'Silicon Valley' Season 6 Episode 2 sees Richard try to decline $1B from 'evil' Maximo Reyes and receive ominous threat in return
The following article contains spoilers
“Money just perverts everything,” said Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch) at the beginning of episode 2 of ‘Silicon Valley’ Season 6, setting a theme for what was to come. The episode aptly titled ‘Blood Money' saw the characters struggling with moral dilemmas.
‘Gates of Galloo’, the game developed by Colin (Neal Casey), a man who stands against everything Richard believes in, only added to Richard’s discomfort because the game used voice commands to run ads directly in the game -- be it a Domino’s Pizza in the medieval fantasy fiction to vacation ads from a Carnival cruise ship and Southwest Airlines, and even porn!
Things moved only further south from there. Jared Dunn (Zach Woods), who was feeling less and less enthused about his ever-changing role in PiedPiper handed in his resignation to Richard, yet again. Unlike the last time that happened, however, the chances of Jared changing his mind seemed slim and that would only get worse as the episode progressed.
An angry Richard dubbed Jared a “buddy-f*cker” implying his action would screw his friend over. A calm and forever-empathetic Jared, despite his best efforts to explain why he was leaving -- “PiedPier isn’t the same company I signed up for. She has different needs now, and so do you. And, it turns out, so do I” -- Richard was in no mood to listen.
On the other side of the Valley, Hooli faced a bunch of new problems. With many parts of Hooli now under Amazon, Gavin Belson’s (Matt Ross) investors were not happy with what they had left. They gave him three months to get his act together, a feat that looks more than impossible.
A determined Belson tried to come up with cost-cutting solutions -- moving to Georgia to save on rent -- but that didn’t end up the way he imagined it. Thanks to his spiritual guru Denpok Singh (Bernard White) and Hoover (Chris Williams) finding a loophole in the law that would not allow businesses to transfer to a different country because of security reasons, Hooli remained stuck in town. And that annoyed Belson enough to punch a hole through the drywall.
And even while Bertram Gilfoyle (Martin Starr) was stuck dealing with the new H.R. person, it was Jared’s and Richard’s relationship that went for a complete toss. When Richard insulted Jared’s new protege Gwart, he woke something primal in him.
A profanity-laced chase through the old incubator ended up with Jared shooting Richard on the butt with an airgun. So much for their years-old friendship, eh? But the real kicker of the episode was Maximo Reyes (Arturo Castro), a shady Chilean businessman. Richard met him at a charity event and floated the idea of a $50 million investment into PiedPiper.
Reyes agreed and how! He offered to buy 10% of the company’s stake for a billion dollars. The catch, however, was that Reyes came from a wealthy, influential and corrupt family. His family was involved in a lot of human rights atrocities back in Chile.
"It's a billion f*cking dollars, Richard," shouted Monica Hall (Amanda Crew) to which Richard asked, "Okay, so does that make this less evil or like way more evil?" It is a good question.
And even as a half-hearted Richard went to decline the offer -- an offer that would allow them to get rid of Colin -- a new kind of trouble crept in. Reyes threatened to make life difficult for PiedPiper and Richard if he didn’t agree to the buy-in.
And he also told Richard about his plans to use PiperNet to mine user data -- the opposite of what Richard and everyone in the company wanted. Richard just can’t catch a break, can he?
New episodes of ‘Silicon Valley’ premiere Sundays at 10 p.m. on HBO.