Uncontrollable laughter from Silicon Valley

My name is Robbie Lamb and I love Silicon Valley. It was the beginning of the year and I moved into my residence hall, Hays, around a week before school started for work. Initially it was just me and one of my three roommates, but after frog camp ended, my other roommate, Dylan, well one of the Dylan’s (I live with two) came back and kept on talking about this show, Silicon Valley, on HBO. As I am with almost every new show, I was hesitant to dive in and allow a show to consume me. Eventually after a relentless effort on my roommate’s part, I did just that. Now, I am beyond thankful for his undying effort. To give a quick synopsis of Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley is a show about the protagonist, Richard Hendricks, who develops the greatest file compressor known to man while working for a massive corporation, Hooli. He begins his journey with his 3 core friends and co-workers Erlich Bachman, Dinesh Chugtai, and Gilfoyle. Cutting the story short, complications occur and the show tells the story of Richard attempting to create the best company he can. Now as I started watching the show, I originally did not like it. I felt that the humor was average and the potential for the show was so large that I became disappointed in the show’s underperformance. That quickly changed when I watched season one episode four and instantly fell in love with show. However, it was season two episode six, “Homicide,” in which I literally laughed so hard I had tears slowly drip from eyes as I attempted to finish watching the episode without ruining the rest of the episode with my loud laughs. Without ruining a majority of the show and plotline, I’ll give a description of the events in “Homicide.” At the beginning of the episode the team secures a deal to live stream an event involving monster trucks and motorcycle stunts. As Gilfoyle and Dinesh are looking at the calculations the stunt driver made, the two realize a fault in his calculations and that he is going to die. When they attempt to warn him of his error he blows up at them in an extremely obnoxious manner. As a result the two to perform a SWOT analysis (A motif in the show) of whether or not they should let the man die. Eventually after the analysis is performed on a very large board the stunt driver walks in and apologizes for his previous actions and asks for forgiveness while standing in front of the board. Although I am positive this blog does not do this scene justice, I started balling because of the audacity and unexpectedness of the scene in which the stunt man walked into the room with a board defiling him as human being stands tall and clearly visible behind him. As I watched the scene occur I fell off the couch and ended up pausing the show so I could enjoy the rest of the episode, which had an even funnier moment a minute later that was a tad too inappropriate to write about for this class.  Aside from the dramatic irony that occurs when he apologizes to Gilfoyle and Dinesh in front of a board that attacks him as a person and mentions sleeping with his extremely good looking wife and possible good looking mother, this scene contributes to the characterization of the two as it illustrates an event that at this point in the show, seems typical to happen to the duo.  Looking back at this moment I wholeheartedly believe that this scene has the humor I believe it possesses.  When I look back at most funny moments there are usually many factors that can contribute to the level of funniness of those events. In that moment, there was nothing but the pure comedic genius of the writers that made tears of joy drip from my eyes. It was almost as if the entire show led to that one moment—which honestly was not significant in the overall plotline in the slightest. Although I was influenced by my roommate to watch the show, there is nothing he did to contribute to my uncontrollable laughter. In that moment there was acceptable to do but laugh. Although I do admit that your surrounding play a large role in whether or not one laughs, I know this instance was pure comedic genius because I laughed so immensely from only the show.  Because of that moment, Silicon Valley will go down as one of my favorite comedy shows of all time.