The sight of tech company founders appearing before Congress to discuss their policies (data collection and sharing, in particular) and otherwise has become a common occurrence as of late, so it’s not a huge surprise that Silicon Valley begins its sixth and final season with a trip to Washington, D.C. The move is another example of how the most familiar faces in Big Tech essentially deserve a co-writing credit for the HBO satire, as their real-life antics frequently result in some of the show’s funniest, most caustic moments.
That’s been the case since the series premiered in 2014, when Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middledtich) was a lowly Hooli employee with a remarkable compression algorithm. Since then, the series has grown alongside Richard and his Pied Piper team, chronicling the infrequent up and many downs of their journey to the top (sort of) of the cutthroat tech industry. And now with the start of season 6, Silicon Valley prepares to bring its story to a close, placing its characters in a familiar yet somehow even more precarious position as outrageous success is finally within their grasp — provided they don’t screw it up for themselves, as they so often do.
The decision to begin the final season with Richard’s Congressional testimony is a shrewd one, as it leaves the audience guessing as to the status of Pied Piper following its all-important win at the end of season 5. As it turns out, things are good, but not that good, for the tech company, which has grown by leaps and bounds — employing over 500 people — though its revenue relies almost entirely on the video game portion of the company run by the ethics-averse gamer-bro Colin (Neil Casey). Colin’s been harvesting user data for some time, a fact that turns Richard’s rousing speech in D.C. into an unintentional lie, and puts the usually confrontation shy CEO on the warpath.
Naturally, Richard’s efforts to rid the company of Colin don’t go as planned, especially when an increasingly marginalized Jared (Zach Woods), in an attempt to get closer to his now-distant friend, slips into yes-man mode, facilitating an AI-driven scheme to blackmail the offending party into leaving Pied Piper. The effort inevitably blows up in their faces, leaving Pied Piper holding a huge, unintentional data collection bag because it can’t afford to lose its biggest asset.
It's the kind of scenario that suggests, the final season is going to play mostly familiar notes as the fortunes and misfortunes of its characters rise and fall, typically within the framework of a single episode. The audience is no doubt accustomed to this structure by now, which means Silicon Valley is following the tried-and-true rule of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” And it’s hard to blame Alec Berg and Mike Judge, as this particular formula has served them and their cast well for five seasons at this point, affording a multitude of angles from which to approach the story of a massive tech company in waiting, and the group of misfits who have somehow managed to find themselves on the verge of unimaginable success and, just maybe, actually making a product that could make the world a better place.
What success ultimately looks like varies depending on who’s being asked, though. Richard seemingly isn’t in it for the money, which puts him at odds with Dinesh (a noticeably buff Kumail Nanjiani) and Gilfoyle (Martin Starr). But Richard’s position as the CEO of Pied Piper also puts him at odds with Jared, who’s been shunted off to another corner of the company, far from the guy who inspired him to leave Hooli all those years ago. That leaves Richard with Monica (Amanda Crew) as the only person he can turn to, and she’s not quite as emotionally supportive as Jared typically is.
From a narrative standpoint, the start of season 6 does feel a bit like Silicon Valley is walking in its own footsteps, what with Matt Ross’s increasingly unhinged Gavin Belson still trying to make life miserable for Richard and the Pied Piper team, and with Jian Yang (Jimmy O. Yang) up to no good in incubator where the series began. Familiar faces like Laurie Bream (Suzanne Cryer), Hoover (Chris Williams), and Gavin’s not-so-spiritual spiritual adviser (Bernard White), are all present and accounted for. But that level of familiarity doesn't diminish the start of the final season. Instead, it enhances it, as the writers demonstrate again and again how to balance recurring jokes (like Richard's nervous stomach, or Dinesh's incomparable pettiness) with finding humor in the latest seemingly insurmountable challenges facing the company.
The result is a season that makes it very clear Silicon Valley is going to go out on its own terms. But, unlike many other shows, Silicon Valley isn't beholden to any number of loose threads or will they or won't they romantic scenarios. As such, it's free to make the most of its final go round by asking what success looks like to each of its characters, and then asking itself if that is indeed what the audience really wants to see.
Silicon Valley season 6 premieres Sunday, October 27 @10pm on HBO.