Rating: 9/10

After finishing 6 seasons in 6 days,(I know it’s unhealthy, stop bothering me) here I am, with a gaping hole in my heart and a phone in my hand, to write about the show that just replaced Hannibal as my  #1 favourite show - Silicon Valley. Creators of the show Alec Berg and Mike Judge have done an outstanding job with this Emmy-nominated satire, which portrays the brash realities of a world where net worth and statistics determine your identity, infused with a whole lot of low-brow and sardonic humour.

Silicon Valley follows the journey of ”Pied Piper”, a start-up tech company working on developing a lossless, middle-out compression system (which you'll hear atleast a billion times throughout the show) with the help of a groundbreaking algorithm created by genius but unlucky coder Richard Hendricks, and its uphill battle against major corporations in the valley, especially "Hooli", led by equally unlucky antagonist Gavin Belson. Richard, along with Dinesh Chugtai and Bertram Gilfoyle, creates an algorithm which gets a Weissman score of 2.89, the highest ever recorded, which in turn earns him a lot of competitors and admirers simultaneously making Pied Piper the next big thing in town.

You might be drawing a parallel to ”The Big Bang Theory” upon hearing the words ’tech’ and ’genius’ and to that I say: Don’t. Even. Silicon Valley is a masterpiece and you’ll know why soon enough.

The characters in Silicon Valley are fleshed out extremely well, with each having depth and a purpose of their own. One of the hardest things I've had to do after watching the show is settle on a favourite character- because they're all amazing and I've already watched "Best of" compilations about each of them on YouTube. Even the villain. I loved the constant bickering between Dinesh and Gilfoyle, the duo of Jin Yang and Erlich who are ready to snap each others throats at any given moment, the brilliant and lovable Jared Dunn who leaves his job at Hooli to join Pied Piper and is willing to do anything for the best interests of the company. This show has one of the best casts ever in a sitcom, their cogent acting brings the characters to life- especially TJ Miller's rendition of Erlich as a wannabe Steve Jobs/stoner and Thomas Middleditch who perfectly balances shy, awkward geek and arrogant CEO blinded by power to play Richard.

One of my favourite things about the show is how it parodies different aspects of the tech world, such as the empty business rhetoric "We want to make the world a better place" or the stereotypical portrayal of geeks in media, with Gavin Belson saying, "It's weird. They always travel in groups of five. These programmers, there's always a tall, skinny white guy; short, skinny Asian guy; fat guy with a ponytail; some guy with crazy facial hair; and then an East Indian guy. It's like they trade guys until they all have the right group.". It also sheds light on treatment of women in the tech world, with scenes that gained a lot of traction– one of them where self-proclaimed CEO of Pied Piper, Erlich Bachman mansplains mansplaining to his female associates Monica Hall and Laurie Bream. The writing is impeccable, and each joke is crafted flawlessly with the right amount of punch. Since Silicon Valley is about geeks, the show gained an audience who are attuned to minutiae- so to save themselves from the wrath that is Reddit, the producers had over two hundred consultants come in to work the edges out. The "Weissman Score" was a fictional metric designed solely for the series, but it was so efficient that it could be used in real life and now they've introduced it into undergraduate curriculum at colleges. Even Bill Gates is a huge fan of the show, and he called it realistic enough to be a documentary. There is no incorporation of any gratuitous romance-arcs either, unlike other shows, which I found refreshing. No laugh tracks or overused gags either, which is definitely a plus point. I should warn you though, this show pretty immersive so you won't be able to multitask while it's playing- just in case you were thinking about giving it a try while getting that assignment done on the side. And if you're someone who has commitment issues because of how HIMYM, Game of Thrones and Dexter did you wrong with their absolutely vile endings, I can assure you that Silicon Valley is not like those other shows, it's different with the best, most twisted ending possible- it's basically "suffering from success" on video and you'll know when you see it.

Enough about why the show is so great, let's talk about its drawbacks. Even though the storyline is great, each season follows a repetitive pattern in which Richard is down on his luck, faces moment of conflict where he has to choose between right or wrong, ends up being doing the righteous thing-risking losing everything and all of a sudden some Deus Ex Machina saves the day. TJ Miller leaves after the fourth season, and while the show is certainly strong enough to hold its own despite that-you'll miss Erlich's juvenile jokes, dramatic dialogue and stupid hair.

My concluding remark is that Silicon Valley is a show that has managed to make me laugh audibly, something that I never got from a lot of other sitcoms. The chaotic, piquant 30 minute episodes will be worth your while, and you might just learn something about computers with all the technical jargon that's thrown around frequently in the show. It has great rewatch value as well- which goes to show that this show's existence truly makes the world a better place.