Silicon Valley (HBO comedy)

Is he leaving to play the fat, arrogant stoner on another show or to play the fat, arrogant stoner in a movie?

 

Noooooo!!!

 

Love the way he yells out JIN YANG!! I suppose they will all move on at some point.

 

What's sad is that it says, "The producers of Silicon Valley and T.J. Miller have mutually agreed that T.J. will not return for season 5," which usually means there was a lot of screaming and yelling. I'm sorry to see the guy go -- he's funny as hell and is a major part of the show.

 

Yeah, this is obviously not a creative decision. But Miller's stock has risen a lot in the past couple of years (arguably in large part to the Silicon Valley springboard) and I could guess that if it's contract renegotiation time, his team was asking for too much.

 

Yeah..it's called "Deadpool 2"!

 

Miller's character is the one I'll miss least, and I don't really find his and Jin Yang's storyline all that compelling. I assume all these programmers can do math, and eventually figure out that he offers nothing for 10%.

 

I agree it might be over money, but you never know if he was asking for too much, or they were offering too little.

 

He DID get his own 'stand-up hour'.
It'll be on HBO next month.

 

His stand up is pretty bad.

 

I tried watching that "Gorburger Show" on Comedy Central....
seemed like a waste of money.

 

Maybe it is just me.....but ever since Thomas Middleditch started doing commercials on
tv I find this show a lot less interesting. Well, his character specifically.

 

...from blindgossip.com

A Sudden Exit

May 25, 2017



When a key cast member leaves a successful show, you have to ask what happened.

No, it’s not creative differences or scheduling difficulties or any other bulls*t you’ll probably hear. It may be hard to believe, but he’s actually more obnoxious than his character. He walked into contract negotiations making demands like he is the biggest star on the show, and he came out with nothing. They hate working with him so it was as good a time as any to can him.

Everybody will make it look like it was a mutual decision so everybody saves face. He does have other gigs lined up, so people probably won’t question it too hard.

On a side note, we hear that now producers have to figure out what to do with the actor whose character was the foil to the departing actor’s character. One possibility is to make him the key player in a real estate transaction that keeps the rest of the cast together.

A Sudden Exit

 

If this is actually about TJ Miller (it's a blind item, so you can only speculate)...it's hard to believe that in real life he's more insufferable than the character he plays.

 

How? Only thing I could think of is demanding a daily basket of live puppies and kittens as a snack tray?

 

That's was a good 'A'-story about the 'patent troll'!

 

Idk, I wasn't crazy about the patent troll plotline. Richard once again self-righteously stood his ground on his principles and gets the shaft because of it, which we've seen countless times over the course of the series. And his solution to the problem was written kind of clumsily. He just happened to come across an old notebook of his from high school which had the code for an algorithm he made to sort out music copyrights. I mean, what were the odds of that exact program to have been discovered out of the blue in a 20 year old notebook at the moment that he needed it when he wasn't even looking for it. I thought that was just lazy writing.

Gilfoyle's secondary plotline of hacking into Jian-Yang's refrigerator rang truer. And while it was basically much ado about nothing, the punchline was funny in its silliness. I also liked the way the fridge would ask if they wanted the foods put on the list that the guys inadvertantly said in front of it. "Uh, sure." And Jared's morphing into Ed Chambers was a stroke of genius. He played the bro role so well. It's a shame they had to let him go.

The dialogue in the episode was mostly sharp and funny, and I really liked the subtlety of Miller's performance as he was basically begging Laurie and Monika for a job. It's rare that we get to see Erlich openly vulnerable like that. So, overall, I enjoyed the episode, and there was a lot to like here. I just found the way that they went about writing the main patent troll plotline to be the weakest part of an otherwise fairly funny episode.

 

But Richard's original idea of Pied Piper from the episode is exactly that: a version of what Shazam and, to a lesser extent, Soundhound is. It's his original idea from the pilot. The use of the algorithm morphs from there but I didn't find it lazy writing in the least. I loved this episode.

I have to say I'm going to miss TJ Miller a lot. He's extremely funny and I cannot see Haley Joel Osment taking his place in the least.

 

I completely agree. I don't know how they can fill that hole. It would be like if Michael Richards had left 'Seinfeld' or an equivalent. They rely on Miller for the physical and belly laugh style of comedy that isn't really in the wheelhouse of any of the other characters. I don't know if they plan on using Osment in a major longterm role like that, but as I haven't seen him do any comedy before, I'll reserve my judgment.

 

ooof ive heard TJ is "hard to work with" before but this sucks. the season has been up and down for me....and I think the first two seasons were as good as a coedy show gets. crikey

 

I've heard all the complaints about this show:

The plot keeps repeating itself (one step forward; two steps back)

Well, okay, that's the main one but I don't care because this is still one of the best comedies on tv. Ever. That said, I'll have to see how the show does without TJ Miller. It will probably be fine, but I'm a little worried. It might be time to wrap it up after next season. We'll see.

 

I have fallen behind-- haven't yet started season 3. But I heard the most recent episode is about a patent troll sending a sort of cease and desist letter? I found out because I myself am a Silicon Valley patented inventor and have been following closely this whole patent troll mythology that has been advanced by big tech giants and their special interests. Just this week USPTO director Michelle Lee resigned, which is great news for anyone who cares about strong patent protections.

Does anyone care to comment on the episode? I look forward to seeing it. The problem is that this particular scenario is not very realistic, but people are treating it like it is. HBO’s ‘Silicon Valley’ tackled an issue that’s all too familiar to startups: The threat of frivolous patent litigation This issue is not a problem for startups except in extremely rare cases because by definition startup revenues are not significant enough to rouse the interest of patent trolls.

Michelle Lee was a Google implant in the previous administration. She had zero startup experience or inventor experience, and by advancing the narrative of the patent troll and enforcing certain elements of AIA, she broadly incentivized infringement and hurt the ability of small business and individual inventors to protect their technology. I wish the show's creators could have done their homework a little better and worked this into the comedy in a better way that dispelled the patent troll myth instead of advancing it.

 

That's what I thought (regarding the alorithm to detect copyright violation) as well. Not sure he really needed to even find it in the notebook as he could just as plausibly have remembered it himself.

I also agree on missing TJ Miller and not being sure Haley Joel Osment can fill that role.

 

I don't know that the episode made it seem like this is a particularly widespread problem. It just seemed to me like there was one kooky guy who was particularly good at it and had made quite a career out of it. Not that there was an epidemic of "patent trolls".

 

Good to know the episode did not make it seem like a common problem, but the advocacy group that published the article I linked sure did. I poked around their website a bit and while they claim to advocate purely for startups and innovation (by definition small businesses with modest revenues or surviving off founder or investor capital), this particular advocacy group seems to have adopted every position of big business they can find, which are totally at odds with startups. Kind of hair raising. Everwhere you look there are predatory types lurking all around the venture community, but hey that's why it is such fertile ground for this comedy.