‘Silicon Valley’ season 3 finale recap: Always blue!

We begin our take on the “Silicon Valley” finale with a realization: We should be blogging instead. Week after week of watching C.J. getting rich from her fictional “Code/Rag” blog makes me wonder what we’ve done with our lives.

Worse, it’s not even “us” anymore up in here. It’s just me, sitting in a dark room, watching “Silicon Valley” alone, now that my seatmate Tricia Romano has left to become editor-in-chief of The Stranger.

It has been a somewhat formulaic season. Every week, the Pied Piper team has fought to keep their baby alive, while trying to keep it from being snatched out of their hands, corrupted or, quite literally, stuck in a box.

Over 10 weeks, though, we’ve seen Richard grow a pair, Erlich chastened, Jared get more action than a Vegas-airport slot machine, and Dinesh and Gilfoyle realize that they’re each other’s best friend. The only one-note of the whole season is Big Head. Dumb as a box of rocks, that one. And Laurie? Always a robot.

In this last episode, everyone is moving on, starting with the elephant that Gavin Belson brought in to make a point to the Hooli board, and that dropped dead right there in the sculpture garden.

He tells his beleaguered assistant (did you know she was a bridesmaid at Sean Parker’s wedding?) to have it cut up and hauled out. When she chides him for using endangered animals as props in his business power-plays, he sends her packing, too.

Back at the incubator, Richard tells Jared that he knows about the click farm he hired to increase the number of users on the Pied Piper platform. He noticed that users were uploading a single photo into a shared folder, then taking it out, and putting it back in.

“Classic click-farm behavior,” he said. “It had to be you.”

Jared (and I have to say “dear, sweet Jared,” here, in honor of Tricia) asks: “Would it make you feel better to strike me?”

Erlich gets home with a way to use the (false) uptick in users to get fresh funding. He then recounts his day, dropping the names of Silicon Valley venture capitalists (Greylock) and restaurants (anyone been to the Rosewood?) like anvils. At some point, he had time to masturbate in a Restoration Hardware bathroom. Ew.

The climax? He has an offer to sell Pied Piper for $6 million on a $60 million valuation. Dinesh and Gilfoyle – who, meanwhile, have been putting the final touches on their video-chat program – are thrilled.

“I think I have a bottle of Cold Duck in the crisper,” Erlich says. “Who’s drinking?”

Well, Patrice, for one ­– once she returns her Hooli parking pass to the security desk – where she spots an ad for C.J.’s blog: “Got tech dirt?” Does she ever. (I’ve done nothing with my life, by the way.)

Cold Duck drunk and Erlich out for more, Dinesh tells Richard that he is hip to the rigged user numbers – but that he and Gilfoyle are in possession of a flash drive (or “zombie script”) that could make them indistinguishable from real users. (Is that actually a thing? Can I get one on Amazon?)

He drops the drive on the patio and leaves Richard to sort out his moral dilemma. This is what CEOs do all the time.

Jared, the wide-eyed moral compass, says it all: “This is fraud,” he tells Richard.

Cut to Hooli, where the same designer who labored over the Pied Piper box is showing three options to Gavin. CJ calls (and gets right through to the CEO of Hooli? Really? Has she ever tried to get as much as the lunch menu from the Amazon cafeteria? Takes 10 days, a blood sample and a scan of your passport.)

Anyway, she’s onto “the death of an unpermitted Indian elephant named Maurice in your sculpture garden.” Gavin solves that problem by buying the blog for $2 million. Which means CJ gets $1 million. Which means I’ve done nothing with my life.

In another move at cashing in, Richard and Erlich leave to collect their $6 million check. But wait, Richard’s phone rings! It’s Monica, of course, calling to ask if he’s out of his mind, saying that Laurie will kill them all if they sell without letting her know first.

In the signing room, where Erlich makes a show of his Mont Blanc, Richard can’t sign. He tells the table that the numbers were rigged. The deal’s off and Erlich is incensed. The revelation will ruin them all in the Valley. He wants nothing more to do with Richard. Ever. (Nor does an Uber driver named Neil in a blue Kia Sportage.)

In fact, Erlich is taking his cut of the Code/Rag sale and heading to India, where Steve Jobs once exiled himself before coming back with the idea for the “Lisa” personal computer. (Thank you, Wikipedia.)

See? You learn a lot watching this show. Computer-industry history and its pioneers. VC firms and SV restaurants. The weight of a dead elephant.

Meanwhile, Laurie runs into Gavin, and tells him she will sell Pied Piper to the highest bidder. Saying he would “like to be the one to drive the final nail in the Hendricks coffin,” Gavin offers $1 million.

Laurie calls the Pied Piper board together for a final vote on the sale. Monica won’t vote, so Laurie removes her from the board and replaces her with guy who was just walking by, and who votes with Laurie.

A broken-down Richard says fine, sell, take it – and the sale is final.

To Bachmanity, LLC.

Back at the house, Erlich is still there, and while he and Richard have some trust issues, those don’t last — and Pied Piper’s video-conferencing application may save them all.

Always blue! Always blue!

We leave you with an explanation on that: A “Silicon Valley” chat site says the ball they play with is a Hoberman Switch Pitch throwing ball. But what’s up with the chant?

“Programmer here. It’s a reference to Red Blue trees in djorski algorithm. You see, in his tree4 system the database with polymorphism enabled would always go to blue on the tree (representing 0xFB on the hexscalar). There is a programming joke that the algorithm is way to efficient, therefore always producing ‘always blue’ instead of red or yellow (representing binary 0011001 for dot hex finite series). It’s a pretty funny joke.”

Clearly. See you next season. Nerds.