Kick us when we’re down why don’t you.
Another season of Silicon Valley drew to a close last night in America. If you’re a fan, and presumably haven’t seen it, then be warned, this contains spoilers.
T.J. Miller, aka Erlich Bachman, will no longer be part of the show. At the end of this season, we see him following Gavin Belson over to Tibet to find himself. Gavin then ditches Erlich after gleaning information from him and leaves him behind.
And that my friends, is the end of Erlich Bachman.
Actor T.J. Miller couldn’t just go out gracefully. Oh no, he decided to cristicise the show, which made him famous, while speaking to People Magazine. The strange part is that it was his decision to leave the show.
He said:
“For me, television, unlike women and wine, does not get better with age. … I just thought that what the show has suffered from, what’s bad about it … it’s just the same thing over and over…
If they fail, then they succeed, and then if they succeed, they fail. It’s over and over. That’s an old type of sitcom. That’s Seinfeld, where Alec Berg used to work. It’s recycling, it’s network. This is HBO.”
He also said that he has no plans whatsoever to continue to watch the show from now on and also likened the end of Erlich as a breakup:
“It felt like a breakup with HBO. The final phone call was them going like, ‘Well, I don’t think this is the end of Erlich. I still want to see him on television,’ and I was like, ‘I know but I think this is for the best.’ HBO has never treated me as an employee, always as a collaborator … So they were very, very cool about it, and that final conversation was super friendly and sad. It was heartbreaking on my end.”
