Silicon Valley Season 3 Episode Guide
3.01 "Founder Friendly" - Review!
3.02 "Two in the Box" - Review!
3.03 "Meinertzhagen's Haversack" - Review!
3.04 "Maleant Data Systems Solutions" - Review!
3.05 "The Empty Chair" - Review!
3.06 "Bachmanity Insanity" - Review!
3.07 "To Build a Better Beta" - Review!
3.08 "Bachman's Earning's Over-Ride"
3.09 "Daily Active Users"
3.10 "The Uptick"
Silicon Valley 3.07 "To Build a Better Beta"
Directed by Jamie Babbit & Written by John Levenstein
Well it looks as though something actually worked out well for Pied Piper, after several episodes of everything going sideways in the funniest possible ways. However, there were plenty of steps to do before we got to that point. First Erlich and Big Head, and their venture firm Bachmanity is actually unable to pay its debtors following Erlich's Jordan Belfort-lite spending spree in the previous episode. In order to finance some debt relief Erlich then considered using his shares with Pied Piper as a source of debt relief only to find that $6million within Bachmanity has been misplaced. It turns out that the $6million has gone to Big Head's former buisness manager who is paying other clients, and therefore this causes him to threatens legal action despite it being low priority for the justice department.
And Pied Piper discovered a Hooli spy once Gilfoyle's God view app allowed the team to pinpoint the location of the people who were selected to test the early version of the beta. In response to being discovered Gavin, whose levels of paranoia is increasing, shuts down the power to Hooli, which as a result puts Hooli's Nucleus rebuild on hold. It's interesting to note that Monica turned out to be another tester of the beta, and her observations was virtually the only negative one. It's inevitably going to backfire on Richard for ignoring the criticism, but ever since his victory over Jack Barker it's clear that his ego has gotten the better of him and all the praise from the other beta testers hasn't helped matters.
Erlich meanwhile, following a private meeting with Laurie about his Pied Piper shares finds out that he's been called about his debts being cleared, which along with the fact that the official launch of the Pied Piper appears to go ahead successfully, (the last few seconds of the episode show Richard and his team counting down to launch), things have ended on a good note for Pied Piper and company. After all their struggles it appears that the ship has been righted, but knowing what the show's writers are capable of, it's hard not to imagine that everything will come crashing down in the next episode. This is Silicon Valley after all.
The juggling of the two plots in this episode worked really well with the split between Erlich's debt issues and the buildup to the launch didn't really have any pacing issues, and both stories allowed for some pretty solid moments. The fact that Erlich was in a weak spot entirely of his own making allowed for several interesting moments which eventually led to him sacrificing his ten percent stake in the one product that he was involved in that actually managed to get off the ground, which is ultimately a blow for him and it's clear that he's not going to get any pity from anybody, which was made clear by the District Attorney.
To Build A Better Beta then was another solid half-hour of Silicon Valley where things actually went well for most of Pied Piper. There wasn't any especially memorable jokes though, and Amanda Crew really needs more to do than to just bring bad news to Richard. But that didn't stop this episode from being otherwise enjoyable, and leaving the audience on a high note before tomorrow's eighth episode of the season, meaning that we're only three away from the finale.
Be sure to let me know what you thought of To Build A Better Beta in the comments section below and remember to check out the next episode at 10pm on HBO after Game of Thrones.
Overall Episode Verdict: B+
Positives:
+Erlich's debt issues.
+Something goes well for Pied Piper.
Negatives:
-Underused Amanda Crew. Again.
