Silicon Valley - The Complete Second Season

The second season of "Silicon Valley" wows its audience with a voracious glimpse of the future of tech. Don't worry the five guys (and now one girl, not everyone in tech has testes) in this series haven't stolen your startup idea.

This show is not about a self-walking dog leash, or smart home technology that will revolutionize the way you heat and cool your home or even a dick recognition app for your smartphone.

No. It's still about an algorithm. But, hang on a minute; this is the formula that everyone in the industry wants to emulate.

After little guy Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch) debuted his company Pied Piper and his idea for lossless compression at TechCrunch Disrupt last season, he's been wined and dined by some of the biggest companies in the industry. Still, he plans to stay true to his original patron and his attractive (and oddly down-to-earth) assistant Monica (Amanda Crew).

Still, the sudden death of their funder Peter Gregory means that fortunes won't change much for Richard and his kooky little team, including the loud-mouthed, Buddha-shaped Don Juan Erlich Bachman (T. J. Miller), the big-boy Bevis and Butthead team of CTOs Bertram Gilfoyle (Martin Starr) and Dinesh Chugtai (Kumail Nanjiani) and the soft spoken and semi-oblivious CFO who screams out German profanities in his sleep as Jared Dunn (Zach Woods).

Unfortunately, the brightest star and biggest ass in the industry, Gavin Belson (Matt Ross), is suing the Pied Piper team. He and his industry dominating mega-corp Hooli (a name that doesn't accidentally resemble a real-life technology monopoly) have no claim on Richard's intellectual property, but he has money and lawyers, and that's all he needs.

On top of that, the deceptive streaming video company End Frame has "brain-fucked" most of the code out of our heroes' heads, and they are left with no one to support them but the mad billionaire who put "radio on the internet," Russ Hanneman (Chris Diamantopoulos).

The reason that "Silicon Valley" works so well is because it is the answer to "Office Space." The everyman's new nine to five is no longer the soul-crushing cubicle of yesteryear. The underdog can still solve the world most overlooked problems in his garage, and this show does it with hope, authenticity and reliable laughs.

The special features in this two-disc Blu-ray collection are scant: A super-short featurette that lets us know the tech in this series is absolutely based in reality, some deleted scenes and some audio commentaries. But the amazing, detailed and smoothly flowing picture reminds us constantly that we're a long way from our own lossless compression. The best video is still on Blu-ray.

"Silicon Valley: The Complete Second Season"
Blu-ray $34.98
www.hbo.com/siliconvalley