Mike Judge Goes Back to Work

Anyone who spent time at a tech-adjacent party in a major city in the early 2010s knows the type: the guy with the app idea—something vague about connecting friends through music or streamlining the dating experience—who somehow had a term sheet and a co-working space and the absolute unearned confidence of someone who has never been told no. HBO gave Mike Judge, the man who made Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill, a series about exactly that world. It was called Silicon Valley.

I was unreasonably excited before it aired. Judge has a specific gift for generating simultaneous fondness and contempt for the same person, which is exactly the emotional register that startup culture demands. There was also something appealing about the premise as a kind of Entourage for nerds—same money, same ego, same delusion, different wardrobe. Whether it would actually have the nerve to be mean about any of it was the question.

It did. It ran for six seasons and skewered the whole ecosystem with a precision that felt almost documentary at times. Judge understands a certain breed of male mediocrity better than almost anyone working in television, and Silicon Valley let him turn that understanding into something close to art. The fact that it started with a trailer and a premiere date and became one of the better comedies of the decade still feels like it shouldn’t have been allowed to happen.