'Silicon Valley' piques viewers' interest in third season premiere

If you missed the season premiere of “Silicon Valley” (2014 - present) on Sunday night, you weren’t the only one. The parody of West Coast tech culture returned the same night as its HBO sibling “Game of Thrones” (2011 - present), whose sixth season landed with something like a biblical impact. Its 30-minute counterpart never stood a chance of shining from under the colossus’ shadow. Nevertheless, the third season of “Silicon Valley” has arrived in good style.

The story picks up exactly where the second season’s finale left off: with Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch) falling off the throne of his company, Pied Piper, and Gavin Belson’s (Matt Ross) Hooli in a spiral of PR nightmares. The former storyline arrives at some sort of resolution by the end of the episode, but the comedy of errors at Hooli seems like it could go in just about any direction.

Accessibility is not this show’s strong suit. Discussions on stock options, payment packages and board seats happen so quickly and with so little explanation that even business-minded viewers may have a difficult time keeping up. Some of the logic seemed completely illogical, but maybe that’s the point. In the end, this show isn’t about the numbers, and the discussions may simply serve as jargon that garnishes the otherwise hilarious script.

To wit, Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani) and Gilfoyle (Martin Starr) are as on point as ever, playing the proverbial Tweedledee and Tweedledum to Richard’s Alice in Siliconland (maybe this makes T.J. Miller's Erlich the Mad Hatter). Jared (Zach Woods), then, is Glinda to Richard’s Dorothy in Oz, guiding Richard to new adventures and instilling in his (former) boss a sense of value and self-worth. These literary references are stretching thin, but the point is that the relationship between these five guys is borderline cartoonish and incredibly entertaining.

Being even tangentially aware of the reputations of Silicon Valley’s literati grants viewers access to infinitely many more jokes embedded in this smart show than just the jokes sitting on its surface. Little details like what kind of car Richard drives are part of what make this show good. That isn’t to say that “Silicon Valley” is just a large, relatively well-funded inside joke for coders, financial managers and West Coasters. There is a healthy serving of old-fashioned shenanigans for lay viewers to laugh out loud to: Erlich runs over a robotic deer at Stanford, Richard’s lawyer is in jail for an epic bender in violation of his parole and the replacement CEO is vexingly zen and happy for someone with his reputation — at least for now.

It will be interesting to see how Richard handles his new role as Chief Technical Officer of the company he built from the ground up. The double, then triple cross of Dinesh and Gilfoyle may play out in episodes to come or it may fall to wayside as a simple one-time joke. But part of what makes “Silicon Valley” so fun to watch is its blend of absurdity and reality. Its continuity, in light of its at times purely ridiculous humor, is a feat of show building — as is the amount of story told in the short sub-30-minute runtime of each episode — so it seems likely that this will play out at some point in the new season.

The show’s return to the airwaves, cables and Wi-Fi routers of the world is a boon for everyone who can find the time and means to watch it. Here’s hoping the rest of the season is as engaging as the stellar premiere this past Sunday.