Tobolowsky is also a gamer, or at least he used to be. I met him at a Simutronics convention back in the 90’s (GemStone III, DragonRealms). He was there as a fan, not a celebrity.
Is Tobolowsky’s character supposed to be sincere? That’s part of what actually makes him a very effective person?
That’s the whole point, it’s devious strategy. He’s gambling “free” money that he just garnered through the mass firing that Big Head will run right back to Pied Piper and expose himself and the company to a lawsuit for violating the draconian NDA. Even socializing with the Pied Piper guys will expose them, and we all know Big Head loves to hang out with his buddies. Any other ex-Hoolies that follow are just a bonus.
It’s well worth a $20M investment to shut down Pied Piper.
It’s not dumb, it’s a masterstroke of business strategy. Big Head was the primary target; the $20M is just too much for him to ignore and he’s a close friend of Pied Piper. If he goes back to them, even to socialize, they’ll all exposed to a lawsuit based on Hooli’s draconian NDA, the terms of which were made quite clear to Big Head. That exposes Pied Piper to either killing itself while in a lawsuit with Hooli or flat-out being acquired now that they have a “real” CEO. Belson knows Big Head can’t resist hanging out with his buds, it’s how he spent his entire tenure at Hooli.
That’s Belson’s flavor of genius- he recovers Hooli stock and baits a hook for Pied Piper, for whom he has a personal dislike. The Hooli compression division was a failure by any metric. His end state is to trade the losers for winners by acquiring Pied Piper and making money in the bargain. The $20M to Big Head is just ante for that game.
I love the fact that not only are most of the characters very smart, they’re smart in very different ways. Belson is a great hybrid of technical acumen and business cunning.
Holy shit, I didn’t catch that, pretty amazing idea. It all ties in with the “Will I still be able to hang out with my friends on the roof?” Neat.
Yeah, I didn’t put this together at all, but it is genius. But I don’t think Big Head will just go and hang out with Pied Piper, I think he’ll become a major investor, or else there was no reason to throw that $20 million number out there.
I didn’t put that together either (obviously), but it makes way too much sense not to be where they’re going with it. Good catch Mike O’Malley! They do seem to be setting up Pied Piper to either become Hooli-like or be acquired by Hooli. With Richard’s move from CEO to CTO, and the addition of Action Jack to the board, the board could now conceivably vote to sell Pied Piper to Hooli at any time and there’s nothing Richard can do about it.
I thought Nelson just loses the money if he says anything bad about Hooli to anyone. I assume it will come up again, but I can’t quite see the dots connecting this to acquiring Pied Piper. Maybe I just wasn’t paying close enough attention though, I’m certainly curious to see how Nelson factors into things whatever he does.
Man. I just binge-rewatched everything for like the third time just because I needed more Silicon Valley in my life.
The whole cast is so very, very good, but my god Zach Woods is just working on levels that are astonishing. Donald/Jared/Other Jared/OJ may be one of the greatest TV sitcom characters in history.
Also, every time I see ads and commercials for the very real travel site Trivago, I cannot help but call it Aviato.
I had no idea this had returned. What a wonderful surprise.
Well, I can scratch “watch horses fucking vigorously” off the bucket list now.
I loved the takedown of salespeople. “In order to keep the best salespeople, you gotta give them something easy to sell.”
“Jan, they call me ‘Jan the Man’, here.”
PETA was apparently not happy with this scene.
— Alan
Of course they aren’t, they’re PETA. Details on the scene and how it came about and was filmed
Love the billing, too, with the sales team up over the tech team.
What are PETA upset about? That the horses are having sex? Or that the horses are having sex on tv? Or that the horses are being abused/objectified by having sex on tv? Or are they just pissed that nobody at PETA is having sex?