![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/b8bbdc06c3b081a823e5f0fea45e58e80a-audacity-ep1.rsquare.w400.jpg\")
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The Audacity<\/a><\/p>\n Best of All Possible Worlds<\/p>\n \n Season 1<\/p>\n Episode 1\n <\/p>\n \n Editor\u2019s Rating<\/p>\n 3 stars<\/p>\n ***\n <\/p>\n \n Jonathan Glatzer returns to the world of prestige television with a tech-world satire that speaks to the burning resentment the Palo Alto crowd inspires. \u201cBest of All Possible Worlds\u201d is now available on AMC+ ahead of its 9 p.m. ET broadcast premiere.<\/p>\n \u201cYou Agreed To This.\u201d<\/p>\n There are many more overt examples of Silicon Valley misbehavior sprinkled through the premiere episode of The Audacity, but the essence of Jonathan Glatzer\u2019s tech-world satire may be in this digital billboard that appears on the side of the road. \u201cYou Agreed To This\u201d is the apparent slogan for Spookle, one of those nonsense company names that sounds like it\u2019s following a trend, like when dot-com media start-ups were adding \u201cist\u201d to the end of words. In light of the chicanery that happens in the episode, the phrase also suggests a bit of victim-blaming for the harvesting of personal data. Like, hey, it\u2019s your fault for not reading the terms and conditions on some stupid app before thoughtlessly clicking your life away. Now Spookle knows more about you than your mother.<\/p>\n Glatzer, who created The Audacity and wrote this first episode, has a sterling television r\u00e9sum\u00e9 that includes scripts for Better Call Saul<\/a> <\/a>and Succession<\/a>, and the tone of this first hour undeniably evokes the latter, with its sharp-tongued dissection of the rich and rapacious. It\u2019s also an unmistakable West Coast echo of Billions<\/a>, given how much time is devoted to ultra-elite power brokers manipulating the market and dancing around regulators while seeming like the most miserable people on earth. (Generally speaking, it\u2019s comforting for viewers to imagine billionaires wallowing in misery, which is why Joyce Carol Oates\u2019s Elon Musk tweets<\/a> are such a delight.) What truly stands out about The Audacity, however, is how much it channels the hostility people feel toward the Palo Alto crowd in 2026. The gentle lampooning of the HBO series Silicon Valley<\/a> a decade ago has curdled into seething, burn-it-down contempt.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s a risk that The Audacity is courting in a premiere that doesn\u2019t care yet about turning its satirical targets into antiheroes, which is what Glatzer was doing on Better Call Saul and Succession. So far, this is a show about two scam artists who have cheated their way into privilege and fortune and are currently paying for it through broken relationships and fucked-up kids who detest them. It is not necessarily Glatzer\u2019s job to humanize his characters any more than he cares to, because that\u2019s not a high priority for a satire. But it\u2019ll be interesting to see if there are more layers to the show than fitfully amusing nastiness that defines it so far.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no better description of Duncan Park (Billy Magnussen), the CEO of a data outfit called Hypergnosis, than \u201ca dumb man\u2019s genius,\u201d the phrase an executive at an Apple-like company uses to help shut down acquisition talks with him. Duncan has not only been banking on the acquisition to happen, but he\u2019s also been leaking rumors of the sale in order to boost company stock. This is a classic white-collar felony, of course, but as Duncan colorfully puts it, \u201cRaising money off frothy numbers to sugarcoat the rotten apple is what built this town.\u201d How can it be fraud if everyone does it? It\u2019s not as if the SEC is looking over anyone\u2019s shoulders. The only real threat is a whistleblower, like an outcast kid overhearing the whole criminal scheme from the floor below his mother\u2019s office. But we\u2019ll get to that in a bit.<\/p>\n Duncan entrusts this information to his therapist, JoAnne Felder (Sarah Goldberg), who serves as a \u201cperformance psychologist\u201d to Palo Alto tech CEOs who need to grouse about the ill effects of their professional sociopathy. (To that end, add The Sopranos to the list of prestige influences.) JoAnne isn\u2019t subtle about plugging Duncan for details about the failed acquisition, asking him when he expects word to come out about it right after wondering how he\u2019ll feel about it. Because of doctor-patient confidentiality, execs like Duncan are free to talk openly about corporate secrets, and JoAnne, who drives a BMW and enrolls her weird son Orson (Everett Blunck) into a private feeder school for Stanford, benefits from the inside information. The moment Duncan leaves her office, JoAnne is on the phone with her broker.<\/p>\n The episode builds to a scene when Duncan, having sniffed out JoAnne\u2019s scheme, blackmails her into an even larger scheme to pump rival executives for business scoops. (That Duncan needs to use a God-like privacy-violating algorithm to discover a deception that was right there in front of him is one of the episode\u2019s subtler ironies.) But Glatzer has an array of supporting characters to set up first and he gets it done with impressive economy, spinning out from Duncan\u2019s calamitous personal life. His marriage to Lili (Lucy Punch) has grown so toxic that they\u2019ve opened it up to other partners, with the proviso that they keep each other informed about who they\u2019re bedding. Neither of them pays much attention to their daughter, Jamison (Ava Marie Telek), other than Lili fat-shaming the girl for grazing through the lemon squares at a pool party.<\/p>\n While Duncan rages over Lili\u2019s new affair with a Finnish CFO, he still hasn\u2019t gotten over his on-again\/off-again dalliances with Anushka (Meaghan Rath), the \u201cDirector of Ethical Innovation\u201d at the company that\u2019s refusing to acquire Hypergnosis. Anushka\u2019s role on Duncan\u2019s board led to her recusal from those negotiations, but he presses her for details relentlessly and seeks her intimate support. Someone as seemingly put-together as Anushka may not look like a candidate to mop up Duncan\u2019s flopsweat, but her home life is a disaster, too, with a husband named Martin (Simon Helberg) who obsesses over his own chatbot and a mopey daughter named Tess (Thailey Roberge) who relieves her angst through clich\u00e9d outlets like kleptomania.<\/p>\n Glatzer\u2019s disdain spins out behind Silicon Valley, too. He\u2019s got plenty left over for the wonderfully named Tom Ruffage (Rob Corddry), an undersecretary who\u2019s poking around town in search of someone willing to help streamline the data at the VA, a government agency that\u2019s notoriously bogged down by bureaucracy. Tom and his underling don\u2019t even make it into Anushka\u2019s office before her colleague, \u201cLil\u2019 Tim\u201d Kwan (Curtis Lum), likens Tom\u2019s request to asking France to help his mother set up his printer. (\u201cFrance but with, like, much, much, much more money than France.\u201d) That leads to a hilarious scene where Duncan meets Tom at Anushka\u2019s request, expecting access to a sensitive, vital Department of Defense operation, only to encounter \u201cold urine-soaked vets with their weird hats and broken brains.\u201d You\u2019d think it would make Tom a pitiable figure, but he\u2019s less interested in fighting for veterans than securing hotel-room luxuries.<\/p>\n The wild card in this whole scenario is Orson, who the show positions as a lonely, uncool kid who\u2019s been shipped to his mother\u2019s home in the wake of his father\u2019s (and her ex\u2019s) hospitalization back east. While staying in JoAnne\u2019s basement, Orson discovers a cellar that happens to sit on a thin floor below her home office, where he can overhear her sessions with patients. When Duncan coerces JoAnne into teaming up for white-collar crime, Orson picks up every word, which crushes him while also giving him a trump card he can play at any time. He seems like the type of kid who could do the right thing, but in the world of The Audacity, such nobility is hard to find.<\/p>\n \u2022 One promising character disconnected from the plotting so far is Zach Galifianakis as Carl Bardolph, a client of JoAnne\u2019s who made some untold fortune in the business, but has since turned into a bitter recluse. His complaint to JoAnne about public resentment of Silicon Valley sounds a lot like what bros of his ilk are thinking these days: \u201cPeople act like we took something as if we didn\u2019t build everything they touch. And we didn\u2019t build it to be worshipped. We built it to work, and it does work. But where\u2019s our parade? All I see are pitchforks and ingratitude.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0\u201cFahfa was a juggernaut in its time.\u201d The low-hanging comic fruit of a show like The Audacity is coming up with great nonsense names for dead tech outfits. (See also: Aviato in Silicon Valley.)<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0If we want to engage in a little moral relativism, JoAnne profiting off inside information from her clients seems like the fair cost of having to deal with their demands. When she tries to get off the phone with Duncan to talk to her son at the airport, he snaps, \u201cI don\u2019t care if he\u2019s in a stranger\u2019s van licking lollipops. You do not hang up on me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Shout out to this week\u2019s invisible underclass, including the servant that Duncan falsely cans for ratting him out to his wife, the maid that has to remake Orson\u2019s bed with \u201cspecial sheets,\u201d and the workers in Guangzhou who have apparently taken their own lives due to factory conditions.<\/p>\n \u2022 Hypergnosis seems like a shambling operation, but Duncan has lucked into a trans coder named Harper (Jess McLeod) whose algorithm is so powerful that it can mine a person\u2019s entire digital footprint in seconds. That\u2019s useful for plot purposes (e.g. Duncan finding out about JoAnne\u2019s side hustle), but the premiere gets a nice laugh about of his efforts to learn more about his wife\u2019s lover. (His likes? Wheat beer, herring, and anal.)<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0Martin to the authentically miserable Jamison: \u201cCan you hold that face? I\u2019m building an intelligent entity, more of an autonomous companion for alienated teens, based on personal data ecosystems, but it has been a real slog to replicate a genuine look of bothersomeness.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Hiring a Black headmaster based on her appearance at something called the Aspen Education Summit is perfect, as is Lili\u2019s speech praising the woman\u2019s \u201cterrifically underprivileged upbringing in Chicago.\u201d Don\u2019t be surprised if this same great hire gets axed for showing any initiative at all in the job.<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Vulture Newsletter<\/p>\n Entertainment news, for the pop-culture obsessed.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n
\n Photo: Ed Araquel\/AMC\n <\/p>\n