'Silicon Valley' Review: The Most Awkward Moment In 'Customer Service'

If you think Richard Hendrix is awkward, imagine having sex with him.

Actually, scratch that – don't ever think about that. The descriptions are enough. Clanking teeth. "All elbows." Someone who says "Gulp" out loud when a woman takes her bra off. Yeah, Richard gets laid in this episode and that's enough awkward for anyone to take.

The episode starts as Russ shows up at the house in his ridiculous car, blasting Live's "I Alone," mad at Richard for taking their idea to Gavin. Richard is a bit surprised, since the idea for the new internet wasn't "their" idea, it was his, and he only told him because Russ asked what he would do with unlimited freedom. Russ says that since he pulled the idea out of him "like a newborn baby" it was his idea as well, and is incensed when Richard points out that doctors don't have claim to babies they deliver.

It's fortuitous that Russ has come at this moment since Richard needs funding, but after this slight Russ wants nothing to do with him. "It's always about my money, isn't it?" snaps the incensed investor. So that's it. No one will fund them. Not even Monica's new company, Bream/Hall.

Funding is impossible, so they decide to do something different by taking their tech directly to the customers and building it up from there. But the presence of Gavin hangs like a fart in an elevator. Pitch after pitch goes terribly after the people they're meeting with realize that Gavin has pulled out, even though Richard is convinced that the tech will speak for itself...if they ever get to that point of the meeting.

Erlich wants to fake a seizure for better results, but Richard doesn't allow it (for some reason – it would have been hilarious), and instead Elrich starts hitting on the woman running the next meeting. Liz awkwardly bats away Erlich's comments about her skin and brings in the CTO, who turns out to be none other than Dan Melcher. You may not remember him, but he's the guy from the first season of the show who beat up Erlich after TechCrunch when he found out that the goon had slept with his wife. "Wives. Plural," points out Elrich.

That seems like it would be the end of their prospects there, but Liz pops in asking Dan if he remembered to give the dogs their medicine this morning, and everyone realizes that they're engaged. One simple question by Erlich actually lands them the deal – the query to whether Dan wants to go three for three. It's super dirty, but it works.

Speaking of super dirty, Richard wants Elrich to have nothing to do with Liz after that whole ordeal, and he heads over to their office for a long meeting to set up their data storage at Pied Piper. They get to talking about video chat and Richard mentions that he was never happy about it. "Just going to spend the rest of my life wondering if there was something better. That's not really a way to live," he says. As Liz watches Dan through the conference room window struggling with a jelly donut that's splurt all over him, she has a revelation.

The meeting goes on well past midnight and she mistakes all of his discussion about his tech for being about them, allowing Richard to be way smoother than he ever has been in his life. He asks her to leap before she looks and she does, eventually ending immersed in the elbowed, teeth-gnashing horror show that is Richard's lovemaking.

Jared gives Richard the advice that Liz is clearly in love with him even if he doesn't feel the same, and that he should just tell her that he was born to roam. But Richard soon finds out that the sex was horrible in every single respect. He gets out of breaking up their marriage or losing the deal with the company, with the caveat that he's even more socially shattered as a person.

Meanwhile, Erlich Bachman has finally realized that his incubator isn't hatching anything and he sets out to get a job at Bream/Hall with Laurie and Monica. He offers his skills as an associate while asking for an office, an attractive assistant, and paternity leave "if that goes well." It's quite the pitch and Laurie immediately passes on it without a second thought.

Erlich does leave with a box of new swag though and, as he's wont to do, he immediately sets off to fail upwards. He sits down at a coffee shop, plopping his box over a reserved sign without a second thought, and soon realizes he's at a meeting for one of the hottest tech investors, played by an unrecognizable Haley Joel Osmett. Using his typical charm (he insults the guy for being fat before realizing who he is) he somehow manages to reel him in, and he drags him all the way to Bream/Hall, who are stunned that he's brought in this whale. They stare at his sock and sandal-clad feet sitting on their new desk as this horror dawns.

TJ Miller is on the way out of the show, so it will be interesting to see if they make his character's latest endeavor crash and burn, and if Bream/Hall will survive it.

An update on the struggle! Here, Gilfoyle and Dinesh continue their eternal fight after installing an early alpha of their space-saving app on their phones. They immediately see that something is wrong, as the app does the exact opposite of its intended use, somehow increasing the amount of storage their data is taking up.

They soon realize why – all of their data is now on both phones, and they have access to each other's personal information. They immediately realize how bad it could be for the other party to retain this info, so give their phones to Jared so they can work on the problem and fix it and never speak of this again.

But this doesn't go well when Dinesh realizes he has absolutely nothing to lose. Gilfoyle is always saying horrible and racist things to Dinesh, and it's clear that he has something he doesn't want anyone else to ever know hidden among his data. This ends in a slap-filled chase through the house that results in Dinesh's phone being dropped in the toilet, Gilfoyle's smashed with a rock, and Jared's face red from being slapped. We may know Gilfoyle's deep dark secrets, but not today.