It's HBO's nerdiest, bro-iest comedy, but Silicon Valley is still capable of shocking viewers.
Never more so than in the third season's second episode, in which tech wiz Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch) visits his startup company Pied Piper's interim CEO, Jack Barker (Stephen Tobolowsky). Attempting to have a serious conversation about his product, Richard is distracted by a horse mounting Jack's thoroughbred in plain view.
Although co-star T.J. Miller (who plays Erlich Bachman) wasn't on set for the graphic equine mating scene, "I got a text from Thomas that was essentially like, 'Dude, it was so much grosser than I ever could've expected,' " he says. "It's a great use of the R-rating on a show that isn't sexy. The joke is, these billionaires are so out of touch, they're going, 'I paid $100,000 to see that my prize mare gets semen from this stud, so if you'll excuse me, I'd like to see these horses (have sex).' It's ridiculous, but it's also pointed satire."
While there's no barnyard boinking in Sunday's third-season finale (10 ET/PT), there are still plenty of surprises. After successfully launching the Pied Piper platform, Richard discovered in last week's episode that his product wasn't intuitive to customers, leading the number of daily active users to plummet. As a result, acquiescent chief financial officer Jared Dunn (Zach Woods) "buys" new users in India — a well-intentioned ruse that doesn't hold up for long.
"In his view, it's like a hope transfusion," Woods says. "You can't live on blood transfusions, but sometimes you need one, or you're going to die." Ultimately, "they find success in a way that's surprising," but only after "Richard faces a moral crisis. He has to decide whether to commit fraud."
Erlich finds redemption in Sunday's finale, which corks an unusually sad season for the irreverent, windbag entrepreneur. After blowing all his money on an Alcatraz luau to launch his new business, Bachmanity, Erlich goes behind Richard's back and sells his shares of Pied Piper. Although Richard hires him back as the company's PR chief, the two clash again in this week's episode, as more investors come knocking.
"We're going to see a restructuring of people's roles in the company, and the question is, 'What comes next?' " Miller says. Even when he's at odds with Richard, "everything that Erlich has done that's bad, he's tried to make up for. He's willing to lose his reputation for Pied Piper and really is passionate about the company. That's not lost on Richard."
In future seasons of Silicon, which has already been renewed for a fourth, Miller wants to see how Richard and his fellow programmers would handle becoming mega-rich. Woods wants to learn more about Jared, this season's breakout character thanks to his confounding success with the ladies and bizarre one-liners. (His boyhood best friends: an imaginary Harriet Tubman and stuffed Ziploc bag with a smiley face drawn on it.)
"You know those clowns with the sand in the bottom and you punch them, and they pop back up with a benign smile on their face?" Woods says. "I always thought Jared was like that, so since the first season, I'd improvise the worst stuff that could happen to him. I thought it was funny that someone so mild would've had this awful childhood."
