[rating=7.00] “Patent Trolls”
As we teeter on the edge of glory, we also walk that familiar Silicon Valley line dividing stupidity and genius. The “previously on” gave a deceitful look at Dinesh’s mistake regarding his hacker girlfriend, and a reminder of Erlich’s shortcomings as he navigates in world in which he “makes an honest living”. As we march closer to his exit from the show, it gets harder to imagine it without him.
Richard found himself back in the doctor’s office this week to get an STD test after his quick fling. Unfortunately, he solely mentions his female companion, negating suspicions of Richard’s fluid sexuality. (For now, at least…though it does open up the possibility that Richard is dealing in a side venture.) Though the reaction to his onetime tryst from the doctor is nothing short of embarrassing, he does find out that he’s so stressed out he is literally shrinking.
The stress is of course compacted further as Richard deals with the lawsuit regarding intellectual property. The lawyer in question gained his fortune from purchasing the music rights to a song from the sixties that sounds similar to many popular/well-selling songs. He sues folks, and eventually gains royalties to their work. As the music side of things dried out, he’s now working in tech.
It makes sense. Humanity as a whole tends to have similar ideas, and depending on whether or not they have the intelligence or the means to bring those ideas to fruition, most of the time those ideas will just be fleeting, so the idea of intellectual property is tough to begin with. Richard having to deal with this is just yet another mountain of red tape in his quest to figure out what to do with his algorithm. By taking on the troll (and effectively making enemies out of all those who went behind his back to try to get out of), Richard is stepping forward to take control of his life for once. Our little programmer is all grown up!
While Richard finds the work around to get out of the lawsuit, Gilfoyle is still doing everything he can to keep Dinseh’s hacker girlfriend from taking over their servers and destroying them from the inside. Unfortunately, he gets distracted from his task as Jian Yang brings in a smart refrigerator that’s supposed to be un-hackable. Within a few hours, he gets through, proving that no matter what he does to safe guard the house, they’re still going to be vulnerable.
Erlich finally gets his wish as Laurie and Monica begrudgingly add him to their staff. In a hilarious sense of awareness by the showrunners, he mansplains the fact that women are underrepresented in the tech world, and that he (a male) will be able to lift them up in the sphere as he fights for their honor. The look on Laurie and Monica’s faces as they listen to his bullshit is hilarious and surely mirrors that of the audience. Of course women are underrepresented, we’re acutely aware of it, but as the two women move forward with their plans to take on the tech industry as female fronted, how often are they going to run into this same issue?
One of the best moments this week came from Jared who fronted himself as one “Ed Chambers,” a cocky supervisor who is mean to Jared and has the confidence to talk to everyone he needs to in order to make moves for the company. His ability to separate himself from Ed is frightening. Richard and Dinesh both balk at his talking about Ed as a real person, and one has to wonder when he’s finally going to snap. Soon, ideally, as it will be a major shake-up that we may need once Erlich is gone.
With Gavin still gone, Richard will not find the support he needs for the company until he’s finally succeeded in figuring out how to make the new internet happen. That’s when the money will come in, that’s when Gavin will come back and act as the face that Richard needs. We’re so close, and with the intellectual property suit closed (thanks to a well-placed lie), the only thing stopping them is (once again) themselves.
