[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
