Maximizing Alphaness is the fourth episode of Season 6. It premiered on November 17, 2019.
Brief synopsis[]
Richard's authority is threatened by his former Hooli manager; Monica tries to prove her support of other women; Gavin sets his sights on the literary world.
Plot summary[]
Now that Pied Piper owns Hooli, the company needs to shed most of the Hooli employees. Ethan (George Basil), who used to be Richard's superior years ago, seems to understand the situation and tries to prove his value to Richard, by suggesting a way to solve the problems the Hawai'i project presents.
But then Ethan seems to forget who the boss is now and proceeds to humiliate Richard to a bunch of other programmers, first by calling Richard "Patches" and showing embarrassing old photos of Richard, and later by showing a snippet of an inefficient program Richard wrote years ago.
int index = 0;
while (!element.equals(sortedList.get(index))
&& sortedList.size() > ++index);
return index < sortedList.size() ? index : -1;
"You brute force searched a sorted list?" Gabe asks Richard. Richard just tolerates this level of disrespect for the good of the company. But then Dinesh urges Richard to stand up for himself. Dinesh shows Richard a video called "Maximizing Alphaness".
The next time Richard talks to Ethan, Richard gets angry and punches Ethan in the forehead. Somehow Richard inflicted more damage on himself than on Ethan. In a meeting with Tracy (Helen Hong) and Ron LaFlamme (Ben Feldman), Richard is urged to apologize to Ethan while being careful not to admit any wrongdoing on his part.
Richard tries to apologize to Ethan, but instead Ethan apologizes, and acknowledges his own insecurity at going from being Richard's supervisor to being Richard's subordinate. But Ethan did not come to this epiphany on his own, he came to it after an off-screen confrontation with Holden (Aaron Sanders).
Meanwhile, Monica asks Laurie Bream to allow her to participate in a women's conference as a panelist. Laurie Bream criticizes Monica for not really supporting women.
So Monica talks to Priyanka Singh (Krishna Smitha) into taking the reins of Foxhole, the Hooli dating app for military men who want to cheat on their wives.
At the conference, Monica talks about how she's mentoring Priyanka, and soon Priyanka upstages Monica by talking about how she's turned Foxhole into a more empowering app for women, both military women and the prostitutes the military men have been "dating".
Also, Jared finds his birth parents, but is disappointed to learn that they sent him away for stupid reasons and now don't really want to reconnect with him.
Laurie Bream makes Gwart (Nandini Bapat) an offer. So Gwart fires Jared, dissolves her company and goes work for Laurie Bream.
And Gilfoyle bonds with John Stafford (Henry Phillips, introduced in "Meinertzhagen's Haversack), over several games of chess, most of which Gilfoyle loses. Gilfoyle declines a social media friend request from John.
As for Gavin Belson (Matt Ross), the recently deposed former Hooli CEO, he tries his hand at writing a romance novel titled Cold Ice Cream and Hot Kisses, "a thinly veiled roman à clef set at a whale-themed B & B", "a coming-of-age story set over one fateful summer in Maine."
After the book is published, Belson gives a reading at a small bookstore. Hoover (Chris Williams) is the only one who claps. Belson gives an interview and suddenly becomes an anti-tech evangelist.
Cast[]
Main[]
- Thomas Middleditch as Richard Hendricks
- Josh Brener as Nelson "Big Head" Bighetti
- Martin Starr as Bertram Gilfoyle
- Kumail Nanjiani as Dinesh Chugtai
- Amanda Crew as Monica Hall
- Zach Woods as Donald "Jared" Dunn
- Matt Ross as Gavin Belson
- Suzanne Cryer as Laurie Bream
- Jimmy O. Yang as Jian-Yang
Notes[]
- When he was one of Ethan's subordinates, Richard made the mistake of writing a brute force searching for an element in a sorted list (e.g., searching for a person's name in a telephone directory by starting at the beginning and scanning the names one by one in order until finding that person's name). Because the list is sorted, it would be more efficient to jump to a position in the list based on an educated guess of where the element might be, rather than to start at the beginning and go in order until finding the desired element (e.g., searching for Ron LaFlamme in the directory by starting at the M's and flipping back to the L's, rather than first going through all the A's, then all the B's, the C's, etc.).
- The snippet of Richard's inefficient program shows indentation that is at odds with his stated preference in "Bachmanity Insanity".
Photo Gallery[]
References[]
| Season Six Episodes | ||
|---|---|---|
|
1. "Artificial Lack of Intelligence" |
| |
| Season One • Season Two • Season Three • Season Four • Season Five • Season Six | ||
