The weather is finally warming up and that means two things: fruity drinks under your palapa (you own one, right?) and Silicon Valley season 5 is right around the corner.
The show is no stranger to drama, both on and off screen — more on that later — so it’s little surprise that the Silicon Valley season 4 finale left us hanging. Will Pied Piper finally shake off its bad juju and turn a profit, or maybe even break into the three comma club?
Silicon Valley season 5: What to expect
If you remember back to the end of the fourth season, Pied Piper had pretty much scrapped the whole idea they had been working so hard on for so long. Such is the world of start-ups, we suppose. Silicon Valley season 5 finds the cast working on Richard’s latest idea, which turns out to have been Peter Gregory’s pet idea as well, of creating a new internet. If you recall their first forays into the subject, they caused a lot of people’s cell phones to catch fire during a Hooli conference. What else could go wrong?
Good guy Gavin Belson is probably dead
Gavin Belson is back, b*tches, and he’s talking to his right-hand man, Hoover (Chris Williams), who is loyal to Belson and Belson alone. Sure, he let the Pied Piper team go, but only because (at the time), they were on friendly terms with Gavin. It seems pretty clear from the trailer that he’s out for blood now — especially after getting dissed as “antiquated.” A huge eye roll from Richard in the trailer points to his relationship with Belson breaking down, which is really no surprise for long-standing fans of the show.
Fighting within Pied Piper
OK, it’s a given. But when things are going well, it’s only Gilfoyle and Dinesh bickering at and blaming each other for minor problems. This time, though there’s still plenty of that, it seems like it gets into deeper waters, with the finger being pointed largely at Richard. And for his part, Richard doesn’t seem to be respecting Jared again, even after he apologized for treating the walking-conscious of a person so terribly at the end of the last season.
Jian Yang’s in court…?
This seems like it could go a number of ways, and we’re not given a lot to work with in the trailer. Did his smoking app idea step on someone’s toes? With Bachman gone it seems doubtful that he would get in trouble for squatting at the “incubator” house, especially when one of the trailers the team released appears to show him living large as the leader of the abode, but you never know.
Jared’s time to shine
Silicon Valley and Richard wouldn’t be what they are without Jared as a foil. When Richard is dark, rude and abusive, Jared’s what keeps you coming back, hoping he can redeem the moody CEO. Well, good news for fans of the cheerful character: the showrunner, Mike Judge, is teasing a whole lot more of him in the coming season. “We’ll probably see the rise of Jared of some kind. I think it will be a Jared-heavy season,” he teased to Entertainment Weekly.
Silicon Valley season 5 cast
As you’re probably aware if you’re a fan of the show and have been anxiously waiting for Silicon Valley season 5 to come out, there’s going to be a major character missing when the premiere comes out — and, no, he won’t be coming back. We’re talking, of course, about T.J. Miller.
Miller brought some laughs to the sisyphean story of friends trying to make it in the cut-throat culture of tech startups in Silicon Valley, but the show decided it was time to part ways with the actor, leaving his character Erlich Bachman to rot in an opium den. Harsh.
So why did the show part with Bachman, a character fans loved to hate? “There are a lot of different ways you can find out somebody doesn’t want to do the show anymore,” creator Mike Judge explained of the decision. “And it’s not fun to work with someone who doesn’t want to be there, [especially when] they’re one of the main people and you’ve got however many crew members and extras and people who are [not paid as well] and they’re all showing up before seven A.M., and then are just like, ‘Oh, O.K., we’re not shooting today.’”
His departure came months before The Daily Beast reported on sexual misconduct allegations levelled against the Silicon Valley star.
Silicon Valley season 5 trailer
Because of Richard’s habit of causing total meltdown for anything he touches (sorry, but it’s true), you can imagine that Silicon Valley season 5 is going to be just as crazy for Pied Piper and the beleaguered team as past season. But you don’t have to imagine it because they’ve already released two trailers for the upcoming season, the latest of which includes Gavin Belson having temper tantrums, Jian Yang in court and, yes, even a live bear.
The first one they released focused mostly on Richard’s transition into the leader of a bigger team, and it looks like it’s going to be rocky. Did we mention that Jian Yang has taken over the incubator house?
Silicon Valley season 5 release date
Get yourselves excited for more speed bumps on Pied Piper’s road to success (and hopefully some more life wisdom courtesy of Jared), because Silicon Valley season 5 kicks off on Sunday, March 25 on HBO.
