'Silicon Valley' slams Facebook with Russian logo in credits
After Sunday's season 5 premiere of the HBO show, Mark Zuckerberg probably won't be friending the guys from Pied Piper any time soon.
- Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year" award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
The fifth season of "Silicon Valley" premiered Sunday night, with cast members Zach Woods, Kumail Nanjiani, Martin Starr and Thomas Middleditch returning, but no T.J. Miller.
Facebook executives aren't likely to be hitting the "like" button for HBO's "Silicon Valley" right now. The techie comedy returned with its season 5 premiere Sunday night, and it delivered a little dig at the social-networking giant.
The show is known for its opening credits, which feature a flyover view of Silicon Valley tech businesses, and occasionally use the animated credits to poke fun at those companies' fortunes.
On Sunday, as the credits zoomed past a sign for Facebook, with the company's name changed from English to Russian. (Well, it's not really the Russian word for "Facebook," but it's done in letters that we non-Russian-speakers would recognize.)
The reference, of course, was likely created to highlight how Russian trolls used Facebook during the 2016 presidential election, manipulating the social network with inflammatory posts meant to divide American voters.
The episode was the first without star T.J. Miller's Erlich Bachman, though his character was discussed and seen in flashbacks to last season. Bachman apparently is still floating happily in a Tibet opium den, and Miller has left the show for good.
But expect Bachman's name to keep coming up, as frenemy Jian Yang is plotting to acquire a dead body, fake Bachman's death and move in on his money. It's just another day in the "Valley," at least according to HBO.
