[snapetom]

I hear you. After the first season, the tech and industry was just a backdrop, and I couldn't get into because the rest of it was pretty weak.

I had the same feeling but the opposite outcome with Silicon Valley. Growing up in Palo Alto, it took me a while to figure out if I was enjoying this show because it was genuinely funny or if it was just because it hit the absurdity of the time and place so well.

[vidarh]

I've only visited Palo Alto, but I recognised way too many aspects of that series from various VC startups. Up to and including the startup I was apart of that had offices in a bedroom in a house in Atherton for a while, and the craziness around Techcrunch (which was incidentally started out of the bedroom next to "ours" in that house in Atherton).

[snapetom]

There is a scene in the first season where they're all on a bus and Gilfoyle sees a middle aged woman on a bike waiting for a light. The soliloquy was so random and not even funny, but fit so well. That woman was basically every middle aged woman neighbor of mine.

[rkomorn]

I didn't like SV (the show) because it made me feel like I was going to work on Sunday night.

I guess that's to its credit: it nailed the culture.

[clydethefrog]

I remember the writers of SV actually somehow had to tone down the ridiculousness of the SV setting. See this quote from The New Yorker [0]:

>“His [Teller, working for Google] message was, ‘We don’t do stupid things here. We do things that actually are going to change the world, whether you choose to make fun of that or not.’

>Teller ended the meeting by standing up in a huff, but his attempt at a dramatic exit was marred by the fact that he was wearing Rollerblades. He wobbled to the door in silence. “Then there was this awkward moment of him fumbling with his I.D. badge, trying to get the door to open,” Kemper said. “It felt like it lasted an hour. We were all trying not to laugh. Even while it was happening, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: Can we use this?” In the end, the joke was deemed “too hacky to use on the show.”

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-silicon-v...

[snapetom]

I not only 100% believe this, but I'm not sure I'd be able to muster a snicker at it due to all the similarly ridiculous things I've experienced.