Top 10 Most Hilarious Silicon Valley Moments

Whenever actor Andrew Daly pops up on this show, the results are always comedic gold. Daly plays Richard’s doctor, who has the worst bedside manner imaginable. As Richard faces a life-altering career decision, he practically barfs up a lung. His physician writes this off as a garden-variety panic attack, which is common in Silicon Valley. The doctor adds to Richard’s phobias when he tells him about another patient who was in a similar position. Long story short, he ended up shooting and accidentally blinding himself. As if that’s not bad enough, the doc shows Richard the proper way to commit suicide and asks him to invest in his startup. No wonder Richard vomits again.

After Richard hits it out of the park at TechCrunch, everybody in Silicon Valley wants a piece of him. Stern-Taylor even invites Richard and company to AT&T Park to play with the San Francisco Giants. Needless to say, Richard isn’t much of an athlete. Just as Richard feels out of place on a baseball field, he isn’t sure whether or not to accept so many extravagant gifts. Erlich, on the other hand, relishes as all these firms suck up to them. This opening to Season 2 has no shortage of memorable moments, as Gilfoyle and Dinesh compete for a woman’s affection, Erlich spots the Winklevoss twins, and Richard realizes that everyone’s watching him.

Although Pied Piper has surpassed 500,000 downloads, the number of daily active users is surprisingly low. To figure out what’s going on, a focus group is assembled to test the platform. They’re totally freaked out, but in all the wrong ways. It suddenly dawns on Richard that he almost exclusively showed the Pied Piper platform to fellow engineers. Mainstream users, however, have no idea how it works. This leads to a hysterical scene as Richard confronts the group and tries to explain the platform. It takes a while, but Richard eventually gets through to them and guarantees this isn’t a Skynet situation. Unfortunately, he can’t give this lengthy tutorial to everybody that downloaded Pied Piper.

People often think of tech billionaires as supreme overlords that look down on others from their ivory towers. While that might be a hasty generalization, it pretty much sums up Gavin Belson in a nutshell. The founder of Hooli, Gavin is constantly making hilarious observations about his employees. In the pilot, he can’t help but notice that programmers always travel in groups of five. But it’s not just any five guys; no, it’s a very, very specific set of five types of guys. Of course, Galvin’s guru/yes-man is there to feed his boss’ ego and support his hypothesis.

At a binding arbitration, it looks like Richard to bound to lose Pied Piper’s intellectual property to Hooli. Accepting the inevitable, Richard instructs his friends to wipe out the Pied Piper code before Gavin Belson gains control. In an unexpected turn, however, the judge rules in Richard’s favor. The problem is that Richard’s phone dies with Pied Piper on the verge of deletion. This amounts to an uproarious and even exciting race against the clock. Richard faces one calamity after another, as he loses his car keys, tries to send an email, and winds up just running to the house. At first, it appears Richard is too late. But luckily, Pied Pier is preserved thanks to Dinesh’s garbage code.

This entire episode is like one big joke with a priceless punch line. Unwilling to build a box, Richard and the gang decide to build a Pied Piper platform in secrecy. The guys spend the whole night devising a foolproof plan to develop the platform right under Jack Barker’s nose. The audience is led to believe that this is the beginning of a major story arc that’ll progress throughout the season. Instead, we get a perfect anticlimax. Tripping over a hose, Richard accidentally drops several documents and reveals the team’s plans. Thus, the top-secret project ends before it even gets started. Probably should’ve destroyed those documents at home, Richard. Not your smoothest move.

An autonomous car might seem like an incredible innovation. If this subplot proves anything, though, it’s that driverless cars still have a long way to go. Jared is overjoyed when a self-driving automobile picks up him. Unfortunately, the car changes destinations to Peter Gregory’s island, which is over 4,000 miles away. We know what you’re thinking: how can a car drive to an island? Well, the car takes poor Jared to a shipyard and drives into a cargo container. Unable to open the door, he’s sealed inside with a 103-hour journey ahead. It’s a classic little problem that quickly escalates into a much bigger problem, not to mention a definitive Jared moment.

Erlich is largely responsible for some of the funniest moments in the entire series and this scene finds him at his absolute best. In desperate need of Adderall to keep his young programmer friend awake, Richard seeks out a young drug peddler. When Richard learns that the kid ripped him off, he politely asks for some real Adderall. All he gets, though, is a demeaning slap. Already full of pent-up frustration, Erlich comes to Richard’s defense by smacking the little brat across the face. In epic fashion, Erlich tosses the kid’s bike into the bushes and threatens his family. Erlich may go a little overboard, but it’s beyond satisfying seeing “Church Candy” get his just deserts.

During a live stream of a condor egg, Jared fears that the baby bird isn’t going to hatch. This, of course, sparks a conversation about Schrödinger’s cat. Although the others advise Jared to leave it alone, he decides to call the museum, which results in the live stream being shut down. When a technician arrives at the nest, however, he suffers a great fall. While he doesn’t die, it’s still jarring to see “Silicon Valley” enter “127 Hours” territory. The fact that Jared is kinda responsible for almost killing a guy only adds to the dark humor. This is easily one of the most shocking moments in the series, but it still prompts uncontrollable laughter.

Before we get to our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions:
- Consider the Elephant
“Daily Active Users”

- It’s Apple Maps Bad
“Homicide”

- Bam-Bot
“Founder Friendly”

At the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield, Pied Piper goes head-to-head with Hooli’s Nucleus. While both applications have the same Weissman score, Nucleus has the upper hand thanks to several additional features. Brainstorming ideas for their presentation, Erlich suggests giving every guy in the audience a handjob. This prompts an extensive conversation about how Erlich could jerk off every crowd member in ten minutes. The subject matter may be immature, but this is quite possibly the most brilliantly written scene in the whole series. Furthermore, it gives Richard a genius idea, as he realizes how to improve Pied Piper’s Weissman score overnight. Sometimes inspiration comes from the most unexpected places.