Spoilers follow for The Audacity Season 1, Episode 1, ‘Best of All Possible Worlds,’ which is available on AMC+ now.
If, like me, you’ve been looking forward to a new show promising to revel in the dark humor of tech bros having a really crappy time of it, set your expectations low. The Audacity, so far at least, is less a sharp skewering of unicorns and the hubris of nerds and more a limp-fingered poke. The first episode is our introduction to CEO Duncan Park (Billy Magnussen) and reveals him to be a bad CEO, bad husband, bad father, and bad person. Most unforgivably of all? He’s boring.
It’s never been a better time to be writing about the world of Silicon Valley. Rich men in hoodies are making videos to explain that the AI they developed probably won’t kill us all, Mark Zuckerberg was rumored to be trying to poach staff from other companies via the medium of soup, and Apple released a $230 iPhone sock. Nothing that happens in Episode 1 of The Audacity is as funny as any of those stories. Instead, everything in this first foray feels recycled. The Sopranos-style therapist, handwringing about a potential acquisition gone sideways, silly company names like Fahfa, data privacy creepiness – all of it is familiar, and The Audacity has nothing new to say about any of it. Having your ineffectual tech CEO shout “Call the ayahuasca guy” is like having your firefighter hero get a cat out of a tree.
The best scenes are those starring Meaghan Rath as Anushka Bhattachera-Phister, Director of Ethical Innovation, as she attempts to double-speak her employer into something approaching decency, and those with Rob Corddry as Tom Ruffage, who’s trying to raise money for Veterans Affairs and being baffled into retreating. “We used to run the world, Jeffery,” he tells his companion. “Now we rent server space from the bastards who broke it.” Meanwhile, Lucy Punch is wasted wearing a tight smile as Lili Park-Hoffsteader, the socially astute and spiky wife to Park, who harasses her daughter for eating more than one bite of a lemon bar.
What you’re left with is a version of Silicon Valley without the laughs, Mythic Quest without the warmth, WeCrashed or The Dropout without the tabloid reality to hold it all up. By the end of the tense moment that finishes off Episode 1, the stakes feel low because you haven’t been given a reason to feel anything other than irritation for anyone.
Wealthy people being miserable is usually one of my favorite genres, but when Zach Galifianakis gives a speech as resentful tech guy Carl Bardolph, moaning about the ingratitude of the common man with the phrase “boohoo poor old rich fart,” it feels less like a character note and more of an accidental summation of the whole vibe. The problem is that when you shout about a show’s creator having worked on Succession and Better Call Saul, you’re setting a high bar, and it’s one that The Audacity’s first episode doesn’t even manage to graze. It’s giving Kendall Roy without the pathos.
There are sparks of potential in the possible plotlines that could spill out of the data privacy topic — dig through anyone’s internet history, fictional or not, and you’re going to get at least a few snorts of laughter. Park’s bitchy, privileged daughter is truly, breathtakingly mean in her brief scene, so I’d love to see more of her. There’s a relationship with an AI that should deliver some low-hanging fruit for the writers. But is it all enough to up the ante and stop me from doomscrolling my way through the next couple of episodes, or asking ChatGPT to create images of Arthur Morgan as a merman? I hope so.
Rachel Weber is the Head of Editorial Development at IGN and an elder millennial. She’s been a professional nerd since 2006 when she got her start on Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK, and has since worked for GamesIndustry.Biz, Rolling Stone and GamesRadar. She loves horror, horror movies, horror games, Red Dead Redemption 2, and her Love and Deepspace boyfriends.
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