HBO comedy “Silicon Valley” – pilot script leaked | Hacker News Reader

HBO comedy “Silicon Valley” – pilot script leaked

qz.com

106 pointsmneedham72 comments

Holy crap, the overdone continuous scrolling and animation makes that page almost useless. Scroll a little bit, and suddenly I'm jumped to a different part of the page. Don't scroll too far up, or it loads the previous article right in place, and doesn't keep you where you were. Then the top-bar seems to come down at random.

What a frustrating example of overdoing an attempt at a "rich experience" thus hindering the user experience of trying to just read the goddamned article. I'll take the bullshit multipage approach that clickmongers use over this goofy and unintuitive interface.

You know, one of the eternal downsides of a discussion site filled with web developers is that whenever you post a link, instead of discussing the actual content, the top-rated comment is far too often an angry criticism of the website design itself, followed by tangent about Javascript or something.

And this is why I keep coming back! The off-topic stuff is great.

In this case, the website design is so horrible as to render a discussion about the topic impossible, since the design has made it impossible to read the damn thing.

That seems a tad melodramatic..

Have you been to the site? It's not at all navigable on desktops. When you can't even read the content without being shoved into another section of the site entirely, it's kind of a big deal.

I managed to read it on a desktop just fine.

hardly, it could be because I block all their trackers on the site, but I just see a spinning circle.

I consider this an eternal upside.

That's the first thing I noticed. Somehow I accidentally scrolled up three articles or so and I couldn't find my way back to this article. I had to back out to HN and click the link again and then I was super careful not to scroll too fast lest I end up on some other page. Horrible user experience.

qz.com should have a warning sign "DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING!".

it's worse than blogspot.

I've been to this website a few times and I've never gotten past the loading throbber.

I don't remember 99% of sites I visit from HN but I somehow remembered this one and I've only seen it once. Maybe that's what they are aiming for.

Uh yeah i'm not on a tablet or phone; horrible experience!

Try running it whoutt JS enabled. Nothing says quality like three levels of nested scrollbars.

A lot better to read via Instapaper: http://www.instapaper.com/text?u=http%3A%2F%2Fqz.com%2F44671...

wasn't there some other HN article that was posted from this site? there were plenty of complaints then, too.

ugh, there's a bunch. all clickbaity headlines: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=qz.com

Like a load of "mobile optimised" websites it only gives the smart phone user 5 or so words per line of text. Amazing when you consider my first Internet capable only had a monitor with a mere 60 thousand extra pixels compared to my phone.

Silicon Valley : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2575988/

Director & writer is Mike Judge who is known for his animated series Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill as well as the classic Office Space.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/

And Idiocracy.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

I'm going to watch the hell out of this!

From the article:

    TANDY: This is it? This is where all the tech billionaires decided to live?
    LANGDON: It can't be. (stops a passerby) Excuse me, is this Palo Alto?

Hilarious :)

Unless they were standing outside a whole foods or so, I don't buy the existence of "passerby"

Downtown Palo Alto is very walkable with lots of pedestrian traffic.

It's television.

Well downtown palo alto has passerbys.

I still haven't figured out which mountains I'm supposed to be viewing in Mountain View.

That would be the Santa Cruz mountains, apparently.

A few days ago someone linked to a test for media, where you had to see if two women have a conversation that isn't about men. I don't know why, but it really stuck with me, and then I was really disappointed when the two female characters in this script turned out to be gold diggers.

I'm not trying to argue there should be more women in this show. I'm mostly just complaining about whoever planted this idea in my head. It may be good, but it's kind of ruining my enjoyment of pop culture

You're referring to the Bechdel Test.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test

This sounds absolutely terrible. Hopefully they've made significant changes, but the stuff included in the OP's link fits with the story beats mentioned in my link below.

From a review submitted to AICN: "If this script is unchanged as HBO begins production, it will be one of the worst pilots HBO has ever aired. The draft I read is dated mid October, so God willing Mike Judge (and other writers John Altschuler & Dave Krinsky) get their act together. Frankly, I had to re-read this twice to really take in just how God awful it is.

Even shorter review: Mike Judge drives through Silicon Valley. Once. He then fills a script with uninteresting stereotypes. It is not funny. At all."

"This isn't Office Space humor of reality/biting sarcasm. This isn't Idiocracy humor of the absurd. It's like a drive by concept, that in execution lacks any semblance of humor, because the world they've created isn't believable and the characters they've populated in it lack any semblance of reality."

link to full review: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/60283

> because the world they've created isn't believable and the characters they've populated in it lack any semblance of reality

Sounds like the Valley I know and love.

Who is "Nolan Night"? Is he qualified to review a script? Reading a script is hard. A lot of fantastic movies have screenplays that sound terrible if you don't have an ear for it (and I don't, that's how I know I'm right).

I think it's somewhat interesting that he dedicates so much time ripping on the whole brogrammers thing as stupid without realizing it's a long-running SV in-joke.

SV/startup culture does deserve some skewering. This will probably be awesome.

The script excerpts make for a good tease, but I generally have a bias for HBO shows anyway. I think this is going to be interesting, unlike Big Bang Theory which bored me within the first season.

I wish I could punch the writers of bbt in the face after a year of boxing/fitness training coupled with consuming the best steroids on the planet. And then doing the same to whoever that idiot is that portrays Sheldon.

Big Bang Theory is definitely not a show for geeks.

Now Fringe, there's a show for geeks (warning the science may be slightly liberal at times)

I really like Fringe because most of the season finales could be the final season and I'll be OK with it. I actually thought the previous season was the final season.

2-hour series finale is tonight (Friday). The most disappointing thing is that it's one of the only Sci-Fi shows on TV right now, and I'm counting the SyFy channel.

Big Bang theory is offensive.

Ironically I think Silicon Valley will appreciate this show so much more than Bravo's attempt to glamorize it.

I work in SV, and yeah, this is a good skewer.

seems the opposite of ironic to me

It's slightly ironic that SV/tech people will enjoy watching something where they're somewhat mocked vs. fawned over, I think.

fair point. but, op was contrasting HBOs version with Bravos version, both of which presumably do a great job of mocking and fawning. which suggests the proposed source of irony is elsewhere.

I thought it was that Bravo failed by being "earnest/fawning", ie the opposite of cynical/ironic

That page has a white "loading" overlay that I had to "display:none;" to see the content. I really hope people stop using them soon.

your probably using adblocker or ghostery. they dont show you the content unless you disable them. Scummy.

Might be accidental, can be a real pain if you develop media tech (and don't personally run adblock yourself).

Not opining on how good it is: the script matters less than the execution.

Have you ever watched Coupling? It is an extremely funny British sitcom (ignoring the 4th season, which is just "funny", but not as good as the first 3 seasons, with the exception of a couple of episodes).

It was also successful in the US. So, an american version with american actors was made, as is customary (see e.g. The Office, Queer as Folk, Being Human, etc, etc, etc.)

It had exactly the same texts for the expisodes I watched. It had reasonably good actors. But it just wasn't funny. I gave it the benefit of doubt. Then rewatched the british. Still funny. Then the american. Not funny.

(Successful conversions like "the office" go their own way, rather than stay true to the original)

The best script is useless without a matching excellent delivery. And a lesser script is still excellent with the right delivery. (Think about how Seinfeld would look if done by your other favorite comedians who are not Seinfeld/Louis-Dreyfus/Spadowski et al)

I like Mike Judge's past work. I'm going to wait until I see it executed before I have an opinion.

That script just reminds me this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzNRUkl9BoY&list=PL88631E...

How I love the Valley.

Did they really say EAST Palo Alto? Maybe if they're squatting at IKEA.

Hugh Mason from JFDI.Asia and Daniel of This Week in Asia said "startups is becoming more and more a spectator sport"

I might watch if it actually depicts life in SV. I just hope they don't go too crazy just to get higher ratings.

It's a fictional comedy, not a reality show.

There's nothing hilarious about 1 million tweets @3:00 am complaining about your server being down . . . of course if it's somebody elses server, well, that's comedy gold.

You know, if the show actually did have stuff like servers going dow, I am going to watch the shit out of it.

Dammit, now I'm setting the bar too high in my head.

Maybe they'll surprise you by having a bar empty out after CloudCo's North Virginia datacenter has an outage.

Sure, the details are fictional, but there's a true-to-life quality that some comedies have.

Hah, the most depressing moment of my life was when I realized that Office Space is disturbingly close to reality.

Then there's hope. I haven't lived in Office Space for three years now as a developer.

You imply that there is a distinction between those two terms. That's like saying, "it's a choreographed fight scene, not pro wrestling"

There's no need to emphasize fiction there; both shows are fake.

Doesn't work very well with Ghostery, http://i.imgur.com/tsXZh.png

Does anyone have a link to the actual leaked script? Can't seem to find on that page (it's scrolling all over the place :)

Can we get a link to the whole script?

Some geeks look rapey.

Nope!

Fuck hbo, comcast, et. al. they peaked in the 80s. seriously, what purpose do they serve? Curators of taste?

HBO is running some of the greatest shows these days, wouldn't you agree?

I would agree. I was just expressing rage at comcast more than anything. hbo was a collateral casualty.

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