Nip Alert For Silicon Valley Casting

In an exclusive to Deadline, it has been revealed Christopher Evan Welch, Amanda Crew, Angela Trimbur, Zach Woods and Kumail Nanjiani are the latest names set to co-star in Silicon Valley, HBO’s single-camera dark comedy pilot from the King Of The Hill trio of Mike Judge, John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky and producer Scott Rudin. The five join previously cast T.J. Miller, Thomas Middleditch, Josh Brener and Lindsey Broad. Silicon Valley is set in the high tech gold rush of modern Silicon Valley, where the people most qualified to succeed are the least capable of handling success. The pilot will be directed by Judge (Office Space) from a script he co-wrote with Altschuler and Krinsky. The trio also previously worked together on the short-lived The Goode Family, and MTV's recent revival of Beavis and Butt-Head, but this is their first live-action project. The script review on Ain't It Cool News was not very flattering, although the source noted that the script was from October so it may have been improved since then. At the time, the characters were one-dimensional stereotypes, but now that living, breathing actors have been cast in these roles, let's hope that the script has been fleshed out.

Welch, of the AMC series Rubicon, is on board as Peter Gregory, an eccentric tech billionaire who is the most successful entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. According to an early review of the pilot script on Ain't It Cool News, the character is modeled after Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and the first outside investor in Facebook. Canadian actress Crew (Sex Drive) will play Peter's head of operations named Monica, who serves as his human touch. In addition to being bright and highly competent, Monica is described as downright beautiful by Silicon Valley standards. menawhile, Trimbur (The Future) has landed the role of Langdon, an unemployed publicist carrying a mountain of debt. She has given up any hope of finding the wonderful and wealthy man of her dreams in Los Angeles.


Another former Office cast member, most memorable for his creepy and cloying performance as Gabe, Woods plays against type in the Silicon Valley pilot as a hard-working and enthusiastic young business executive named Jared. I guess he wasn't the Scranton Strangler after all. Kumail Nanjiani of TNT's Franklin & Bash will portray Dinesh, a tech geek resident of Erlich's Hacker House. Looks like we have our Indian caricature as mentioned in the script review.

Middleditch (The Campaign) is already down to play Thomas, a budding tech wizard who is focused, idealistic, and brilliant when writing code for software, but awkward and insecure in all other aspects of life. He moved from St. Louis to California to make his dreams come true in Silicon Valley. Best known for holding the camera while running from monsters in 2008's Cloverfield, T.J. Miller is the owner of the "Hacker House" named Erlich. Described as the big fish in the small pond he created, Erlich is blessed with an intellect eclipsed only by his imperious self-satisfaction and has very little sense of self-awareness.

Brener (Glory Daze) plays Thomas' best friend and confidant called Big Head, an unfortunate grade-school nickname that stuck despite his normal-sized head. Big Head earns his spot in the Hacker House — as well as the respect and adoration of Erlich — by developing an app called "Nip Alert" that somehow alerts the user to the location of women with erect nipples.

Finally, Lindsey Broad, who played the temp worker that tried to seduce Jim on NBC's The Office last season, has been tapped as Tandy, described as "a loyal friend who would never have sex with her girlfriend's boyfriends". She is also described as "attractive in a friendly, slightly sloppy way," whatever that means. Tandy is a realist about her desire to marry into a comfortable life, but she still has a hint of the romantic in her.

In his scathing script review from ealy last month, Nolan Night had the following to say...

"If this script is unchanged as HBO begins production, it will be one of the worst pilots HBO has ever aired. The draft I read is dated mid October, so God willing Mike Judge (and other writers John Altschuler & Dave Krinsky) get their act together. Frankly, I had to re-read this twice to really take in just how God awful it is. Even shorter review: Mike Judge drives through Silicon Valley. Once. He then fills a script with uninteresting stereotypes. It is not funny. At all.

So you're still around- so why do I hate it so much? The writer's disdain for Silicon Valley is evident from the OPEN. The credit sequence references gaudy billboards and "shit brown colored hills of Mountain View" and geeks doing things that the audience "doesn't understand." This is a recurring theme by the way- these stupid geeks with their alien geek culture. Our main character, Thomas, is living in some sort of a geek house, where his older benefactor Ehrlich runs a geek household of promising geeks working on geeky programs. For instance, Thomas is working on a program called "Pied Piper" which delivers "melody" recognition. Our story takes off ::cough:: when Ehrlich tells Thomas he has to get the hell out of the house because his computer program sucks. I guess if your program doesn't suck you can hang around in the "hacker hostel."

By the way, I've ignored a few other house characters because frankly, they aren't worth noting. One is a black guy. One is an Indian guy. One is an Asian guy. And one is a fat white guy. Seriously. Thomas's best friend, Big Head, is named Big Head because he has a big head. That's how the script describes him. (One more note: the Asian cusses! Isn't that hilarious? Remember when that happened in the Hangover?!) Ehrlich says Thomas needs to work on an app with a more practical purpose. Like Big Head's idea "Nip Alert" which tells people when women's nipples are erect. /sigh, the Nip Alert idea could be funny, if this script had any idea what to do with their stupid humor ideas. But we are supposed to take this at face value and buy into the fact that this is a real world representation of Silicon Valley. By the way, these "genius" stereotypes actually figure out that Big Head's idea is stupid/impractical 30 pages later into the script

So Big Head and Thomas go to work, (at a Google esque company, Boodle). Where they talk about the industry giant Peter Gregory (thinly veiled Peter Thiel) and go and see him speak that evening. But before they get through that, Judge has to introduce new characters at Google, excuse me Boodle, called BROGRAMMERS. So these particular "genius" Silicon Valley programmers, the script lazily refers to as "frat guys" "who clearly only work out their upper bodies" and OF COURSE they make fun of poor Thomas and his Pied Piper music program. Oh and they totally LOVE their DOUBLE MACHIATTOS. Because that's what Brogrammers drink Bro.

Anyway, yada yada yada it turns out Thomas's program has an mp3 esque revolutionary aspect to it- it can COMPRESS mp3 files! Woah. Peter Thiel, excuse me, Gregory and the EVIL CEO of Boodle Gavin start a bidding war over it. WHO WILL THOMAS CHOOSE? THE EVIL CEO and all of his money or the revolutionary Peter Thiel cough Gregory, who offers Thomas less money but more involvement?! Dun, dun dun.

I'm sick of reviewing this because frankly, re-reading it has reminded me of how disappointing it is. One sideplot, I'm not kidding, is two hot women (a laid off publicist & a non prof worker) deciding to date geeks because they have money. (The script has them looking at an MSNBC broadcast and commenting "Well they don't look rapey.") Seriously, that's a sideplot that happens. If this were in any way presented as humorous, I could buy in. Instead it's just ANOTHER lazy stereotype.

This isn't Office Space humor of reality/biting sarcasm. This isn't Idiocracy humor of the absurd. It's like a drive by concept, that in execution lacks any semblance of humor, because the world they've created isn't believable and the characters they've populated in it lack any semblance of reality. There's no Peter Gibbons here. Just "geeks" and "brogrammers." Ha. Ha."