

Back in my recap of “ Success Failure,” I predicted this season would entail Richard succumbing to his own delusions of grandeur.

Jared will honor the notice, but he vows not to lie nor do anything illegal for Pied Piper. He briefly falls for Richard’s last-minute ego stroking before strengthening his resolve. “You read the handbook?” asks Jared in a stunned voice. He coldly forces Jared to endure the two-week-notice rule that Jared himself wrote into the employee handbook. “You can’t leave,” Richard says to Jared, but not because he wants him to stay. “A personal action plan, a letter to my 40-year-old self, and a resignation letter.” Richard gets that third letter, severing a work relationship that began 36 episodes ago.

“I write three letters whenever I start a job,” Jared says. He reaches into his binder and hands Richard a piece of paper. Richard’s refusal to take responsibility - to be “Honest Abe,” as he promised at the end of “ The Keenan Vortex” - is too much for Jared to take. Richard responds by blaming Hooli phone “dick fires” on Keenan Feldspar’s power-draining VR system. Our resident conscience Jared wants Richard to confess. As the video guy tries to extinguish his crotch fire, Gilfoyle reveals that the combustible Hooli phones contained the illegally installed Pied Piper: The Next Generation. He is describing the YouTube video of an exploding Hooli phone. “You only make that face when your dick is on fire,” Dinesh says at the beginning of Silicon Valley’s fourth-season finale. Thomas Middleditch as Richard, Josh Brener as Big Head.
