[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
