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I actually liked Betas, which is Amazon's Silicon-Valley-based show. I hated it at first (it made me cringe a lot), but then I realized it wasn't that the writi

I actually liked Betas, which is Amazon's Silicon-Valley-based show. I hated it at first (it made me cringe a lot), but then I realized it wasn't that the writing was bad. Rather, it was so spot on, it made me cringe because I know people (and companies) like that. Once I realized they were in on the joke, I liked it a lot better. They clearly knew SV culture really well. There were a lot of great references, and many scenes were clearly shot in SF. http://www.amazon.com/Pilot-HD/dp/B00CDBX1PA http://www.amazon.com/Pilot-HD/dp/B00CDBX1PA

yzzxy 13y ago
I felt beyond the specific area, it was extremely good at capturing the weird zeitgeist of millennial culture - not the living-with-parents-unemployed-loser stereotype, but the confused generation of people who grew up along with the internet. I can't really think of a specific instance of this, but the characters on the startup team had very specific, subtle character traits that I associate with people I know who are 20-30 right now.
swanson 13y ago
Maybe it's just the HBO polish but Silicon Valley seemed to be better overall than Betas. At least in the pilot, I had empathy for Richard (the lead in SV) - Tre (the lead in Betas) always seemed like kind of a dick to me. The self-aware parody seemed just a bit too high in Betas; so far, SV as much more restraint. Once SV fleshes out the supporting characters and the main arc, it will be interesting to see if my opinions are still the same.