actually have the money anymore and thus can’t really pay them back. This arouses the Erlich ire but only apologies from dumber-every-frickin-minute, Big Head.

EndFrame loses their best engineers

The same sort of sham permeates the Hooli offices where the EndFrame team finds out through the grapevine that Pied Piper is already Beta testing. Because their team’s nowhere near ready to Beta test their compression app, the EndFrame engineers tell nobody this news. But Gavin finds out anyway because he surreptitiously reads “private” employee emails. Meanwhile Pied Piper gets loads of positive feedback from everybody in the Beta test except Monica, who’s dissatisfied but also insistent with Richard that her opinion isn’t as important as all the others. As the Pied Piper team then reviews who the other Beta testers are, they discover there’s a spy somehow infiltrating from the Hooli offices (Gavin) looking in on their Beta. Gavin brings the wonders of the Pied Piper Beta to the EndFrame and demands they deliver an even better version of it faster than PP can get theirs out to the public. The EndFrame engineers immediately realize it’s going to be an impossible project to catch up to PP; they just don’t have the goods. Meanwhile the Pied Piper team drops a giant poop emoji bomb into the spying Hooli account, destroying both Gavin’s personal laptop and phone. Afterward during the backlash from this confrontation and Gavin’s demands, the best EndFrame engineers quit on Gavin.

In the next scene Erlich and Big Head go to the District Attorney with a plan to sue their embezzling business manager. But instead of a case, they get a lecture series from the DA about how they’ll never get a sympathetic jury, being spoiled, rich, tech billionaires. Just give up is the basic feedback. To get their money, they’d have to legally seize it from the business manager’s other clients, who are essentially either victims themselves or innocent small business owners. As Bachman and Big Head leave, the DA tells Erlich he better pay all those vendor bills for his party or he can expect to be prosecuted by the DA office. Right after this he gets a call from the tech blog Bachmanity bought (in their brief heyday) because they’re doing a story on Erlich neglecting to pay the bills for their launch party. He’s getting smeared from all sides. Thus, Erlich scrapes the bottom of the barrel and makes a deal with Laurie for his Pied Piper shares so that he can pay those bills and clear his (and the Bachmanity) name. It’s the first time we’re seeing Erlich really respond to feedback with relevant behavior, almost as if he has a conscience. Is this character growth or merely a coverup? It’s hard to say until we see what Erlich does next but this could represent a potential shift away from his usual megalomania.

Despite her reservations about the Beta, Monica tells Richard to believe in it. There are always some people who just don’t get even the most successful apps, she says with humility. Unfortunately, it just so happens that this time the one who doesn’t get it is Richard’s biggest fan. Still, after their meeting with Laurie, the Pied Piper team decides to launch the Beta to the public and no longer just their select list of trusted friends. As they launch the Beta Monica says she’s “never been more excited to be proven wrong,” and we’re impressed with how much she means it. That girl’s a unicorn and hopefully Richard will soon realize how lucky he is to have her humble, helpful support.

Then Erlich gets a call from the Bachmanity tech blog saying they won’t do the story on Bachmanity’s unpaid bills after all because the party vendors have reportedly been paid now. He sadly watches the Beta launch knowing that he’s no longer able to benefit from the one undertaking he truly cared about. In fact, we see in Bachman’s face how much his heart was at stake with Pied Piper and now appears to be breaking at the loss.

Bachmanity feeling the feedbacklash

Feedback really paid off for Richard and worked a catalyst for his confidence and courage to put Pied Piper out in the world. At the same time, feedback was a bitch for Bachman in this episode. Essentially, just as Pied Piper launches like a rocket into a potentially billion-dollar company, he’s lost his entire stake in it. Oblivious Richard pats broken-hearted Erlich on the shoulder as they stand side-by-side to watch the launch, “We did it. You and me, man, forever,” Richard says. But, thanks to his Bachmanity fountain of negative feedback, Erlich isn’t really feeling buddy-buddy with anyone anymore… Least of all himself. So, it’s a bittersweet launch and we’re excited to see the backlash next week as Gavin gets wind that he’s already lost the first battle of the compression application war. It’s unlikely he can get that $250 million back… but can he keep the war waging?

–Katherine Recap

[For Silicon Valley “Bachmanity Insanity” or any other recaps on Fetchland, assume the presence of possible spoilers.]

HBO Summary:
Bachmanity Insanity. Richard’s new relationship is threatened by neuroses; Dinesh falls for a foreign coworker.

After a first half of a season with zero smooch factor, “Bachmanity Insanity” revolves around romantic relationships. This makes sense given that Bachman’s name dominates the episode title and he’s the alleged “king of romance” from way back. Also, our heroes have been completely focused on saving Pied Piper for the first five episodes and now they’ve finally got it nailed down. So, it’s the perfect time for some hot action. Ironically, everybody’s getting in on it for this episode although some of the relationships are painfully platonic. Ok, let’s admit it, nearly all of them fit that category even by episode’s end. The only exception turns out to be Jared, who they all find out easily gets laid on the regular, even while living in the incubator’s unfinished garage. The relationships in “Bachmanity Insanity” are potentially romantic for Richard, Jared, and Dinesh respectively. But even the mess between Bachman and Big Head looks like a marriage according to their contract, the main reason Big head’s business manager advised him not to sign it.

Spaces – Tabs – Spaces – Tabs – Spaces – Tabs

The episode opens as Richard gets a girl’s number. He starts to date her (Winnie) and it turns out she’s a fellow coder who works at Facebook. Winnie sleeps over after their first date and Richard’s thrilled about it even if he did spend the entire night sleeping in his jeans. After having breakfast with Richard she hangs out in the living room with Dinesh and Gilfoyle. She shows them some of her work and they find out that when Winnie codes she uses spaces rather than tabs. They know this nixes anything that could happen between Winnie and Richard going forward because he’s insistent that tabs users are superior to spaces users. Dinesh and Gilfoyle call Richard a “formatting nazi” about tabs. So Winnie confronts Richard about it at dinner that night. Nervous, he immediately freaks out and can’t make a sensible sentence for the remainder of their meal together. Later, coding side by side on the couch, he’s visibly flustered by Winnie’s use of the space bar. Richard breathes heavy and tries to restrain himself but finally can’t help it and pushes Winnie’s tab. Then they hash it out in the epic final battle between spaces and tabs. Turns out Richard really just can’t be with her because he simply can’t abide anyone who uses spaces. We all have our limitations and, although exceptionally gifted at coding, Richard’s also exceptionally limited when it comes to the ladies.

Meanwhile Dinesh flirts with Pied Piper’s Estonian employee, Elisabet and he’s about to find out his limitations are also lady-centric. Elisabet is one of the foreign coders they hired at the end of the last episode to save money. So, Dinesh sees her over the video chat they use with these employees. The two of them tease and trifle every day so that Dinesh falls hard for Elisabet. Thanks to Gilfoyle’s snark Dinesh then realizes he can’t really see Elisabet that well over the crappy Estonian video stream that connects them. Thus he upgrades their streaming service so he can get a better picture. Trouble is, this ends up biting him back when Elisabet gets a crystalline view of Dinesh and is so disappointed she suddenly starts talking about how she has a husband. It’s sort of on him, though because Dinesh set her expectations high saying his friends call him the “Pakistani Denzel”. Alas, there’s no more flirting in the forecast for our dear, exaggerator Dinesh. Sigh.

Bachman spends the episode planning the “Bachmanity Insanity” launch party and rents out Alcatraz to do so. Funny thing about Erlich, he rents a famous place only to then pay a fortune to have it transformed to look like anything other than what it is, finally settling on Hawaii. While Bachman’s making the plan to transform Alcatraz into a luau space that was never a prison, Big Head approaches him. Big Head’s worried that the blogger he told about Gavin’s “scrubbing the Internet” will rat him out and then Gavin can take Big Head for all the settlement money. When he got the twenty million dollars he’d signed a tight NDA; and telling the blogger that story was definitely a violation of the NDA. Because the deal they have is classified as a “General Partnership” that basically means Big head and Bachman are married, a dangerous proposition. It’s particularly dangerous in the final moments of the episode when we find out that thanks to their outrageous spending, Big Head and Bachman are now completely broke. Bachmanity is over just as it begins. This is perfect because it’s a Hawaiian luau party and thus they say “Aloha” which means both hello and goodbye.

“Aloha”

A funny subplot of the episode reveals that Jared turns out to be the actual Pied Piper “Player”, even though Erlich holds that title officially and likely won’t ever let it go. But this honestly makes sense, character-wise. Jared’s the kind and considerate one… and he’s also the tallest by a large margin. We here at Fetchland know a little bit about what women want and these are three biggies on most lists out there. The party Bachman throws turns out to be a great allegory for the relationships explored in the episode. It’s a flash in the pan that seems impressive initially but can’t hold up for very long because the foundation is a joke. Luckily, in this case it all really is jokes and funny ones too. We can’t wait to see what happens next and if Big Head will end up moving into the incubator now that he’s broke and basically Bachman’s wife. Lucky for Pied Piper that they weren’t part of the “Bachmanity Insanity” deal and thus remain unscathed. We predict a launch for their platform soon… maybe even in the next episode. After all, remaining girlfriend-free, what else have they got to do?

–Katherine Recap