The second season of HBO’s Silicon Valley ended with the ouster of Richard (Thomas Middleditch) from Pied Piper. The third season, and the first trailer for it, find him scrambling to retain some kind of grasp on the company he started. There are, as it stands, surprisingly few dick jokes.
The third season finds the crew confronting the company’s new CEO, Jack Barker, played wonderfully by Stephen Tobolowsky. Aside from that, things seem to be stuck in the status quo, with Erlich (T.J. Miller) insulting Jack in an improvised assault of insults, and Donald (Zach Woods) being a lovable idiot, while Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani) and Gilfoyle (Martin Starr) mostly stay in the sidelines, saying things to upset Richard. At one point, a unicorn kind of makes an appearance. You’ll see.
We also get some footage of Pied Piper rival and Google-parody Hooli, so it’s good to know that aspect of the show isn’t going to disappear in favor of only internal strife. Also, the absurdity of Hooli paired with the half-assedness of Pied Piper makes me hope that, by the end of this show, PP will be a global conglomerate just as idiotic as Hooli, but that’s just a pipe dream, and has nothing to do with the fact that Silicon Valley’s third 10-episode season premieres on HBO on April 24.