Silicon Valley S03E05 The Empty Chair Thomas Middleditch, TJ Miller Premiere Recap

From the comedic mind of Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-head), Season 3 continues with the premiere of Silicon Valley on HBO. In Episode 5, can Erlich Bachman (T.J. Miller), Richard Hendriks (Thomas Middleditch), and the rest of the tech gang sit in The Empty Chair?

With the loss of Jack Barker (Stephen Tobolowsky), Pied Piper is back to bare bones. Though there was cash influx before, all the money Monica (Amanda Crews) and Laurie (Suzanne Cryer) had is going to Jack's severance package. Richard has to figure out how to have a product ready for the market now that they abandoned the box.

Richard's strategy forces him to make decisions of a CEO, even though he's not a CEO. That means he has to downsize the staff to the core engineer team. They can save office space by relocating back to Elrich's living room, even though he has a new incubator with  by Big Head (Josh Brener), who's practically paying for everything.

While Gilfoyle (Martin Starr) and Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani) take charge of the fire sales, the duo end up costing Pied Piper something big. They inexpertly let some confidential information out of the office. Everyone in the office starts picking on Richard for his managerial skills, wondering why he hasn't been fired yet.

As candidate meetings are taken place, Moncia and Laurie are even debating about whether or not Richard should be back as CEO. The problem is Richard's ego is becoming just as big as Gavin Belson's. Richard becomes so pissed off at his co-workers, that he decides to let loose some steam in the wrong conference room.

Richard ends up letting loose on "the Laurietron 6000," which makes him look bad in his boss' eyes. Big Head reminds Richard about the search engine re-optimization Gavin ordered. Gavin's terrible decisions will come around to haunt him. Big Head is able to say the right things at the right time to save Richard and get him where he's supposed to be.

Richard officially titled the new CEO and Pied Piper might have to move out of Elrich's living room. But at least Richard has that new fancy chair that once belonged to Jack Barker.

Readers, what did you think of The Empty Chair?