[Blu-Ray Review] ‘Silicon Valley: The Complete Fourth Season’: Now Available On Blu-ray & DVD From HBO

Silicon Valley: The Complete Fourth Season [Blu-Ray]

Cast: Thomas Middleditch, T.J. Miller, Martin Starr

Release Date: September 12, 2017

A Review By: Kevin Lovell

Disc Rating: 7/10

Synopsis:

Change is in the air in Season 4 of Silicon Valley as the Pied Piper guys pursue their video-chat app, PiperChat, but Richard (Thomas Middleditch) has a hard time letting go of his dream to put his algorithm to better use. As Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani) flirts with notoriety while Gilfoyle (Martin Starr) looks on in amusement, Erlich (T.J. Miller) searches for his next big break, Jared (Zach Woods) attempts to pivot with the company, and Big Head (Josh Brener) enters the world of academia. Over at Hooli, Gavin (Matt Ross) finds himself threatened by Jack Barker (Stephen Tobolowsky), while Monica (Amanda Crew) struggles to bounce back at Raviga after her fallout with Laurie (Suzanne Cryer). Sharp, irreverent and hilarious, Silicon Valley continues to lambast the self-important world of tech in a season that finds the Pied Piper guys looking to leave their mark, even as they continue to fumble along the road to success.

The fourth season of ‘Silicon Valley’ rejoins the Pied Piper team as they focus their attention on the newly launched video chat application PiperChat. While Richard (Middleditch) being the one individual unsatisfied with their current direction begins to seek outside alternatives which eventually lead to him forming an unexpected partnership with his nemesis Gavin (Ross) in an attempt to construct a new, superior internet that could potentially change everything if successful. Meanwhile the remaining members each tackle their own handful of hilarious problems in their continued quest to stay relevant in the ever changing tech game.

Season four of ‘Silicon Valley’ basically follows a very similar pattern to previous seasons of the series, offering up another bundle of road bumps and embarrassing mishaps for our team to resolve and providing no shortage of the offensive, over the top, vulgar fun and insanity that it does best. The latest season is perhaps somewhat less impressive than the previous runs for the simple fact that it often revisits old gags and tweaks a few too many jokes that have already been stretched quite thin and therefore feels slightly less fresh and creative on occasion. Fortunately, most fans of the series probably won’t mind too much, and some of the returning bits do manage to elicit some true laughs, with the season also taking some of our characters in hilariously unexpected directions which helps to make up for the few mild problems present elsewhere. Fans of the series that haven’t yet had the chance to check out season four will definitely want to make a point of doing so whenever possible. It may not be quite as memorable as some of the other seasons but still manages to serve up all of the offensive, hilarious and grin-inducing fun that fans have come to expect and should certainly have no trouble keeping you consistently laughing out loud throughout its ten episode course.

Overall, the fourth season of ‘Silicon Valley’ provides plenty of the offensive, hilarious and just plain enjoyable insanity that we fans have come to love from the series. Even while suffering a few mild downsides, it still ponies up all of the goods and should have no trouble keeping a grin plastered on the face of fans for the majority of the season’s duration; with no shortage of laugh out loud moments around every turn. Fellow fans that have been collecting the previous season releases on Blu-ray will want to strongly consider purchasing a copy of ‘Silicon Valley: The Complete Fourth Season’ on Blu-ray to add to your collection as well if you haven’t already done so. Even if some fans may be understandably concerned about the change from the previous 2-disc BD collections to a single disc release this time around they can rest assured that the release still manages to offer impressive high definition video and audio presentations on each and every episode that shouldn’t disappoint in the slightest. In reality, the lack of a slipcase on Season Four is in fact probably the most notable change likely to somewhat upset some fans.

VIDEO:

The Blu-ray release of ‘Silicon Valley: The Complete Fourth Season’ features a full 1080p High Definition presentation utilizing the show’s original 1.78:1 Aspect Ratio on all of the fourth season’s episodes. Surprisingly even with the fourth season being the first downgraded from a 2-disc Blu-ray collection to a single disc, it still manages to look outstanding as a whole and provides sharp, detailed and gorgeous presentations on every episode with no notable faults to be uncovered throughout. They hold up remarkably even during the heavily populated and darkly lit sequences, never allowing anything occurring on screen to become negatively affected or rendered indiscernible. Overall, these are wonderful high definition video presentations that even with the entire season confined to one disc still manage to look fantastic.

AUDIO:

The Blu-ray release features a lossless 5.1 channel DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on all 10 Season Four episodes. These lossless multichannel soundtracks deliver crisp, clean and often quite active audio presentations on every episode. They regularly take advantage of all five available channels in order to send crowd chatter, music and plenty more throughout the various speakers when appropriate and never causing any dialogue or other simultaneously occurring audio elements to become distorted or rendered inaudible the process. Overall, these are great 5.1 channel DTS-HD MA soundtracks that deliver in every way required of them.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The Blu-ray release of ‘Silicon Valley: The Complete Fourth Season’ includes a single extra; ‘Deleted Scene(s)’ from three of the season’s episodes (running approximately 3 minutes combined).