Silicon Valley's 15 Best Episodes Ranked

First on our list is the Season 4 finale, "Server Error." In this episode, Richard and Pied Piper are dealing with the fallout from the previous episode ("Hooli-Con"), where several phones running the Pied Piper app exploded. Jared resigns over Richard's plans to minimize the scandal, and Hooli CEO Jack Barker (Stephen Tobolowsky) travels to China to try and stimulate the increased production of millions of smartphones to replace the destroyed ones, only to be taken hostage by factory workers.

Meanwhile, Gavin Belson (Matt Ross) who is still in Tibet, is joined by Erlich Bachman (Miller) who annoys Belson by watching episodes of "House" instead of giving himself over to the monastery's lifestyle. Back in Palo Alto, Richard and Pied Piper are struggling to find a place to house the data for their client FGI after their internet service gets cut for lack of bill payment. The guys solve the problem by disassembling Gilfoyle's server Anton and bringing it to Nelson "Bighead" Baghetti's (Josh Brener) office in Stanford. Except, everything falls out of the truck on the way when they forget to secure the latch.

Luckily, the Anton servers had backed themselves up on Jian-Yang's (Yang) smart fridge, persevering FGI's data and saving Pied Piper from breaching their contract. The episode is not only hilarious but masterfully blends together all of the converging storylines from Season 4. It is definitely a surefire top 15 episode.

In "Third Party Insourcing," Richard's limitations in engineering the cloud threaten to derail everyone's work on Pied Piper. So, they decide to recruit Kevin "The Carver" (Austin Abrams), a hacker who had previously cracked Bank of America's security and brought down their entire system. However, when they get there The Carver turns out to be a sarcastic teenager, who promises to finish the entire job over the weekend by taking excessive amounts of Adderall.

Back at Erlich's incubator, Gilfoyle's new girlfriend Tara (Milana Vayntrub) moves in and Dinesh immediately finds himself attracted to her. Gilfoyle tricks him into thinking Tara is into him, which causes Dinesh to embarrassingly present himself to her, much to Gilfoyle's amusement. At the same time, Jared finds himself trapped in a self-driving vehicle, which changes courses while he is a passenger and drives him into a shipping container.

While working on Pied Piper, Richard quickly realizes that The Carver isn't the coder they thought he was and can't function without being under the influence. Richard tries to purchase some more pills for the teenager but ends up getting ripped off and slapped by a 10-year-old. Erlich has to save the day by hitting and threatening the kids into making good on the deal. Erlich's scenes with the minors and Dinesh trying to woo Tara are just a few reasons why "Third Party Insourcing" is one of the best episodes, with laughs coming from beginning to end.

In "Proof of Concept," the Pied Piper gang attends the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield to compete for $50,000 in funding capital. Richard is physically ill because Pied Piper hasn't been completed yet, leading to constipation and vomiting, and both he and Erlich are dealing with issues from old relationships. Richard runs into his ex-girlfriend at the event, and Erlich tries to avoid Dan Melcher (Jack Broder), one of the competition's judges whose wife he previously had an affair with.

Dinesh starts hitting it off with an attractive coder named Charlotte (AJ Michalka) at the event, only to find that he's only really attracted to her excellent coding skills. Eventually, it's revealed that the code Dinesh was so infatuated with was actually written by Gilfoyle. The episode ends with Pied Piper beginning their Battlefield presentation, during which Melcher tackles Erlich as he is giving his presentation as revenge for sleeping with his wife years earlier. 

Though it is pretty early in the series, "Proof of Concept" holds up as one of the best episodes. The love triangle between Dinesh, Charlotte, and Gilfoyle's code is worthy enough, but the second dysfunctional relationship between Melcher and Erlich, ending with the attack, really seals it.

In Season 3's "Maleant Data Systems Solution," after getting caught working on their own project (the Pied Piper platform) instead of the Pied Piper box, Richard, Dinesh, and Gilfoyle reach an agreement with new CEO Jack Barker to work on their platform and the Pied Piper box at the same time. Intending to build a poor box as quickly as possible so they can devote all of their energy to their platform, the guys can't help themselves but create a quality product, which promises to more than double their competition's speeds.

Meanwhile, Erlich is trying to find a new house for his incubator, and he tricks Bighead into cutting him in on his already functioning setup located in his new mansion. Back at Pied Piper, Richard's friend and board member Monica Hall (Crew) prevents Jack from pulling a fast one on the crew by using her voting rights to stop a bad deal from going through.

In the end, Monica's gamble pays off, and Pied Piper secures Laurie Bream's (Suzanne Cryer) funding for their platform, while Jack is fired from the company, leaving the CEO position open. "Maleant Data Systems Solution" is one of the more uplifting and positive "Silicon Valley" episodes. Its happy ending has the gang vanquishing the villain (Jack) — albeit temporarily — and getting permission to follow their original dream.

The series finale "Exit Event" serves as both a conclusion and epilogue to the series, as it shows both how the Pied Piper story ends and the characters a decade in the future. After the prior episode ("RussFest"), Pied Piper seems like it is on an upward trajectory toward becoming one of the biggest tech companies in history. However, the tweaks the company made to be successful at the festival also lead to its ultimate downfall.

Previously, Richard had allowed Gilfoyle's AI to improve the company's platform by programming it to optimize itself. Unfortunately, it did such a good job making itself more efficient that it learned the ability to break strong encryption schemes. Not only that, but because the network is self-optimizing, the AI continues to keep breaking encryption schemes, making them useless and preventing any form of internet privacy. Realizing the potentially devastating effects of their incredible code on the world, the guys sabotage the Pied Piper launch, hoping everyone will write off the code as useless and not dig into it.

The sabotage works and Pied Piper becomes one of the biggest tech failures in history. Yet, in the end, all of the characters wind up successful and happy in their own ways. The series finale is one of the most dramatic and exciting episodes of the series, making it an easy inclusion on the list.

"Binding Arbitration" begins with Bighead speaking with some of the Hooli engineers creating Nucleus when he discovers that their prototype phone is glitchy and performs incredibly poorly. He gives the phone to Richard, who then tries to leverage it with Gavin to get him to drop his ongoing lawsuit against Pied Piper. The lawsuit alleges that Richard had created part of Pied Piper while working at Hooli and using their equipment, which would give them proprietary rights to Richard's algorithm because of the terms of his former employment contract.

Gavin agrees to drop the lawsuit if Richard doesn't release the prototype to the public, but they instead enter into binding arbitration over Pied Piper. Gavin is defended by Hooli's team of corporate lawyers, while Richard has to use Pete Monahan, a disgraced former attorney who was recently disbarred. During heated testimony, Erlich inadvertently clues in the Hooli legal team to the fact that Richard had used their company's laptop to run a test on his algorithm at one point. Richard is then forced to admit to the arbitrator that he did indeed use Hooli's equipment, conceding it will mean the loss of his company.

The episode ends on a huge cliffhanger as we are left waiting on the final ruling. "Binding Arbitration" is one of the most dramatic in the series, while also staying light and hilarious throughout.

Season 5 finale "Fifty-One Percent" is one of the most satisfying in the entire "Silicon Valley" canon, as Richard and Pied Piper notch one of the biggest wins of the series. The episode starts with PiperNet, Pied Piper's newly created decentralized internet, finally starting to gain traction after months of stagnancy. While the team is excited at first, they soon learn that the source of the new users is from YaoNet, a rival decentralized internet using a stolen version of Pied Piper's software.

Realizing that Yao (Tzi Ma) is trying to gain 51% of the network so they can start rewriting the internet's rules and delete Pied Piper's users, Richard tries to get Gavin on his side by offering him the prospect of revenge on Yao for double-crossing him earlier. Instead, Gavin and Yao end up teaming together in a double cross on Richard. While Gavin is celebrating by eating ice cream he hand-churned in front of Richard, Pied Piper secures 80,000 new users from the game "Gates of Galoo," which they use to control the network and lock Gavin and Yao out.

In one of the most satisfying scenes in the series, Richard tells Gavin "thanks for the help," as he tosses a bowl of Gavin's hand-churned ice cream over his back. It smashes on the floor as Richard walks away, leaving an exasperated Gavin seemingly on the verge of tears.

If you're a fan of "Silicon Valley" you probably saw this coming a mile away. The top episode of the series has to be Season 1 finale, "Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency." Not only is the conclusion probably the best in the series, but the main plot line is incredibly hilarious. Following the end of "Proof of Concept," where TechCrunch judge Dan Melcher tackles Erlich, Pied Piper is given automatic entry to the finals of the Battlefield competition.

However, Richard instantly becomes dismayed when they watch Hooli's presentation, which is basically a better version of Pied Piper. The guys find themselves back in their hotel room scheming ways to win the competition when they start trying to calculate how long it would take for them to pleasure everyone in the audience in exchange for their vote. The guys create an equation outlining the most efficient way to service everyone, which they term the optimal tip-to-tip efficiency.

While the guys are working on this, Richard completely rewrites Pied Piper from the ground up. He bases the new algorithm on "middle-out" compression, which is inspired by their equation. At the competition, Pied Piper crushes the theoretical limit for compression, instantly making them the hottest tech company on the planet. "Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency" is easily the top "Silicon Valley" episode as it set the tone for future seasons, showcasing hilarious banter with a heartwarming ending.