The Problems With Silicon Valley's 'Delete' Episode.

I'm fairly confident in saying that the most consistent and the most solid comedy series this year has been HBO's Silicon Valley. In my opinion its second season has been much better than its somewhat shaky and inconsistent first season. 

So I had pretty much enjoyed every episode that had aired this season. Therefore it was really unfortunate that last Sunday we got to see S2E08 "White Hat - Black Hat". This was an episode that probably should have never aired. It was really that flawed.

For starters, even the first and the least significant storyline - that cigarette smoking plot didn't feel right or plausible. I don't really understand what they were trying to achieve with it.  Nobody really cares if you smoke, like seriously.

But it got worse when Pied Piper's crucial representation was about to happen. Richard decided to talk to the only guy who could screw things up for his company. He decided to talk to a system administrator (hacker) who was fired because of them.

This whole thing did not make much sense. But I thought that perhaps Richard wanted to be a decent person. By that I mean that maybe he would get the guy to work for Pied Piper - or something - and that this is how the storyline would eventually be resolved. 

Unfortunately this is not how it played out. Instead we got a 'complication' where the admin guy vowed that he would make Pied Piper pay. He would hack into their system and make sure that their representation wouldn't go well.  

So I thought this story thread would still be resolved in a way that would make the audience sigh in relief. But as it happened, that's not what eventually occurred. Richard met the guy again and made him even more angry. This was just depressing to watch.

The problem here is that it was completely obvious that the story was driving the characters and not the other way around. There's just no way that Richard would be that dumb, even though he's supposed to be somewhat inept socially.

However, that still was not the worst part about the episode. The thing that got people (the audience) really mad was the moment when despite Gilfoyle's assurances that their system was hacker proof, stuff started to disappear from their screens.

What made it so unforgivably bad was the explanation for this 'climax'. Pied Piper's and their client company's server data was being erased - but this all happened because their billionaire financier misplaced his bottle of scotch so that it hit the delete button. 

Absolutely nobody thought that was plausible even in the slightest. That's simply not how it works.  I couldn't believe my eyes. It was so disappointing to watch a show that has most of the time been relatively plausible to let us down that way.

I mean, it's as if the writers in charge weren't really thinking at all. They decided that since - in their opinion - they needed another setback for our nerds, it wouldn't matter what they would come up with here. But that was just too implausible, way too implausible.

In any case, I genuinely hope that this boo-boo was a one time thing and that they won't screw up as badly again. After all, as a whole Silicon Valley has perhaps been the best comedy (or dramedy) series this season. We can only hope that things will get better again.