Silicon Valley - The Uptick - Review: "Unexpected Buyer"

Silicon Valley Season 3 Episode Guide
3.01 "Founder Friendly" - Review!
3.02 "Two in the Box" - Review!
3.03 "Meinertzhagen's Haversack" - Review!
3.04 "Maleant Data Systems Solutions" - Review!
3.05 "The Empty Chair" - Review!
3.06 "Bachmanity Insanity" - Review!
3.07 "To Build a Better Beta" - Review!
3.08 "Bachman's Earning's Over-Ride" - Review!
3.09 "Daily Active Users" - Review!
3.10 "The Uptick" - Review!

Silicon Valley 3.10: The Uptick - Review:
Directed & Written by Alec Berg

And so we managed to end on a really effective note for Silicon Valley this season, without a real cliffhanger and without the team ending the season in a really bad place. It could have been easy to have Gavin outbid Big Head and Elrich and leave Richard in a new compromising position as having to work under his rival, but thankfully Big Head and Elrich were able to save Pied Piper in the end, outbidding Gavin by a dollar.

The main bulk of the episode was pretty good stuff as usual. Gavin brought in an elephant to make a point during a board meeting but the elephant then had to die whilst on Hooli Campus. He then fired his assistant for refusing to go along with his plan to bury the elephant without telling anyone, and in response Patrice went to C.J. Cantwell in order to publish the story on Code/Rag which is also in part half owned by Big Head and Erlich through their Bachmanity partnership. And then Gavin finds himself in the position to buy both Code/Rag and Pied Piper, effectively getting his revenge on Richard and eliminating his team in one swoop.

It wouldn't be a Silicon Valley episode if Richard didn't have problems of his own though and it didn't take long for him to find out about Jared's clickfarm that he established last episode in secret to keep a ready stream of daily active users. Dinesh and Gilfoyle have come up with a situation to try and prevent this from leaking to the public and have decided to make software that would prevent clickfarm usage from being detected, saving their skin, because if the investors know that Pied Piper faked its numbers then they would be no longer interested in the company. This is something that Erlich is furious about when he learns the truth during a board meeting with the interested party of Coleman Blair Partners, which he's helped set up after spreading positive news throughout the neighborhood. It turns out that Richard doesn't want to be a part of fraud, as advised by Jared, effectively undoing all of Erlich's newly generated praise.

Laurie's response is to put the system up for sale with the highest bidder getting Pied Piper, which leads us to the end of the series when Erlich and Big Head step in to save Richard's skin. We also learnt that Monica has been fired for standing against Laurie and has decided to join the team, who has a brand new project in the video chat app that Dinesh was working on. Their chat app might actually be better than what Hooli is working on after all, meaning that not only have they managed to prevent Gavin from buying out Pied Piper but they've also managed to get one over him again. It's an effective way to end the episode and it was great seeing everything play out in a fairly unpredictable and intriguing way.

I loved the various gags that this episode gave us with the best one of all probably being the whole elephant in the room one that we got from Gavin. It was a nice little moment that really worked and has proven that this show can keep coming up with some excellent moments of humour, three seasons in. But the problem is now that we'll have to wait another year to see what happens next, and I hope that the writers can keep up the overall consistency of the series going forward because Season 3 I think it's fair to say, overall, really great.

I'd love to know what you thought of Season 3 as a whole in the comments below, as well as the finale! Did you enjoy it? What has been your favourite season so far?

Thank you for reading my recaps of Silicon Valley Season 3 and I hope you'll join me next year for more of one of the best comedies around.

Overall Episode Verdict: A+
Positives:
+Elephant gag.
+Elrich and Big Head buying out Pied Piper.
+Monica staying with the team.

About the Author - Milo MJ

Milo is an Arsenal FC supporter and loves TV shows like Battlestar Galactica, Justified, The 100, The Americans and Person of Interest. He reviews Black Sails, Hell on Wheels, Murder in the First, Narcos, Preacher, Roadies, The Shannara Chronicles and Veep for Spoiler TV as well as books, films and games for his own blog The Fictional Hangout and contributes to comic reviews on a weekly basis for All-Comic.

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