Oh, Richard Hendricks. Has TV ever produced someone as simultaneously lovable and infuriating? To borrow an acronym coined by the Silicon Valley hero’s own friends, Richard Is Great but Y’know, he really can’t seem to do anything right. Sunday’s episode of HBO’s techno-centric comedy managed a rare feat, delivering a twist that was satisfying almost entirely because it was so predictable. But the twist was made even more intriguing by the heavily hinted possibility that it’s not what it seems. Before we get into the details, obviously, spoilers ahead.
So. The episode ends with what seems to be total disaster for Richard and company, as our hapless hero trips and falls, spilling out a folder full of papers that reveal their plans to undermine their new boss, Barker. As Barker calls the guys into his office, it seems we’re met with yet another classic Richard Hendricks screw-up. But several clues are buried within the episode that seem to indicate that the information leak was no accident.
From an editing standpoint, the episode employs a clever, subtle trick well before its twist ending. After the initial idea hatches and the guys decide they want to start a secret company inside the company, they need to devise a plan. Dinesh asks, “O.K., how do we even begin to pull it off?” After Hendricks replies, “O.K., well, let's work through it,” we cut away and come back a little later—but how much later is unclear. The guys are seated in front of a white board with different writing from before. They’ve clearly squeezed in some discussion we weren’t privy to, meaning however the plan will begin is probably unknown to us. Step one easily could have been to spill some “plans” for Barker to find.
If that’s the case, it’s certainly supported by the episode’s title—and direct reference to—“Meinertzhagen’s Haversack.” As the team prepares to go into work, Jared alludes to the principle to warn everyone not to change any of their behaviors. His reference is met with blank stares, so he explains: “It’s a principle of military deception. Essentially, it means you have to continue to act the part. So as far as anyone knows, we're still building a box that we hate. We need to act like it.” This is mostly true, but as some critics and fans have noted, he left one part out.
As Dustin Rowles explains on Pajiba, “Meinertzhagen’s Haversack is actually a reference to the Haversack Ruse, employed by British Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen during World War I.” Essentially, after two failed plans to take Gaza from Turkey, the British needed to try a new strategy. As the story goes, a colonel named Meinertzhagen tricked some Turkish soldiers into thinking he’d dropped some secret battle plans during a horseback chase. In reality, the documents in the bag (haversack) were fake. The Turks planned their attack according to the fake plans, and the Brits finally succeeded in taking Gaza. Sound familiar?
Would Jack Barker ever really believe it if Hendricks went down without one more (spectacularly failed) fight? Pied Piper’s struggles and missteps have been many, and often—like the lawsuit in Season 2— catalogued in the public eye. Pied Piper and its engineers have never been known to go down without kicking and screaming and fighting the whole way. So to convince Barker that everything’s normal, it would make sense to let him think he’s caught them. We don’t know what was on those papers—was it the plan the group discussed the night before, or a different one that Barker can steel his company against, unwittingly opening up the avenue Hendricks and his crew actually want?
Even non-history buffs might have caught a whiff of deception at the closing gambit if they happen to love heist movies. Another seemingly casual reference in this episode? Ocean’s Eleven. For those who don’t quite remember, the George Clooney/Brad Pitt remake most of us are probably familiar with featured a whopping twist, as casino owner Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) thinks he’s caught Daniel Ocean and his group in the act of robbing his casino when, in fact, the cops he’s called are actually Ocean’s men. They’ve been feeding him pre-recorded video of them robbing a decoy safe, intercepted his police call, and came in dressed as a SWAT team to clean him out. It is, once again, a plan that’s based on letting the enemy think they’ve bested you when, in fact, you’re attacking from another angle.
And if that’s not enough, the show even sprinkled in an allusion to Niccolò Machiavelli for good measure. After Barker called Hendricks out for going over his head in an attempt to force his arm, he got in a few last words: “if you’re going to shoot the king, you better be goddamn sure you kill him.” If that sounds weighty and vaguely familiar, you’re right. It’s a tweaked version of a quote many associate with Ralph Waldo Emerson: “when you strike at a king, you must kill him” is what he supposedly told a young man who’d written an essay on Plato. Further back, however, the sentiment can be traced to Machiavelli, who wrote in The Prince: “it must be noted, that men must either be caressed or else annihilated; they will revenge themselves for small injuries, but cannot do so for great ones; the injury therefore that we do to a man must be such that we need not fear his vengeance.” Machiavelli, of course, is known to have believed very strongly that the ends justified the means—and for Machiavelli, deception was often a go-to means to a triumphant end.
Ultimately this could go either way. It’s just as easy to believe that Hendricks simply dropped the ball—or, in this case, papers—again as it is to believe that this is all actually an elaborate ruse. But this is more than a plot point—it’s a decision about the show’s worldview. Silicon Valley thrives on the tension between two opposing themes: the bleak, cynical nature of the tech industry, and the amazing things that can happen when people are sincerely willing to break the mold. Hendricks and the gang have certainly had their share of struggles with Pied Piper, but somehow—whether they’re scrambling at TechCrunch or duking it out with a Google facsimile in court—they always manage to scramble through it with the kind of genuine creativity that the show tends to admire. How this pans out will either move the show's philosophical dial further toward cynicism or optimism. Until next week, we’ll have to cross our fingers and hope all those hints are meant to do more than simply keep us guessing.
