'Silicon Valley' Season 6 premiere: Season 5 recap from when Chinese manufacturer Yao almost took over PiperNet
HBO’s critically-acclaimed comedy ‘Silicon Valley’ is about to begin its sixth and final season. And while fans (and even the cast) may be shedding tears over the inevitable end of this so-funny-that-you-can’t-breathe TV show, it is time to look back at where the show left us and what it may bring in the new season.
In the fifth season, the Pied Piper team got new office space and hired a large team of coders. Meanwhile, Jian-Yang (Jimmy O. Yang) managed to convince a judge that Erlich Bachman (T. J. Miller) was dead in order to inherit Erlich's estate, which included a 10% share of Pied Piper.
Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch) promoted Donald “Jared” Dunn (Zach Woods), who then became the new chief operating officer for Pied Piper, and Jian-Yang went to China to build a knock-off version of Pied Piper.
When Eklow's CEO almost destroyed Pied Piper's credibility, Richard took up Bertram Gilfoyle's (Martin Starr’s) idea to create a cryptocurrency for Pied Piper, to secure an independent source of funding. The season five finale began with Richard celebrating the launch of his decentralized PiperNet in a Peter Pan costume.
But just two months later, they realized its failure. When Monica Hall (Amanda Crew) alerted Gilfoyle that even though their user numbers were up, their coin did not increase in value, they realized that the new users were coming from outside their developer base. Ergo, someone stole their software.
A confrontation with Jian-Yang revealed the Chinese manufacturer Yao was behind this. Yao, in fact, teamed up with Laurie Bream (Suzzane Cryer) and attempted a 51% attack on PiperNet, signing up thousands of fake users to take majority control of the network and then delete everything on it to eliminate it as competition.
Meanwhile, Richard turned to Gavin Belson (Matt Ross) for help. They struck a deal where Gavin gave Richard access to Hooli’s many Boxes to add more users to PiperNet, diluting the user base, making sure Yao couldn’t reach 51%.
True to his nature, however, Gavin stabbed Richard in the back. He offered to help Yao and Laurie delete PiperNet in return for a 20% stake in his new venture. Richard, in a moment of desperation, offered to give PiperNet to Gavin, and said, “I’d rather give it away than watch it die.”
Of course, when he looks at the piece of signed paper later, he realized he was duped by Richard, who bought just enough time for Gilfoyle to implement his patch, deleting all of Laurie and Yao’s users. The episode ended with Monica giving Richard and the Pied Piper crew a tour of their new offices.
The trailer for season 6 shows Richard grappling with the compromises that can come with money. We see an angry Jared, chasing Richard with a gun, cursing his heart out. We also see Gavin rejecting Richard’s offer -- although it would have been great if he had said, “Kiss my p**s” instead of “Hell no”.
The best part of the trailer, however, is Richard testifying before Congress about the security of user data, just like Mark Zuckerberg did in 2018. The trailer, of course, doesn’t quite point towards how the show ends. But one can easily surmise it would only get wilder with each passing episode.
‘Silicon Valley’ Season 6 premiers on HBO October 27.