‘Silicon Valley’ Should End This Season

Sunday night’s fifth season premiere of Silicon Valley marked a turning point for the series. It was the first episode without T.J. Miller, one of the show’s original stars. Miller and the show agreed to part ways after season 4, and the aftermath (i.e. Miller’s subsequent press tour) seemed to shine a light on what might not have been a great working relationship. So you can see where Silicon Valley might be energized to start fresh without whatever Miller was bringing to the table. There’s still an incredibly strong core at the center of the show — Thomas Middleditch as the eternally nervous Richard, who might be inching ever closer to becoming the Zuckerberg tyrant he could be; squabbling programmers Dinesh and Gilfoyle, played by Kumail Nanjiani and Martin Starr; the almost preternaturally guileless Jared, played to perfection by Zach Woods — which should keep things humming through season 5.

But while we’re still finding the fun in Silicon Valley‘s skewering of tech and startup culture, it seems increasingly clear that the show would do best to build towards some kind of satisfying ending this year, before its incredibly talented cast goes and scatters themselves to the far reaches of Hollywood.

It’s already begun. Miller jumping ship was one thing. As central a character as Erlich Bachman was, he was also eccentric enough to be able to lift him out at a moment’s notice. And by the end of season 4, his character’s big-ness was beginning to feel overcrowded on a show that was always keeping multiple serial plots in the air. You could easily make an argument that T.J. Miller’s ouster could have a beneficial effect on the show.

I’m not sure you could say the same thing about Kumail Nanjiani, though. There’s a surrogate family at the center of Silicon Valley, and while Erlich can play the absentee dad, I’m not sure you could remove half of the squabbling quasi-siblings Dinesh and Gilfoyle and still have the show survive. And while Nanjiani hasn’t made any noise about leaving Silicon Valley, the trajectory of his career might end up lifting him out anyway. The Big Sick was a solid indie hit, and awards season was very kind to him and his wife, Emily V. Gordon, who together won an Independent Spirit Award and were Oscar-nominated for Best Original Screenplay. That first Oscar nomination screams out for a follow-up movie, and Nanjiani would be wise to strike while the iron is hot.  While the TV/film divide isn’t nearly what it once was, the fact remains that Nanjiani’s career momentum is (or should be, if Hollywood has its head on straight) moving film-ward.

It’s a classy problem for Silicon Valley to have, with too many cast members in demand for other jobs because they’re just so good. But if any of the current core four cast members leaves, it’s going to be very hard for Silicon Valley to continue to justify its existence. Why not, instead, let Mike Judge end things on his own terms? There had been a lot of talk that, in fact, season 6 was being eyed as an endpoint for the series. But at a PaleyFest panel last week, Judge appeared to be backing off from that a bit:

“There was no confirmation or denial [about season 6 being the end], but Judge garnered a ton of applause when he said: ‘It could go on for a while. You never know.'”

HBO likely doesn’t want Silicon Valley to go anywhere. With Game of Thrones and Veep also headed into their home stretches, and few shows besides Westworld to truly hang their hats on, HBO can’t be relishing the prospect of losing another longstanding performer. But for the good of Silicon Valley, better to burn through your hard drives than to let your patent slowly expire. (That’s a good tech-corridor metaphor, yes?)

Where to stream Silicon Valley