At long last, things are looking up for the Pied Piper team! Let’s just look past the fact that they’re committing highly illegal acts to get ahead. Still, to be fair, the group of techies has been repeatedly sabotaged for quite some time, so their era of retribution has been long overdue.
Last week left off with the Pied Piper gang finding out that Branston Ventures stole Richard’s compression algorithm, at least in part, to successfully create a 4K livestream platform. This was, of course, the Pied Piper team’s own fault to begin with, for disclosing practically the entire algorithm during a business meeting. They are now attempting to clean up their own mess by heading to EndFrame headquarters and valiantly proclaiming that they will, in fact, “not get away with this.” Their venture into EndFrame doesn’t go anywhere near as planned, particularly after the team finds out EndFrame has a successful sales team and a contract in the works with the pornography company “Intersite.” Things are continually looking bleak for Pied Piper, particularly after Russ Hanneman suggests a merge with EndFrame so that he can hit his billionaire mark again. That is, until Gilfoyle discloses that he stole the CEO of EndFrame’s login information and has all the details on their deal with Intersite, which Pied Piper can undoubtedly exceed in quality.
The illegality of the situation remains a moral dilemma for the team until they hear the monetary term agreed upon between EndFrame and Intersite: 15 million dollars. After that, it’s not long before Richard finds himself at an online pornography convention named “Adult 2.0,” where Molly Kendall, head of Intersite, is a keynote speaker. Among the adult entertainment attendees are notably hilarious sites such as “Blackmailed for Gay,” “Brutalized Assholes,” “My Dirty Vagina,” “Let’s Try Fisting,” “Fingered Teen,” “Porn Hospice,” “Poop on My Wife,” and “Non Consensual Santa.” To top it off, at the end of Molly’s speech, a series of colorful vibrators and sex toys go off on stage, leaving Richard looking awkwardly discombobulated and out-of-place at the convention.
After her speech, Richard approaches Molly and discusses Pied Piper’s higher resolution quality in comparison to that of EndFrame, which can save Intersite billions in bandwidth at a higher and faster rate. Despite her initial apprehension about Richard knowing the details of her deal with EndFrame, in addition to the fact that she’s on a board with Gavin Belson, Molly gives Richard the benefit of the doubt. The Pied Piper team blindsides the EndFrame team during an Intersite conference at which Molly proposes a “bakeoff,” where both teams are given the same video library to compress and the winner is awarded the contract. For the first time in a long time, we see a smile spread across Richard’s face as the EndFrame team stares at him in dismay.
Pied Piper pitting themselves against their inferior counterpart is the first real success they’ve had in quite some time, and if all goes according to plan, could be the big break their company has been in dire need of. Additionally, unbeknownst to them, Gavin Belson is dealing with the major backlash of his failed Nucleus project, which could also mark a substantial and unexpected success for Pied Piper in the long run. After an entire season of failed opportunities and negative outcomes, the boys (and girl) of Pied Piper are finally digging themselves out of the trenches—even if their only hopes are being funded by a megalomaniacal “986-ionaire” and a porn site. Everyone’s got to start somewhere.
Here’s a preview of episode 8:
Find episode #14 here.
Find Episode # 16 here.
