'Silicon Valley' Season 5 Episode 1 Recap: Moving Out of the House
Silicon Valley is back on HBO, and the first episode of the new season answers a few questions lingering since the Season 4 finale. The episode, titled “Grow Fast Or Die Slow,” plays it safe in terms of story and jokes, but does a good job of setting up the rest of the season.
Pied Piper is finally expanding into a real company. Richard is faced with hiring new employees to work on his “New internet” initiative, and like with everything else in his life, dithers indecisively and drags his feet. As always, this ends up biting him in the ass.
Gavin Belson, head of Hooli, may have made a charitable move by allowing Richard to pursue the “New internet” project at the end of Season 4, but the wealthy CEO still has it out for our tiny heroes. He hires all the prime candidates away from Pied Piper, leaving Richard even more stranded when it comes to staffing his company. Gavin is too invested in Richard’s failure to be done for the season, so expect plenty more corporate meddling in the episodes to come.
With prime candidates no longer an option, Richard becomes desperate to find a good group of employees to hire. This leads to him courting a small company in the hope of acquiring their talent through a buyout. Without going into too many details and ruining a few jokes, it ends with Richard buying out two companies instead. What started as a search for around 12 employees has snowballed into a new combined staff of more than 50.
Now that Pied Piper has an office, the incubator has become less important. Erlich leaving also means there’s less tension on the homefront. Jian-Yang sees an opportunity to gain control of the house, and looks to be making a move to a more prominent role as the head of the incubator. It will be interesting to see if Jian-Yang makes a play for Erlich’s shares of Pied Piper as well, or if his new leadership will frustrate the guys enough to move out.
Looking forward to the rest of Season 5, it’s clear Pied Piper is going to have to actually start creating a product and gaining a user base. Richard will also struggle with leading a large team instead of a handful of guys, while Gilfoyle and Dinesh will have to fight to remain relevant among all the new hires. And as previously mentioned, expect Gavin to pop in whenever the time is right to take a bad situation and make it worse.
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Episode 2, “Reorientation,” will air on HBO this Sunday, April 1 at 10 p.m. EDT.
So what do you think? Did you like the new direction for Season 5 of Silicon Valley? What do you think will happen this season? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.