Silicon Valley: The Complete Second Season

The second season of the Emmy-winning HBO satire co-created by Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-Head)—which skews Internet startups and tech innovators in California's Silicon Valley—takes the software breakthrough of technically brilliant but socially inept programmer Richard (Thomas Middleditch) to the next level. Having proven his new compression app, Richard goes searching for investment money for his team, while also fending off a lawsuit from their former employer, the unscrupulous CEO (Matt Ross) of a Google-like corporation that claims ownership of Richard's creation. This is a world of savants—nerds, basically, with plenty of technical know-how but no business savvy or social skills—and the humor revolves around their arrested-adolescence-driven behavior in an ostensibly grown-up world of business plans and public relations. Richard is a likable schlub whose idealism bumps up against the greed and self-interest of the tech world and whose support team (programming partners Kumail Nanjiani and Martin Starr, earnest business advisor Zach Woods, and self-proclaimed mentor T.J. Miller) is equally helpless in the face of an egotistical idiot of a billionaire investor or the business savant who wrests control from Richard before he crashes his own startup due to poor decisions. Presenting all 10 episodes from the 2015 second season, extras include cast and crew audio commentaries, a behind-the-scenes featurette, and deleted scenes. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)