[For Silicon Valley “Bachman’s Earning’s Over Ride” or any other recaps on Fetchland, assume the presence of possible spoilers.]
HBO Summary:
Bachman’s Earning’s Over Ride. Erlich struggles to come clean to Richard; Richard must make a difficult choice.
“Bachman’s Earning’s Over Ride” circles around confrontations and Erlich Bachman’s dignity. In fact, it’s a lot like a chain reaction with one character confronting another and then they confront another character and so forth all the way around until the issue gets resolved with closure in the end. This aspect of Silicon Valley gives it a refreshing stance in a world filled with cliffhanger TV. Each episode encapsulates a major challenge and then resolves it with little remainder and override. So, although the same Silicon Valley story keeps moving forward, it’s always fresh – which is more than one can say about the Vanity Fair Summit dinner salad Richard abandons in the episode.
We open on Erlich and Richard’s Bloomberg News interview about the Pied Piper launch. It’s taken off like a rocket with more than a hundred thousand installs in only the first ten days. Richard has trouble with the confrontational style of a public interview but the real confrontation is actually happening behind the scenes. It’s in the back of Bachman’s mind that he still hasn’t told Richard about his cashed-out shares and Monica calls to confront him about it. She insists Erlich tell Richard ASAP because she doesn’t want to be complicit in this lie. But Erlich’s all about attending the Vanity Fair Summit dinner that night. Funny thing is, Richard doesn’t care about the photo shoots and parties. He’d rather Erlich was the face of the company. So, this too is part of Bachman’s motivation to keeping the secret hidden.
Next Jared enters the incubator wearing a tailor-made Pied Piper varsity jacket. As Dinesh and Gilfoyle leave to get coffee they get Jared to give them the heinous jacket. Then at the coffee shop Gilfoyle wears it to embarrass Dinesh, saying he’s a suicide bomber of humiliation, happy to go down as long as Dinesh goes with him. It backfires, though when coffee shops peeps are impressed by his Pied Piper jacket. It’s the hot new company! Everybody’s talking about it! So, then Gilfoyle pivots to pretend he doesn’t know Dinesh, causing him further humiliation.
Next we see Jared and Richard interview a guy for the Pied Piper head of PR. He’s the confrontational one and asks if everything at the company is cool. He saw a paper on Laurie’s desk the day before that showed a big chunk of Pied Piper stock being sold. It made the potential PR guy wonder because an insider selling a load of stock right before the big launch is cause for alarm. Richard then assumes the seller was Monica because she was the only one who didn’t like the Beta test. He confronts her so she tells him the truth about Bachman’s selloff. So, In the BIG confrontation Richard confronts Erlich and says he’s going to have to issue a press release now because the ten percent sale sends a message to Silicon Valley that there’s something funky at Pied Piper. Bachman’s bummed because now nobody will ever take him seriously again. When Richard talks to Dinesh and Gilfoyle about it they, surprisingly, don’t a hundred percent agree with Richard. So, he writes the press release but says he won’t publish unless word gets out on the street about Bachman’s selloff.
Pissy Richard then confronts Erlich with a “last rent check” and says they’ll be moving out of the incubator. He also replaces Bachman’s board position, promoting Jared. This sends Jared into a tailspin of mixed emotion. He’s a salad spinner of sensitivity. Still, even with all this shaming… Richard lets Bachman attend the Vanity Fair Summit dinner later that night. When Richard’s checking in for it he finds out Erlich attempted to sell only half his shares but Laurie prevented this and, using Pied Piper contractual particulars, forced him to sell them all. Richard then sees Laurie at the Summit dinner and finds out she also fucked Bachman thanks to a detail in the contract that allowed her to set her own price for the shares. So, although Erlich was going to get five million for half the shares from the original buyer, Laurie found out exactly what Erlich owed for his debts and paid him only that much for all of his shares. Thus, Bachman’s completely broke now.
Meanwhile Erlich gets a voicemail from the tech blog he half owns saying they heard rumors about “serious ugliness” at Pied Piper. So, to protect the company he outs himself on the blog as the “dumbest guy in tech” and in the process doubles down on earning Richard’s empathy. So, in the end Richard gives Erlich the still-open job as head of PR. As his first order of business in PR, Bachman calls his tech blog to tell them Hooli’s now selling Pied Piper’s app in their online store, a big win for the company. But in the process Erlich finds out that the “rumors” about ugliness at Pied Piper were actually just about Jared’s jackets. He’d outed himself over nothing.
Bachman makes a circle from indignity to dignity and back again in this episode as a result of all the confrontations he’s forced to face for his legendary bad behavior. “Bachman’s Earning’s Over Ride” works like a cleansing ritual for his character and makes us wonder, is Erlich Bachman the Jamie Lannister of Silicon Valley? Nobody knows if he’s a villain or a hero but it certainly seems like at the very least he’s on the Hero’s Journey. Maybe he’s on a path from villain to hero, as many theorists suggest about Jamie’s narrative arc. Either way, he’s a helluva lotta fun to watch along the way.
–Katherine Recap
