Silicon Valley Season 4 Episode 9: The 5 Best Jokes in “Hooli-con”

Silicon Valley is a saga about one man’s journey into the heart of darkness of the world’s weirdest and most insular industry where everything is “disruptable” and nothing makes sense.

But also: jokes.

After each episode of Silicon Valley this season, we’re cataloguing our five favorite jokes. What constitutes a “joke” is often subjective. So don’t concern yourself too much with the proper definition of “jokes.” These are the five moments that made us laugh the hardest, ranked in order.

It’s Hooli-Con! Which can only mean one thing – Pied Piper installing illegal malware secretly onto thousands of people’s phones via a technique involving multiple wifi routers known as pineapples. You know, like what happens at Hooli-con every year.

Yes, Richard is finally sick of losing so he decides to do something un-Richard-like. He cheats, much to the chagrin of Jared. But as it turns out Richard can’t even cheat properly. He lets his jealousy over his old “tabs or spaces” fling’s new boyfriend get the best of him and changes his rival’s screensaver to something unmentionable: Poop Fare.

This petty act attracts the attention of Hooli-con security which discovers the pineapples. Thankfully, Hooli’s head of security is sympathetic to anyone who says nice things about Gavin Belson, much like Richard did publicly earlier in the season. Unthankfully, Pied Piper’s gambit may have actually backfired anyway since the processing power needed for Keenan and Jack’s VR presentation combined with Richard’s malware blows up phones across the auditorium.

Where is Erlich in all of this? Heading to Tibet to make Gavin Belson’s life a living hell yet again.

5. “Don’t you need a visa to go to China?” “Yes. I will call my uncle. He is very corrupt.”

So this is how Erlich Bachman will be exiting the show, huh? There’s still one episode to go so we’ll see but Erlich stomping around Tibet with Gavin, annoying him to the point of insanity seems like a pretty great fate for both characters. And it also led to some hilariously brief and intense goodbyes in “Hooli-con.” Richard and the rest of Pied Piper could care less that Erlich is leaving – they likely don’t even think this adventure will last lost. Jian Yang on the other hand is actively happy to see ol’ Erlich go. He even drives him to the airport 4 hours early and tosses his luggage to the sidewalk.

4. “Engorged with the blood of a youthful charlatan.”

Per usual, Jared has several lines in this episode that are laugh out loud funny in their specificity and meticulousness. First, he lets Richard know that “as a product of a forced adoption, there are consequences.” Then he succinctly and perfectly sums up what the dangers of Silicon Valley excess and corruption did to Gavin Belson. One day he was a straight shooter like Richard then after one too many compromises, you find that you’re engorged with the blood of a youthful charlatan.

3. Poop Fare

Poor Richard can’t do anything right. His turn to the dark side is intriguing. Naturally he almost immediately ruins in with his childish, jealous antics. After his awkward encounter with his ex-lover from last season (more on that in the next paragraph), he decides to enact his revenge on her current boyfriend. This simply means changing his screensaver to “Poop Fare” and in the process completely exposing their entire hacking scheme. This all leads to one of Jared’s truest and most brutal soliloquies yet. “Poop Fare? Poop Fare. Are you serious? You’ve sacrificed everything that we’ve worked for for Poop Fare. How is ‘Poop Fare’ for the greater good? You compared yourself to Abraham Lincoln, Richard.”

2.  “Cool beans. Bean, beans – magical fruit. The more you eat the more you…” “Toot?” “Toot.”

Man, “Hooli-Con” really shits on Richard. If what comes after his brutal reintroduction to his ex wasn’t bad enough, the initial exchange is just so painfully awkward – even by Richard standards. He follows up this golden “cool beans” exchange with the equally cringeworthy “It was good seeing you.” “Not if I see you first!”

1.  “Did you snub me earlier? That made me feel bad. I like to feel good.”

It’s pretty awesome how amazingly and seamlessly Haley Joel Osment’s Keenan Feldspar fits in to the Silicon Valley universe. He’s the perfect foil to Richard. Where nothing ever goes right for Richard, everything always goes right for Keenan – to the extent that Gilfolye and Dinesh not saying “hi” to him is a severe issue that could ruin his day and lead to the wonderful, hilarious mission statement “That made me feel bad. I like to feel good.” It’s like if Chris Traeger put on some weight, slapped on a beard and moved out to California.