Silicon Valley recap: ‘Reorientation’

This week’s Silicon Valley has Richard adjusting to inspiring the new team.

Richard just can’t seem to catch a break, and it doesn’t help that his anxious demeanor gets in the way of his progress. After the events of last week, Pied Piper officially has a working team, inclusive of Optimoji and Sliceline employees.

Since one half doesn’t know the other half, it presents problems within the office as Richard tries to adjust policies according to everyone’s needs. However, Richard is not able to speak to the employees without vomiting, fainting, or running into a glass window. His need to be authoritative gets the best of him as he struggles to take on the role of a leader.

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Trying to keep everything together, as always, is Jared who plans an employee orientation to get everyone on the same page. Richard doesn’t feel this is necessary and rejects the idea, hoping everyone will fall in line on their own.

This doesn’t bode well for Richard because the employees begin listing their demands and he can’t seem to say no to anyone. Not only does this cause friction amongst the already split employees, but when Richard allows for dogs to be brought into work, it results in absolute chaos.

Richard tries to mediate the situation and tries to inspire the employees and tells them they are free to leave if they’d like–he’ll even throw in a severance package. The majority of them leave which pushes Richard to the brink and he ends up coding the entire thing on his own.

Richard has a complete breakdown as he stays up for 48 hours working nonstop on the code for his new internet — while Jared manages to bring back some of the employees that had left. When exhaustion overwhelms him, he falls right through the glass window and ends up in the hospital.

While Richard experienced his growing pains as a leader for Pied Piper, Dinesh and Gilfoyle had a battle of their own going on. Dinesh ordered a Tesla and is more than happy to brag about it nonstop — a point Gilfoyle gets annoyed with.

In retaliation, Gilfoyle buys a Mad Max-esque electric bike to compete with Dinesh in the race to get to work first. Things don’t end well for the poor Tesla as Dinesh goes into Insane mode to race with Gilfoyle and ends up crashing it.

All the while, Jian Yang spent the episode trying to take over Erlich’s estate. He gets a fake death certificate and cremates a dead pig to “prove” Erlich is dead. However, while in court, the judge informs him that she can approve for him to take over but Jian Yang would have to pay all of Erlich’s debts.

After finding inspiration from a conversation with Dinesh, Jian Yang decides to go for it. While Jian Yang may now be the owner of anything Erlich ever owned, the situation puts Dinesh, Gilfoyle, and Richard out on the street. Now that Jian Yang owns the incubator, he changes the locks and refuses to let them in.

Next: Westworld trailer: Easter eggs

And let’s not forget the whole Galvin Benson storyline, who struggled to find a design for his box that included his lavish signature. He even turned down Banksy. Crazy, right?

Silicon Valley returns next week Sunday, April 8th on HBO at 10 P.M EST!

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