Ctrl Alt Deliver!: why Silicon Valley must go out with a bang

Silicon Valley ends this week. It ends for good. And more than any other show in recent memory, Mike Judge’s startup sitcom needs to deliver. After nearly six years on the air, this final season has been so hit and miss that it’s bound to be defined by its finale. End it well, and the show will go down as one of the smartest comedies of the decade. But one wrong move could throw its failings into sharp relief, and it will go out as a middling, quickly forgotten sitcom.

I have to say, I expected a lot more from this season. The end has been coming for a while, and the creators have had plenty of time to build a muscular climax. That is what shows are supposed to do. Breaking Bad gave Walter White a machine gun and figured out what he should do with it. The first scene of the final run of Mad Men contained the “om” that would conclude the final episode. When a show has the finish line in sight, it has a chance to define what it is. It is an opportunity to say something big about itself, about us.

But so far, that hasn’t really happened on Silicon Valley. Although it started strongly – so strongly that I raved about its potential a few weeks ago – nothing about this season has felt like a finale. Worse, for a long stretch in the middle, all the momentum drained out of it. Silicon Valley should have been sprinting to the end, but it got caught chasing its tail.

I think that, at its heart,the show has always been about the intersection of ethics and power. Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch) was always a genius with an amazing idea – a decentralised internet – that he fought hard to keep, in the face of ruthless competition from bigger players. The first episode this year reinforced this notion, that he was the sole face of good in the curdled world of tech, and the question seemed to be whether or not he could maintain his integrity to the bitter end.

But instead, he has been playing the same game of footsie with Gavin Belson (Matt Ross) that he has been dragging out for years. Belson tries to destroy Pied Piper. Richard thinks of a way to sabotage him. He tells Belson too early. Belson changes his tactics and wins. Richard snatches partial victory from the jaws of defeat. There is no movement to it. Everyone ends up back in the same place. As a viewer, it is frustrating.

The Gilfoyle, Dinesh and Monica problem – they have spent years with nothing to do – hasn’t gone away either. Every second of time is precious in a final season, but Silicon Valley has spent episode after episode engaging them in sub-Cheers contests with one another to see who can get the better of HR or each other

Last week’s episode is the perfect example. With just three episodes left, the characters should have been racing to a fixed point together. Instead, there was a lot of waffle about Richard signing a meaningless pledge, while Monica and Gilfoyle attempted to boost their management statistics. That’s it. It could have been any episode from any series, which isn’t really good enough at this point.

Luckily, this week’s episode seemed to at least understand that it was a penultimate episode of an entire television series. PiperNet was finally tested at scale and, without sabotage from a rival, failed. And then it succeeded, better than anyone could have anticipated. For almost the first time this season, Silicon Valley is now in brand new territory.

So now we have to see where it goes. It might end with success – with Pied Piper finally toppling the established tech hierarchy. It might end with failure, asPiperNet grows sentient, ruins everything and sends Richard back to the room where he started six years ago. But whatever it chooses, Silicon Valley has to be bold. It’s the only thing that can save it.

• The Silicon Valley finale airs on HBO at 10pm on Sunday in the US and on Monday at 10.10pm on Sky Atlantic in the UK