It\u2019s one week until The Audacity\u2019s first season finale (or the week of the finale, if you\u2019re watching on AMC+), and look at how far things have come. HyperGnosis has a new boss and a new mission, and a different earth-shattering technology hidden away in its little programming cave.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Carl is fully back in the game, riding herd on the revamped HyperG and buying up his favorite restaurant so he can dictate who they do and do not serve. Among the latter: Duncan has cobbled together a whole new company and is poised to become the new face of radical data transparency\u2014not that anyone else wants that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Duncan\u2019s bribe has supercharged JoAnne\u2019s shady investing, and with every move she\u2019s made to cover her tracks, she\u2019s acting more and more like one of her clients.<\/p>\n
Orson and Tom are now fully integrated into their surroundings and reflections of the world those surroundings have built\u2014with Orson\u2019s transformation so repulsive that it drove Tess to renounce teenage rebellion and embrace her life as a child of extreme wealth and privilege.<\/p>\n
Character arcs all significantly advanced from where they started\u2014and, truth be told, where they left off in episode six<\/a>. Life moves at a quicker pace in Silicon Valley\u2014one that\u2019s fast and prone to breaking things, as the old startup chestnut goes\u2014but in order to fit the amount of story in season one into eight episodes, The Audacity really has to put the pedal to the metal this week. And while the jump to hyperspeed at least preserves the season\u2019s feeling of perpetual motion and endless surprise, it can also feel like \u201cFoundering\u201d is skipping some essential steps to get everything in position for the season finale.<\/p>\n Once more, I\u2019m prone to seeing The Audacity\u2019s methods in it contents: The episode where the show takes some narrative shortcuts is also the one where Duncan tries to optimize labyrinth walking\u2014why does the Myxy CEO not simply cross the path to the center of the labyrinth? It\u2019s also the one where Martin, after six episodes (and who knows how many years) of diligent tinkering, makes a major Xander breakthrough with a few keystrokes and a night of computing. Granted, he\u2019s only able to do so with HyperGnosis\u2019 full backing (and Anushka and Carl\u2019s goading), but it still feels somewhat convenient, no?<\/p>\n Before all that, and after the disastrous trial run that prompts Xander\u2019s evolution, \u201cFoundering\u201d finds some artful ways of showing how long it\u2019s been since \u201cSandbox.\u201d After a spectacular flameout where the adolescent bot asks a vet who\u2019s lost her leg what it\u2019s like to even have a leg, Tom exits the room and whips out his phone, which tells him it\u2019s been 34 days since his last drink. And now we know: In a little more than a month, HyperGnosis has brought both the MUMP programmers and Xander under its roof, given Martin\u2019s pet project the eye of Gnodin, and prepared to ingest pallet after pallet of VA paperwork.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is the kind of material a time jump is made for\u2014was anyone particularly itching to see HyperGnosis rebuilt hire by hire and server by server? \u201cFoundering\u201d leaps to the most interesting part of that process, and then uses Tom\u2019s sobriety app to define the passage of time hinted at by all the small changes around the office. Tom is kind of the ideal character for this type of storytelling, too. The changes he\u2019s made within this short window of time are communicated through wardrobe and performance as well as the script, with Rob Corddry projecting a renewed confidence through what his character is wearing and the way he carries himself. No more hiding beneath the Desert Storm cap for this seemingly acclimated creature of the valley!<\/p>\n It\u2019s easier to pull this off with a character who\u2019s less important to the narrative\u2014considering the way Tom came and went in the middle stretches of the season, it\u2019s to be expected that he\u2019d go through some major changes offscreen. The same goes for Orson, who\u2019s Tom\u2019s photo negative in \u201cFoundering\u201d: He\u2019s feeling a lot more self-assured, and showing it through his behavior and personal styling. But it\u2019s decidedly Not A Good Thing, and at least partially because of something he\u2019s putting in his body, rather than abstaining from: A urine test reveals that the gut tincture\u2019s secret ingredient is steroids\u2014lots and lots of steroids. It turns out Orson has been emulating his manosphere idols in ways he wasn\u2019t even aware of.\u00a0<\/p>\n Work your way to the top of the call sheet, though, and the acceleration in \u201cFoundering\u201d starts to feel less effective. The Audacity has made a fine sport out of setting Billy Magnussen loose on Duncan\u2019s increasingly unhinged pronouncements, and it\u2019s abundantly clear at this point that what the character excels at most is overpromising and underdelivering\u2014a bullshit artist of the highest magnitude. What feels murkier is why, exactly, PINATA is rattling Duncan\u2019s peers. Like Carl says, making private data public is neither a new idea nor a proven path to success. But the guy who\u2019s giving it a whirl now has a less-than-sterling track record and faceplanted out of the last company he co-founded. The greater fear, which Carl expresses but The Audacity hasn\u2019t really had the time to convey, is that the latest development from the twisted mind of Duncan Park is one that will prove so unpopular, it\u2019ll finally bring the regulation hammer down on the valley.<\/p>\n I admire that The Audacity isn\u2019t spoonfeeding all of these conclusions to us. And I think \u201cFoundering\u201d finds a clever way to plant the idea of PINATA\u2019s unintended consequences: Harper\u2019s mention of forum chuds drooling over this new opportunity for privacy violation says all you need to know about how bad it could be. Yet in other places, there\u2019s the inescapable feeling of the show moving from point A to point C without being able to fully or satisfyingly explain how it got there.<\/p>\n Where this gets most frustrating is in the Duncan-JoAnne material. Last week\u2019s twist and the puppet master monologue that preceded it were fulfilling on a narrative and character level; this week, there\u2019s a delicious callback to Duncan\u2019s speech when it\u2019s revealed that he bought JoAnne and Gary\u2019s house under the name Puppeteer Real Estate Holdings. But the interpersonal fallout from that session feels like more of the same. They bicker during appointments. Duncan mutters unsettling things to JoAnne at a Las Altas function. JoAnne tries to reason with Duncan, but Duncan won\u2019t listen to reason.<\/p>\n The wheels are spinning here, and I have to think it\u2019s because Duncan\u2019s done so much and had so much happen to him over seven episodes, while JoAnne has stayed relatively static. She\u2019s still dealing with the same problem she had in the premiere, the only difference is she\u2019s insider trading with significantly more money. And though the situation with Duncan has escalated considerably, the scenes between them, as mentioned above, haven\u2019t changed.<\/p>\n Sara Goldberg\u2019s giving it her all, but she\u2019s giving it to an underwritten character. But where in the span of these first seven episodes could JoAnne have gained more dimension? More scenes like the one where she tours the crappy house with the big price tag in \u201cLamplighters<\/a>,\u201d probably. But there hasn\u2019t been a ton of room for scenes like that one, or Lili and Dr. Webb\u2019s getaway to the mudbaths. That\u2019s part of the problem with a season this short on a show with an ensemble as deep as The Audacity\u2014particularly when the storytelling is hastening the way it does in \u201cFoundering.\u201d The chances to catch your breath and give your characters a little shading pretty much evaporate\u2014that\u2019s why the highlight of this week just might be the light spot of commiseration between Martin and Carl where they connect on leap-frogging over their peers into a college experience they weren\u2019t equipped to handle.<\/p>\n And now it\u2019s full steam ahead toward a finale where Duncan is due to blow up the entire valley\u2019s spot at an event that I don\u2019t think we\u2019ve heard about before this week, in conversation with a character who\u2019s been treated largely as an unseen boogeyman. The mentions of reporter Nana Marks in \u201cFoundering,\u201d like the sight of Dr. Webb walking past one of the locker memorials at Las Altas, serve as reminders of the world-building that The Audacity has had limited time to cultivate. Not saying that these are things that needed to be part of the landscape in every single episode. But when the show whizzes past them, it would be nice not to think \u201cOh yeah, I forgot that was there!\u201d<\/p>\n Stray observations<\/p>\n