Silicon Valley Season 3 Episode 5, Spoilers Rotten

Rollin in, hella deep, tryna get Jack Barker’s seat, pressed with bad news, Richard wants to get a meet and greet. Macklemore am I right? So after Richard reclaims his company exercising his CTO rank, he trims the fat of the company—can you still say that in 2016? Trim the stout? Portly? Non-scalenormative? Whatever he does, he fires all non-essential workers and sells everything in the Reviga-funded office. No more gluten-free or glutenful waffles, much to the dismay of Dinesh and Gilfoyle. But, Richard realizes the necessity to keep costs down while they don’t have any money flowing in. They move back to Ehrlich’s incubator/trap den. 

At the same time, There are constant online stories about CEO candidates both under and over qualified to take the Pied Piper position, while the stories also blast Richard’s technological work, angering him more and more. Richard seems like exactly the kind of person who little siblings love to annoy on long car rides. He demands to meet with one of the reporters who particularly annoys him (Mom she won’t stop touching me!). But, because of his lack of social intelligence in any sense of the word, Laurie Bream insists he meet with a Reviga PR person. Richard enters a conference room incensed and screams about everything he can’t say in the meeting, only to realize the person he’s talking to is in fact the reporter. This story is only saved thanks to Richard uncovering (through Nelson “Bighead” Bighetti) that in fact there is a bigger story that needs to be covered, saving Richard’s reputation and his bid to become Pied Piper CEO. The story is that Gavin Belson, CEO of Hooli, told his employees to change the Internet so that there were no negative reviews of Hooli or Hooli nucleus. Kind of a dick move, bro.