美劇《硅谷》第三季爆笑迴歸

Silicon Valley, the heart of the American tech industry, has provided Hollywood with endless inspiration for movies and TV shows. Most of these offerings delve into the pathos of its most famous entrepreneurs. In the past three years alone, Apple visionary Steve Jobs has been the subject of two movies and one feature-length documentary, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was likewise profiled in the 2010 biopic The Social Network.

美國科技產業的心臟——硅谷爲好萊塢電影和電視劇提供了源源不絕的靈感。此類題材的作品大多描述的是著名企業家的艱辛的創業故事。僅在過去三年中，蘋果公司的夢想家斯蒂夫•喬布斯就兩次被搬上電影銀幕，此外還有一部關於他的長篇紀錄片問世，臉書創始人馬克•扎克伯格的故事也被拍成傳記電影《社交網絡》。

Yet few shows have been willing to embrace the Valley’s quirky side. The HBO comedy series Silicon Valley happens to take this unusual approach. The show is about a geeky programmer named Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch), who rockets to superstardom after he creates a revolutionary data compression algorithm.

不過鮮少有劇願意觸碰硅谷奇葩的一面。美國有線電視網絡公司HBO的喜劇劇集《硅谷》碰巧走上了這條不尋常的路。該劇講述了極客程序員理查德•亨德里克斯 （托馬斯•米德迪奇飾）在發明了一套革命性的文件壓縮算法後名聲大噪的故事。

Ever since the show debuted two years ago, Silicon Valley has been known for lampooning tech culture in US. However, its third season, which was kicked off on April 24, takes the series’ comic absurdity to a new level.

自兩年前首播後，《硅谷》就因爲諷刺了硅谷的科技文化而聞名。現在該劇的第三季已於4月24日開播，這一季荒謬爆笑的程度比之前更上一層樓。

The new season starts with a dramatic scene: Hendricks, founder of the startup Pied Piper, gets fired as a CEO. “You have created a company that is too valuable for you to run: You should feel good about that,” his investor, Laurie Bream, tells him.

第三季開篇就是這樣一個戲劇性的場面：亨德里克斯是初創公司Pied Piper的創始人，但作爲首席執行官的他卻被解僱了。投資人勞瑞•布里姆告訴他：“你創造了一個很有價值的公司，它珍貴到容不得被你糟蹋：你應該爲此感到欣慰。”

Ludicrous as it seems, this scenario rings true in the tech industry. Celebrated tech entrepreneurs like Jobs, PayPal’s Elon Musk and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey have all experienced being pushed out of their own company.

這聽起來很可笑，但在科技行業這種情節可是真實發生過的。著名的科技界企業家，比如喬布斯、貝寶公司的伊隆•馬克斯和推特的傑克•多西都曾被自己的公司趕出去過。

The show’s creator, Mike Judge, was himself a former programmer in Silicon Valley. He revealed what inspires the whip-smart satire from the show in an interview with The Guardian. “If you’re in Wall Street, you’re kind of unashamed about how much money you’re making,” Judge said. “But in the tech world, it’s not enough to be making money – you’ve also got to be saving the world.” That mentality inspires a running joke in season three. The series’ fictional entrepreneurs start using the catchphrase “Making the world a better place” to justify all their ideas, however bad.

該劇製片人邁克•詹郅之前也在硅谷當過碼農。他在《衛報》的採訪中透露了劇中機智吐槽的靈感來源。他說：“如果你在華爾街工作，你會覺得賺再多錢都問心無愧。但是在科技界，賺錢是遠遠不夠的，你肩負着拯救世界的使命。”第三季中的一個段子就來源於此想法。劇中虛構的企業家開始使用“讓世界變得更美好”的口號爲自己所有的想法辯護，哪怕是壞的想法。

The stinging satire of Silicon Valley is the perfect medium to capture today’s tech culture. A rising number of college students are choosing to major in computer science. Around graduation season, many of them flock to California to launch their startups so that they won’t miss the new high-tech gold rush.

《硅谷》中的辛辣諷刺是瞭解當下科技文化的絕佳途徑。越來越多的大學生選擇主修計算機專業。畢業季時，很多計算機專業的學生涌入加州創業，似乎只有這樣他們纔不會錯過新一波高科技淘金熱。

“If you’re making a show about twenty-somethings, someone’s got to work at a startup because that’s what’s going on in the culture,” US writer and TV producer Evan Endicott told The Atlantic.

美國作家、電視製片人埃文•恩迪科特告訴《大西洋月刊》：“如果你拍一部講訴20多歲年輕人的電視劇，那就必須加入創業元素，因爲這才符合當下的最新潮流。”