[rating=8.00] “White Hat/Black Hat”
Richard and the guys are riding on a high after successfully getting a bid for a contract with Intersite. The only thing standing in their way is a “bake off” with EndFrame, a small obstacle considering Pied Piper is so much more sophisticated and thought out than EndFrame’s platform. Unfortunately, knowing the guys and the cadence of the show, there’s a 100% chance that one of their own will fuck everything up before they can seal the deal.
As Richard gets ready for the upcoming bake off, Hanneman drops by to congratulate their effort. He believes that it was his threat of walking that inspired Richard to finally get it together and take care of business. In an effort to rebuild their relationship, Hanneman brings by a giant bottle of tequila, Tres Comas, his own brand. Richard is happy (or well, accepting) to have Hanneman back on board and asks for their next check so he can pay the engineers. Hanneman refuses, explaining he’s only going to give them money if they win the bake-off.
As the house buzzes with anticipation over the upcoming upload, Richard notices that Seth Lee, EndFrame’s chief security officer has updated his LinkedIn profile to unemployed. Gilfoyle and Dinesh find it hilarious, he was fired because the guys “hacked in” to EndFrame’s private information. In a throwback to last year’s jerk math episode, they begin going back and forth using math to determine whether or not Seth is still an “piece of shit” now that he’s been fired. Richard feels guilty though, it wasn’t Seth’s fault. His guilt gets the best of him and he makes an appointment to meet with Seth to talk about the whole debacle.
It’s infuriating to watch Richard bring himself down. Not only did he give EndFrame everything they needed to get their platform off the ground, but last week he even pointed out redundancies in their algorithm that would have kept them from firing at full capacity. Now with this upcoming meeting, one can’t help but hold onto the sinking feeling that he will find a way to fuck up the whole Intersite deal simply because he feels bad for the competition. Richard doesn’t have the cutthroat attitude a CEO needs in the competitive Silicon Valley work force. It might (will) be his undoing in the end.
Richard fucks up. He immediately tells Seth Lee the truth, which causes him to fly off the handle and call Gilfoyle to threaten Pied Piper. “You’ve just fucked with the wrong hacker!” He fires, walking away. It’s a great scene as the two were yards away from a kid’s birthday party. In an effort to quell the parents’ anger, Richard then manages to make himself sound like a pedophile and asshole before he concedes and heads home. Gilfoyle and Dinesh are pissed, but not worried. Seth Lee is a programmer just like them, and they assure Richard that he’s nothing but talk. He just needs a few days to calm down. Richard again asserts his fears, repeating Seth’s rant in front of a mother and her daughter, again coming off as a pedophile as he attempts to apologize.
In an attempt to keep the peace, Richard reaches out to Seth again. Seth has calmed down, and apologizes for his threats. He asks Richard to apologize to Gilfoyle, who assures Seth that it wasn’t a big deal. Gilfoyle didn’t really care. Ouch. Seth again flies off the handle, and again threatens the upcoming upload with Intersite. As the day comes around, Richard is on edge. Gilfoyle and Dinesh assure him that they’ve done everything possible to stop potential hacking, and the upload begins.
Everything is going really well, and in the middle of the action Hanneman shows up to celebrate. But, Richard can’t take it anymore. He berates Hanneman in front of everyone, explaining that once they close the deal he plans to buy Hanneman out and become self-sufficient. Hurt, Hanneman asks them to come outside where he shows them to brand new car (with butterfly opening doors) that he bought himself to celebrate the deal and prove he wasn’t a total dick. “You bought yourself a gift to prove you weren’t an asshole?”
As the gang stands silently hating Hanneman, Richard receives a call. Something has gone wrong with the upload and premium content is rapidly getting deleted from Intersite’s man server. Seth has hacked in. Everyone is locked out from their keyboards, unable to stop the hack. While everyone freaks out, Hanneman stands in the corner near his giant bottle of Tres Comas…that’s sitting on the main computer’s delete button. He picks up the bottle, the hack stops. Just to be sure, he puts it down again. Hanneman effectively fucks everything up for everyone involved. At least it wasn’t Richard this time?
The next day Monica, Richard, and Erlich sit across from a stone faced Molly. They do their best to spin it, explaining that EndFrame wouldn’t have been able to delete 9,000 hours of premium content that quickly…She asks them to leave. In a last ditch effort to save face, Erlich to stops to compliment the website, “I would be remise if I didn’t tell you your sites are some of my prime destinations.” “Get out!” Well alright.
Honestly, there’s no way the guys can succeed. The primary humor of the series comes from the fact that they are constantly fucking up. If they were to succeed and get rich, it would be a completely different show. Now, who’s to say that it wouldn’t make for good humor? Realistically it could easily evolve as the characters do, but this being the second season it just doesn’t feel like they’re there yet. While it gets old seeing them fail time after time, they always manage to find humor in the failure. It’s a double edged sword really. It’s unclear where they can go from here with Pied Piper, but with two episodes left in this season they’ve got plenty of time to fuck themselves out of a couple million here and a couple million there.
In Other News…
Erlich and Jin Yang have been working on an app that they want to pitch to Monica. As she relaxes outside of work smoking a secret cigarette, Jin Yang and Erlich surprise her. While she finishes her cigarette, Jin Yang and Erlich head inside to get ready for the pitch. As they wait, Jin Yang mistakenly gives Monica up to an assistant who is appalled at the idea of her smoking. Erlich does his best to talk his way out of it, knowing the general feeling towards smoking in California is negative.
Monica unsurprisingly gets in trouble for smoking. She’s even told that smoking is worse than heroin because, “No one ever died from secondhand heroin” according to Laurie. But, Erlich tried to stand up for her so she owes him one. The app that Jin Yang proposed can possibly become a breeding ground for pedophiles, so Monica tells Erlich he’s going to have to adjust it before she can pitch it to Laurie. Erlich takes the note, and comes back with an app that instead targets smokers, “Smokation” something Laurie can get behind. He even feeds her original assertion about smoking being worse than heroin, throwing Monica under the bus in the process. It seems that the app will be approved for production, and to celebrate Jin Yang pulls a cigarette out of Monica’s purse for a “celebration smoke,” infuriating Laurie, and ensuring the death of their app.
Over at Hooli Gavin is still effectively fucked. After Big Head failed to deliver a usable product he’s forced to do his best to quell the excitement of Nucleus. It’s a tough sell, as he’s been plugging it as the next big thing for months. In an effort to at least take the heat off himself, he rehires Bannercheck to run all of Nucleus, promising him exclusive rights to the idea of Nucleus in general. Bannercheck accepts, excited to be a part of Hooli history.
Bannercheck, now in charge of Nucleus, meets with the team to see where they are production wise. The team is obviously defeated, there’s no way they will make their deadlines. Bannercheck, still thinking positive, asks for reports from every department. Instead they show him a beta version of Nucleus on a Hooli phone. In the resulting scene, Gavin is helping build houses to keep his philanthropy image up. He’s interrupted by his team who lets him know that Bannercheck has quit, leaving 11 minutes after arriving to his first day back at work. They then look at the bright side: Gavin will again have full responsibility for Nucleus.
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