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(SPOILER ALERT)

I almost cried seeing this scene last week. Or maybe I did. Richard Hendricks, after finally being the CEO of the company of his dream and launching a product that he was proud of, crouched on a not-so-clean bathtub, hiding from the fact that his platform was too advanced for average users. The sad thing is, this one was on him. You can blame almost everything that happened to him on someone else: Gavin Belson, Russ Hanneman, Action Jack Barker, even his accidentally talking to Code/Rag's CJ was partially Laurie Bream's fault. But he massaged his ego, failed to take into account Monica's input, and finally launched a platform that may or may not be Skynet, that was definitely on him.

Some people say that Silicon Valley is the nerdy version of Entourage, except that nothing's working out in Silicon Valley. That is probably 90% accurate. It seems like the creators (I'm using this term loosely) like to punish Richard—see above. But most of the time you can see it coming, not because it happens so many times, but because no actions without consequences in this show.

Post-Community, Silicon Valley is so far the only sitcom that meets my renewed standard. Not only it's funny but it is also—like Community—believable. Okay, there are some details that are not quite right for the sake of the story but overall I buy the idea. Or the characters, to be precise.

Richard is of course the key. You see him evolving from this nice guy ("Richard, if you're not an asshole, it creates this kind of asshole vacuum and that void is filled by other assholes"), to a guy who reluctantly took the left hand path, to post R.I.G.B.Y, and finally to a guy who messed up Hooli's system (or Gavin Belson's laptop). Richard is maybe this stereotypical geek who becomes highly inarticulate when he's nervous, but aren't we all (I know I do). He failed to score a girl not because he was incapable socially, but because he was a formatting Nazi about tab vs space that, as unbelievable as it may sound, does exist. The point is, Richard and all the characters are treated with respect, even when the characters are borderline caricatures like Erlich or Gavin. And that attitude, that respect, enables the geekiest d*ck joke of all time.

PS: My favorite character in Season 3 is Jared. Laurie is a close second. I hope she still makes appearances in Season 4.