We’ve made it to the end. The finale episode of season 4 is one that really had me feeling a bunch of different things and made me start to question how much I liked Richard. This season has been great, with some of my possible favorite moments from the entire series happening and I actually laughed like a maniac when they got to the part where you know that is the last time we will see from Erlich Bachman (possibly). Enough rambling and let’s get into the episode.
We open with the guys of Pied Piper watching videos of Hooli phones exploding in peoples pockets, “You only make that face when your dick is on fire” says Dinesh describing the video. While they are watching the video Gilfoyle lets them know that the exploding phones all had the illegally installed Pied Piper app on them. Jared obviously wants them to confess to their wrong doing, while Richard, refusing to believe that the explosions are his fault, blames it on Keenan’s VR.
With Richard refusing to take responsibility, Jared tenders his resignation by pulling out a letter he had written when he started at Pied Piper. He explains that he writes three letters whenever he starts a new job, “a personal action plan, a letter to his 40 year old self, and a resignation letter.” Richard then reminds him that he can’t quit and that in the employee handbook, that Jared wrote, you must give a two weeks notice before quitting. Jared agrees to fulfill his two weeks, but then he is done.
This season was full of storylines of characters flying too close to the sun, their Icarus moments, and Richard’s dissent into madness is the hardest of them all to watch. After the negative backlash Jack Barker decides they need to recall all of the Hooli phones that are exploding, which would include the 123,000 that contain the Pied Piper App and the Dan Melcher’s data, and replace them in three days. In order to do this they would need their plant in China to produce 50% more phones then they currently do per day The board says they will not approve of this, preferring to instead just release a corrective software update, but Jack is a step ahead of them and had already sent out the recall. Jack goes to China to try to motivate the employees to work harder and fails miserably. They hold him hostage until they can get fair wages and human working conditions. We’ll get to how he is saved later.
Photo Source: Silicon Valley, HBO
Richard decides to use Anton, Pied Pipers server, to hold all of Dan Melcher’s data. The problem is Anton is not strong enough to hold all of that data. Richard argues with Dinesh and Gilfoyle about this while Jared brings in someone to interview for his position. The interview obviously doesn’t start off well, with her seeing them fighting, and ends just as bad when he asks if she is “comfortable with casual racism.” Gilfoyle breaks his glasses while hooking up Anton, which leads to him wearing horrifyingly funny cat contact lenses since he does not have spare glasses.
Photo Source: Silicon Valley, HBO
After finding out they did not pay their broadband bill, Richard decides they are going to take Anton to Stanford where Professor Big Head will allow them to hook him up. In truth, Big Head only gave Richard his login information to access Stanford’s network. By the way, Big Heads username is password and his password is password. As Dinesh and Gilfoyle are loading Anton into a truck Jared starts asking questions about Stanford’s security clearances which leads to Richard flipping out again and letting Jared out of his two week notice. After finally loading Anton into the truck, which took them all night, they go to start the truck and it does not work, the battery had died. After realizing they didn’t have jumper cables or AAA, which Gilfoyle states “seems like a Jared thing” (which is true, Jared wouldn’t have let them leave the lights on the truck all night); they charge the battery with some of the batteries from Anton. When they finally get to Stanford and the guys find out that Richard had lied to them about Big Head saying it was okay if they come set up Anton, they also find out that they had forgotten to close the door to truck and Anton is no more. At that time Richard receives an angry text from Dan Melcher and Dinesh and Gilfoyle leave Richard with Gilfoyle saying “Good luck with that.”
Photo Source: Silicon Valley, HBO
Now back to how Jack was saved. Last we left Erlich he had just gotten to Tibet where he found Gavin Belson. Belson is trying to find his inner peace and Erlich keeps disrupting him, he tries to watch an episode of House while they are all meditating. Erlich informs Belson that Hooli phones have been exploding and Belson has to find out how the stock is so they go outside and eventually leave on horses after they are given a choice between enlightenment or ignorance. At the hut they end up in, Belson is on the phone with the Hooli board and says that he will hop over to China to save Jack, which he does, but not without a catch. On his way out he goes to Erlich as he has just smoked opium and passes out. Belson gives the man some a wad of money and asks how long will that allow him to stay there and the man tells him “five years”.
Photo Source: Silicon Valley, HBO
As Action Jack gets on the plane with Belson, Belson informs the flight attendant that they are stopping in Jackson Hole. Jack asks if Belson is going there and Belson informs him that’s where he is dropping Jack off in the most savage of call backs from episode one of this season.
Richard goes to Jared’s condo to apologize to him, meanwhile Jared has a couple of girls over (seriously, this guy fucks). After Richard leaves to go deal Melcher, Jared catches up to him and gives him an application for his old job back. When they get to Melcher’s office we see Dinesh and Gilfoyle are sitting their waiting for them. Jared had called them and convinced them to forgive Richard. As they are checking in they find out that the data is working fine and had been loaded to Jian-Yang’s smart refrigerator, the hack acting as an upgrade, sending the code to all the 30,000 refrigerators.
So with all the data being fine Dinesh asks “If Melcher never lost his data, what was he so upset about?” Well as it turns out his fiancé told him about her and Richard having sex and he wanted to kick his ass.
The episode ends with Richard and Belson meeting at the same restaurant and Belson giving Richard an offer and Richard rejecting it, solidifying season five’s main conflict.
Now that the season is over, what did you think of it? Did you like the ending for Erlich? Do you think he is gone for good? I love that they left it open to him possibly returning for a future date. Hopefully, he will be back at some point.
Overall, I think this season was great. The acting has never been better and the show itself has never been funnier. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I have and I cannot wait to see what they do next year.
