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Television Space

HBO's New Space Comedy Mocks 'Tech Bros in Charge' (engadget.com) 46

Engadget reports on a new tech-industry-in-space comedy premiering tonight on HBO:
If you thought that HBO was done mocking technology companies now that Silicon Valley is done, think again. Avenue 5 is the channel's new sitcom, and one that asks the question: "What if tech bros were in charge of more than just our internet histories?'" The answer, at least according to the first half of the season, is that it won't be pretty -- or safe...

The Avenue 5 is a large space liner that, in the words of cinematographer Eben Bolter, is designed after a vulgar space hotel that goes too far and "gets the details wrong". This Titanic-like vessel and its 5,000 passengers are on a routine jaunt through the solar system when a minor disaster strikes, and its course is altered. But this is space, where a small deviation changes the flight time from eight weeks to several years.

The ship is owned by Herman Judd (Josh Gad) of the Judd Corporation, a self-regarding business magnate who, in Bolter's mind, has "only ever had one good idea." He's not quite an analog for the Bezoses and Musks you may be thinking of, but more a cracked-mirror version of both. Throughout the show, he attempts to impose his thinking on the crisis as if he was still in California, or wherever Silicon Valley moved after the show's alluded-to Huawei Wars. Early on, Judd is presented with the intractable problem of space physics, and he hopes to fix things as he did on Earth. He says, in the Jobsian tradition, that you can make something happen by making someone say that it can. The fight between visionary optimism and reality is harder when you're surrounded by an infinite vacuum, after all.

Avenue 5's point seems to be that you can't simply blue-sky your way out of a crisis when reality keeps getting in the way.

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HBO's New Space Comedy Mocks 'Tech Bros in Charge'

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @02:50PM (#59635454)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by gwills ( 3593013 )
      I agree these people shouldn't be idolized, but these shows don't contribute to any meaningful change in perception, or industry self-reflection. Its just another thing to sell to people, to commodify.
      • by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @03:06PM (#59635502) Journal

        these shows don't contribute to any meaningful change in perception, or industry self-reflection.

        And they shouldn't try to. If they do, they wouldn't be funny but preachy or awkward.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Thing is that Silicon Valley did do that stuff, and it did it well. A lot of the jokes were based on real life events or were commentaries on the real Silicon Valley. So many episodes were built around one of those ideas.

      • these shows don't contribute to any meaningful change in perception, or industry self-reflection.

        This may come as a terrible shock to you, but most of us don't watch shit to to undergo a "meaningful change in perception" or engage in "industry self-reflection". We watch shit to be entertained.

        Its just another thing to sell to people, to commodify.

        OMG say it isn't so!! The TeeVee industry is about selling stuff??? When did that start?

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @02:57PM (#59635480)
    a handful of wealthy plutocrats are. Bezos & Zuckerberg (the folks being parodied) are both ruthless businessmen. Elon Musk is a Union buster. They're not well meaning idiots, and making them out to be via parody only serves to make the look better/kinder than they really are.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @05:56PM (#59635812)

      a handful of wealthy plutocrats are. Bezos & Zuckerberg (the folks being parodied) are both ruthless businessmen.

      I would say it's more like they are indifferent to the suffering of those under them and enabled by a system that pro-corporate political climate.

      Elon Musk is a Union buster.

      This would be true if there were unions to bust. Seems more like Tesla is doing everything they can to avoid a union forming.

      I think it's important to recognize that so single individual is evil but rather the icon of a collective that is deemed evil. However, Zuckerberg seems like a real asshat.

      • yep, the fundamental difference between obstructing creation of union vs removing reasons and need to create the union. Leading the company in such a way that the union is not needed.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        I would say it's more like they are indifferent to the suffering of those under them and enabled by a system that pro-corporate political climate.

        Both things that they created.

        Seems more like Tesla is doing everything they can to avoid a union forming.

        Which is the same thing as union busting.

  • Having lived through the First Dotcom Bubble in 1998/1999. watching the Second one playing out again in a very similar fashion is amusing to say the least. The only thing different is that the VCs are the ones investing in the companies. and by extension, the techbros. You don't have as much individual investor CNBC-driven hubris. (I remember seeing people quit their jobs to become day traders just as the bubble popped.) As soon as there's an economic contraction and the stock market stops constantly rising

    • As long as the fed keeps injecting money, the game is not over. All that free money goes somewhere. At the moment, it is going into the market. I'm actually expecting a crash more like 29 when the party is over.
  • Aniara (Score:5, Informative)

    by t4eXanadu ( 143668 ) on Sunday January 19, 2020 @03:10PM (#59635514)

    That's the same premise as the film/poem Aniara, though there's no tech bros in that.

  • If this is McArts Degree writers portrayal of tech, then I can be certain it will be full of magical and implausible technology, engineers acting stupidly, and someone with no technical background "trying harder" and solving the impossible problem.
  • I'm sick of the mainstream mocking of technocratic ideals. To get rid of widespread corruption, we need to make AI's that can take charge of government and business and run them in fair and unbiased ways for the benefit of all life. Mocking tech bros just seeds wide distrust and the sense that we're all sociopaths obsessed with world domination in a malicious way.
  • by AxisOfPleasure ( 5902864 ) on Monday January 20, 2020 @12:03AM (#59636472)

    Just looked at the credits and Amando Ianucci is on the writing team and directs some! Ianucci worked with Chris Morris on some of his biggest pieces. Ianucci and Morris have never been afraid to push comedy into some very dark places, Blue Jam, The Day Today, 4 Lions and a hand in The IT Crowd.

    • Ok. That sounds interesting now (and probably important enough to be mentioned in the summary). So hopefully more like 'the thick of it' in space, and less like 'my two space dads'

  • As a manager in tech right now I'm telling you Silicon Valley is not satire. All of the things from the show are basically day to day life at a startup. Tech startup life is an alternate universe.

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