With "Binding Arbitration," the penultimate episode to Silicon Valley's second season, it becomes clear what makes this new batch of episodes so appealing: it's the balance between it's overarching plot alongside consistent character growth.
Whether it’s Richard’s (Thomas Middleditch) growing as a leader and person by losing his inhibitions, or Erlich (T.J. Miller) also becoming more human by realizing he can’t become the macho-man type he desperately wishes to be, the HBO series becomes more mature all while freely residing to its boyish tendencies. It’s the best of both worlds, especially as two different tech companies battle it out out of court in this week’s episode.
As seen throughout the season, Nelson “Big Head” Bighetti (Josh Brener) is living large at Hooli this past month or so, even though he’s done nothing to earn this, “less than nothing,” he notes later on. And so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that his co-workers are less-than-flattered with him, calling him Egghead behind their backs and, to his face, ask him point blank how he can be the most useless guy there but now run the entire team. “Did you ever ask why?” they say to him, and as it turns out he may not have. So when one of them leaves their phone on the table, with information tech journalists would crave to scoop to destroy Hooli, Big Head turns to a familiar source.
Inviting Richard onto his boat, Big Head talks to him about his prospects and encourages his old co-worker to use this device as leverage for Gavin Benson (Matt Ross) to drop the case. Why would he do this, Richard asks? The answers pretty simple: everything Big Head’s gotten this season is thanks to the Pied Piper creator, and he owes it to his old friend to repay him for everything he’s unintentionally given him. He’s gotten everything he’s wanted, and he’s a mere three classes (out of three) away from getting his own boating license. It’s both a thank you and an apology, and Richard decides to heed forward with Big Head’s proposition.
So, with lawyers by their sides, Gavin and Richard duke it out through carefully worded phone argument, from which they agree to massively accelerate their legal case towards a binding arbitration. In non-law school terms, this is a two-day out-of-court trail where both sides present their information to a judge and decide who wins from there. Even with the short notice, Pied Piper takes little-to-no time finding an attorney on the spec with Pete Monahan (Matt McCoy), a disbarred, incarcerated lawman with a history of possessing poppers and various young girls near the border. He may not practice law in court within California, but because this is arbitration, so he's more than able to cover their case.
So begins the background checking, where Jared (Zach Woods) tells Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani) and Gilfoyle (Martin Starr) that everyone needs to work to make sure they make it through. Yes, he is telling them work will set them free, and this is a celebration of the triumph of the will, which Dinesh calling him “the most cheerful person I ever heard quote Hitler.” And the comparison may end up more apt than intended, for later on, when Jared tries to learn what's becoming of his rare, live-streamed baby bird egg, he leads himself down a path of unexpected violence.
This is because he doesn’t listen to Dinesh and Gilfoyle’s warning about Schrodinger’s Cat theory, the famous thought experiment that finds a cat put in a box with a flask of hydrocyanic acid. A device breaks this flask solely if radiation is detected, and the cat’s state of living is unknown unless one checks inside the box. If his state is undetermined, he theoretically could be alive or dead, and the fate is only known if one explores the box, which could disturb the results and unwillingly kill the cat.
It’s fighting fate, something Pied Piper’s done this whole season. And with a long list of defeats, they somehow still end up beside one another through their difficulties. It’s hard to determine just how they’ll wiggle their way through their predicament next week during the finale. But with the box closed things are going either well or terrible for Richard’ company, especially after this week’s cliffhanger, and for now it's up to us to determine how things are for the gang. While this is unclear, one thing for certain is McCoy’s a fantastic addition to Silicon Valley.
As stark and straightforward a person as could be — and dryly hilarious as a result — McCoy is perfectly nuanced and posed to a T, and delivers an exceptionally deadpan character which tests the deliriously entertaining monotony of Starr, Suzanne Cryer and the late Christopher Evan Welch before him. Whether delivering tremendously off-kilter exposition or talking ligation terms on his troublesome history, he easily could have become a one-note character but thankfully McCoy makes him all the more delectable. Surely he’ll be around for next week’s wrap-up, but it’s unclear whether or not he’s back for season three. Hopefully he is, for he, Cryer and Chris Diamantopoulos are all fantastically unique personas brought into this new season and are very much part of the reason why this show’s succeed so well this year.
As Entourage comes back into the public spotlight, with men gathering their buddies around to watch a different set of friends, Silicon Valley — as stated by many before me — serves as a finer evolution to the formula Doug Ellin popularized with his past HBO series. Mike Judge, John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky’s series is a resoundingly timely, highly intelligent series on male bonding able to be both high and low minded, reflexive and technical in ways it whatever ways it feels fit. In doing so, it also becomes both narratively satisfying and extremely engrossing on a character level, not to mention constantly funny. With one episode left this season, it’ll be fascinating to see the team open the box and reveal their cat’s fate. Hopefully they have better results than Jared did.
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