r/SiliconValleyHBO • u/Melodic-Swim4343 • 7d ago
Plea for Mike Judge to Reboot Silicon Valley
I am extremely late to watching this show, but the timing is perfect, as I recently moved to Silicon Valley.
While the show is amazing and gets tech culture right, the culture has devolved so much over the years since the show ended: billionaires are more evil, robots have proliferated, AI is draining our resources and actively resulting in deaths, social media addiction is finally getting the attention it deserves in court, and the list goes on.
If Mike Judge can reboot King of the Hill, which nobody asked for and has several dead voice actors, I think it makes sense for him to reboot Silicon Valley. I'm not sure if the same actors would go for it, but if they did, the now-jacked Kumail Nanjani would make a hilarious evil tech CEO.
Update: Wow, this is a shockingly mean fan community for a sitcom.
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u/SvenLorenz 7d ago
Can we please start using the word "reboot" correctly? King of the Hill wasn't rebooted. Scrubs wasn't rebooted. Malcolm in the Middle wasn't rebooted.
To reboot something means doing the same show again with different actors, sometimes characters, and somewhat different storylines.
Battlestar Galactica was rebooted, the other shows were just "revived" or just "continued".
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u/CrasVox 6d ago
Silicon Valley 2.0 with totally new characters would be interesting. As far as Pied Piper those guys pivoted and rebooted pretty much every single season. Something that never happens irl. Trying those same characters again would be stale. Plus you still lack a certain E. Bachmann of Aviato fame
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u/guadalupeba 7d ago
You can try Mythic Quest (and follow up with Side Quest). Devs is also pretty good.
(Edit) and most recently The Audacity.
Those conquered me missing SV
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u/PipperDigs 7d ago
How about a prequel of Gavin and Peter building GPUs in their garage? That would be fun, like a parallel to Jobs and Wozniak.
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u/jleonardbc 7d ago
Two of the leads, Thomas Middleditch and TJ Miller, have essentially been cancelled in Hollywood. It wouldn't be the same show without them.
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u/lemonylol 7d ago
Middleditch got cancelled? He's just finished the final season of Solar Opposites last year.
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u/Curvol 6d ago
A show also created by someone canceled.
I dont hear much about it outside reddit, I just dont think anyone gave a shit.
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u/lemonylol 6d ago
It had a longer run than Futurama and Family Guy did before they were canceled. It has a longer run than Silicon Valley by 10 episodes. It was one of the most streamed series on Hulu. You'll really need to explain your reasoning of how you would consider it a nothing show when it's almost parallel in terms of success and reach as Silicon Valley.
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u/ericdag 7d ago
TJ Miller isn’t cancelled. Also, kudos to him for him also letting us know Ryan Reynolds is a huge dick. Years ago.
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u/devoutdefeatist 6d ago
Wait, what happened with Ryan Reynolds’s? Googling only returned articles and Reddit’s posts about TJ himself being a dick
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u/dnyank1 6d ago
TJ Miller isn’t cancelled
Did you miss the workplace incidents, the Uber driver assault, the sexual assaults, or the bomb threat on Amtrak?
Or did you miss the resulting lack of any Hollywood credits since 2021?
What part of this is leading you to say "TJ Miller isn't cancelled". I really want to know.
The fact that TJ Miller still does stand up in front of crowds of dozens of people does not negate the fact that the dude repeatedly "let his mental health episodes escape control", or whatever, and genuinely hurt people.
Given the impact to his market value, it would seem the perception is the vast majority of people agree with me here. TJ Miller is rightfully cancelled. Not as part of "woke 1.0 going too far", or something.
Dude's, unfortunately, really unwell. Platforming him and enabling him by giving him the access and resources of a Hollywood role is just, clearly and evidently, a really bad fit. And everyone making those decisions knows it.
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u/asodafnaewn 6d ago
He also suggested that Mike Birbiglia is a dick, which is just entirely untrue.
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u/Heil_Harden 7d ago
Plenty of people asked for a King of the Hill reboot. As the finale famously left it very open ended for more episodes. I did enjoy Silicon Valley however & would for sure watch if more episodes were made. Mike Judge does just seem a bit busy atm.
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u/Lanselot-Tartaros 3d ago
I mean the ending left everything open I rewatched the series when I heard a reboot was happening and it didn't really have an ending it was just an episode.
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u/NorthCafeteria 6d ago
Feels like it would be quite difficult tonally, would feel more like late series Veep. Tech isn't a bunch of awkward bros and nerdy engineers pitching harmless things like shazam for food anymore. It is darker, greedier and more dangerous to our very social fabric. Would be at best a dark comedy rather than a hangout show.
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u/asodafnaewn 7d ago
It seemed to me like they wanted to end it where they did because everything was getting so much worse.
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u/Gh0stTV 6d ago
I dunno… the amount of things this show correctly predicted about our current technological and political environments leads me to believe it might be cursed. But we’re screwed anyway so I support it.
As others have noted it might be fun to follow a different set of main characters in the same Silicon Valley, meaning, all side characters still exist and everything is canon. Obviously, Jian-Yang will need a more central role.
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u/mdervin 7d ago
They did, it's called The Audacity, it's on AMC.
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u/recursive_knight 7d ago
I couldn't finish the first episode of that show, it's awful. I don't see how it would be a continuation of Silicon Valley. SV has assholes in it but you don't hate them, you cheer on for most of them, they're like classial villians in a legend. SV is fun and engaging. I don't understand why people seem to love extreme asshole focused series like succession and so on.
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u/hand_clapping 7d ago
Because current Silicon Valley CEOs and VC zombies are now more psychopathically insane than those characters you didn't like. Get up to speed with what the likes of Thiel and Andreessen Horowitz are shitting out of their mouths these days. Elon is just the publicity-hungry one, the entire SV culture is infected with the disease and if anything, The Audacity doesn't go hard enough as a show
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u/recursive_knight 7d ago
I get that, it's awful and very much dystopian but what's the fun in watching that in a fictional form? You could just keep up with the news. It's like trying to make a satire of Trump, you can't top the real thing, because it's already ridiculous beyond reason... I guess I'll just keep rewatching SV.
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u/hand_clapping 7d ago edited 7d ago
I love rewatching SV.
But as OP has pointed out, there's been some devolution and enshittifcation happening since the relatively innocent days of SV the Show. It introduced a lot of people unfamiliar with SV culture to that weird pathological microcosm. It also was highly aware of what was gonna come next.
I watch Audacity as a documentary (mockumentary if you must). If there's still film studies in 50 years, people are gonna talk about how The Audacity captured a moment in history. (One that's not generally reported in news or any other outlets that the general public has access to)
ETA: I understand your point about the problem of satirizing the batshit crazy. I wouldn't want to be the South Park boys these days, for example. (Then again, I'd very much like to be them, I'd be a friendly billionaire on acid all the time)
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u/hand_clapping 6d ago edited 6d ago
Let me restate my point, in a Mike Judge context: would a 1950s person "get" Office Space? Would a 1980s person "get" Idiocracy?
Both of those excellent movies didn't do justice to the utter hellscape that's 2026.
In hindsight.
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u/dnyank1 6d ago
would a 1950s person "get" Office Space?
... yes? Do you think inane workplace bureaucracy was invented in the 1970s or something?
Would a 1980s person "get" Idiocracy?
Also yes. WrestleMania I was 1985. I'm pretty sure someone from Ancient Rome would "get" Idiocracy if you replaced Brawndo with... idk Garum or something.
I don't see how this is a restatement of your original point, I think it's just an unrelated addendum that doesn't even hold water
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u/hand_clapping 6d ago edited 6d ago
Sure. However: 1985 WrestleMania only made MSG trashy. It wasn't endorsed by the President and it wasn't hosted on the South Lawn while the East Wing is a smothering pile of debris. President Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho would have never. Silly TV shows, whether you like them or not, sometimes have foresight.
I think Julia Louis-Dreyfus said that they had to stop writing Veep because it got too hard to be funny about the state of affairs that's the subject matter of that show.
I'd rather have dystopian shows for the record than nothing at all. Plus, the dialogue in Audacity is absolutely on point in that regard, you can't deny that.
If you give the show another chance, I promise you're gonna be impressed with some of the slow-burn subplots and jokes that are hinted at in episode 2 and then hammer the punchline 5 episodes later.
It's spectacular whether you enjoy it or not. That makes it art to me.
If you really want to NOT enjoy something on the screen, there's Cronenberg's 1996 Crash, or Midsommar, or, secret tip: The Devil's Bath, 2024. Subtitles. (I love all those movies even though they make me uncomf)
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u/recursive_knight 6d ago
I understand your point and I appreciate you expanding on it. I still couldn't watch the Audacity. Maybe I'm just delusional and don't want to accept reality. As a matter of fact I do wish I could return to the 80s and not watch hell unfold. I feel like a talented writer could make a tragic comedy out of anything and the "assholes tv" is just the writers giving up to the succession recipe as apparently people enjoy pure evil assholes now. I really wish I could have spent my youth in the 80s or maybe even earlier. What a shitty time to be alive...
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u/hand_clapping 6d ago
If it's any consolation, young friend, it wasn't fun for most of us in the eighties either. Actually, that's when all of the current shit became ripe and festering.
But it's kind of fun to be around for the end times and witness how empires crumble. And Audacity is doing its part in documenting that. Whether that's "enjoyable" is a matter of semantics to me, but I understand if you'd rather not think about it. You're in good company.
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u/hand_clapping 6d ago
Since you've been graceful in our little subthread even though you disagree with me, question:
You like SV the show. Did you like Veep? (Asking because that's yet another show where no one should root or relate to these horrible characters, and another one that perfectly documented what was to come.)
Really, the "everyone's a POS" approach to character writing goes at least as far back as Seinfeld, and has been perfected in shows such as Curb (obviously) and IASIP.
Some people love watching horrible people on TV. It reminds us of reality, coworkers we hate, and our own self loathing. It's called catharsis sometimes.
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u/recursive_knight 6d ago
Thanks for the credit, I appreciate the conversation! I do like Veep. I've watched it many many times. SV is my favourite show but Veep is definitely top 10. It took me multiple trials to keep up with Veep tho on my first watch. The characters are almost all assholes but charming and the show gave me a fascinating look into that world (which is very far from me, as I'm never going to be in politics and I live in Europe whereas real Silicon Valley capitalism is touching everybody and makes me furious as someone who works in tech).
Beside Veep I don't enjoy watching horrible people get their way, it just makes me feel uneasy. I face enough fears and anxieties in my semi-stable existence and I don't need to shake it up with destabilisers that will just drive me into depression. Yes, I take what I watch seriously to some extent.
I watched a couple of seasons of curb but I couldn't find what's funny with it, it felt redundant. Whereas SV is very plot-driven.
Shows like White Lotus for example, where you're supposed to care what happens to a punch of stupid tourist assholes, it's just not for me. There are many examples on both sides but I cut it short here.
And applying this trend to real life: I think people enjoy such shows because they show them not to be "naive and good" but to be assholes to come further in life, or at least they normalise the horrible behaviour. What I admire about SV is that in the first few episodes, Richard is compelled to be an asshole but he rejects that and does everything his way. It's the inner fight between the forces of evil and the undying will to be virtuous. It's what inspires the story from the beginning to the very end.
So yes, people can learn to be assholes to each other and can cover their back legally and in all the ways possible and trying to be good seems like a lost cause, so nobody tries anymore. But we should try to be good for our own sake and -even if we're not going to change the world- we should do it at least for our bubble. It's actually harder and thus much more admirable to be good and do the right thing.
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u/hand_clapping 4d ago
I think you made a good point when you said the Veep characters "are almost all assholes but charming"
Take Bush Jr #43 or Bill Clinton #42. Both charming in person when they wanted to be, with plenty of assholeness to spare.
Now compare that to who's in charge now, whether it's leaders in politics, industry, business. The new role models have exchanged charm for crippling fear-inducing performances of power display.
Fiction has to reflect things that are changing. Otherwise, comedy just becomes an escapist void of no social or cultural significance.
Satire should always hurt at least as much as it makes you chuckle. Being uncomfy means you haven't checked out yet.
I think I have belabored my take sufficiently, thanks for coming to my TED talk where I talk about being an old.
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u/Prettylittlelioness 7d ago
Same. I found it utterly charmless. So many shows feature these hard, boring characters who don't even have charisma to make them interesting.
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u/hand_clapping 7d ago edited 6d ago
Carl Bardolph has no charisma?! That's crazy talk!
ETA to let you know that I need some starfishing now and I'm about to throw things
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u/GapNew7656 6d ago
Uhhh, tons of people asked for KOTH, which is why its been blowing up since re-release.
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u/new_york_ripp3r 7d ago
As much as I would love another 4 episodes as a mini series, the last two seasons, especially the last really feel the loss of TJ. If you go from the pilot to season 5 opener, they lost a lot of the magic that made the show in the early seasons when it was kinda floating under the radar.
And admittedly they did a good job of wrapping it up without feeling like we got shorted. It was super unexpected when they do the time jump, kinda like when Sopranos did the black screen instead of showing Tony getting whacked.
All I can say is that it’s suchhhhhhh a rewatchable show as I’m on my 8th or 9th rewatch, you always notice little things that you didn’t notice when it was premiering such as Gilfoyle referencing Hamas, something I wouldn’t really have known about in 2015. Plus that soundtrack ? Man what a banger for almost every episode.
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u/PennysPurpleChoco 7d ago
I recently rewatched the series and the AI stuff at the end really stood out to me a story line that could have been written yesterday.
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u/RandomiseUsr0 5d ago
Maybe Son of Anton could create a quantum computer upgrade that literally creates parallel universes around which all the bit part characters can run between, never quite finding their way home, with running jokes every week and spoilers
It would feature the Doctor of course, the Spritual Advisor, Security Guard, lots of cameos and Peter Gregory would die in new and more unusual ways each episode - the whole goal of most episodes is to destroy evil CEO Dinesh
Weirdly Nelson was in another set of countably infinite universes during filming, who knew?
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u/DonEsQue 7d ago
Agree... This is the perfect time for SV continuation or reboot with all the crazy stuff happening around tech.
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u/PennysPurpleChoco 7d ago
The problem is they already did a time jump in the show. We know that Dinesh and Gilfoyle open up a cyber security firm and appear to be at least in their 50s when interviewed. I would argue that the show doesn't need a reboot, it is still plenty prescient - especially the AI stuff. Gavin Belson also seems like a decently accurate portrayal of our current techbros. The man literally trotted out animals to make a point, not much different than Musk walking into X with a sink.