If I want to hear how billionaire tech bros are making the world worse, I can turn on the news. If I want to hear how billionaire tech bros are making the world worse and at least laugh about it, I can watch Audacity.
Created by Jonathan Glatzer, writer and producer at Succession again Better Call Saul, Audacity takes a satirical hammer to Silicon Valley. It cuts through the tech world with cutting one-liners and a show of super-rich, insecure “billionaire kids” that often feel frighteningly familiar.
What Audacity about?
Zach Galifianakis and Billy Magnussen in “The Audacity.”
Credit: Ed Araquel / AMC
Among those man-children is Duncan Park (Billy Magnussen), a data mining executive for the tech company Hypergnosis. He is a sleeveless vest full of delusions and insecurities, a man who is confident in his genius, yet still needs those around him to validate that genius.
The person he is closest to is his elderly therapist, Dr. JoAnne Felder (Sarah Goldberg), who doesn’t earn enough to hear about Duncan’s fraudulent activity. However, JoAnne’s record is also spotty. Thanks to the knowledge from his sessions with Duncan and other management technical experts, he gained enough insider knowledge to get into deep insider trading.
When Duncan discovers this, and when his stock threatens to plummet, he tells JoAnne to help him, which leads to a sharp, self-destructive turn for both of them.
Billy Magnussen and Sarah Goldberg are killing it Audacity.
Sarah Goldberg and Billy Magnussen on Audacity.
Credit: Ed Araquel / AMC
There are few greater joys in television than watching two great actors duke it out, and you’re going to get plenty of those Audacity thanks to Magnussen and Goldberg.
Many stand out in supporting roles, from He entered the Forest on short-lived HBO FranchiseMagnussen takes center stage with his usual self-deprecating commitment. His Duncan is someone you love to hate: smarmy, full of himself, and always ready to keep digging a deep hole if it means he’ll get what he wants. Magnussen channels each of Duncan’s flaws with glee, and the result is comedic gold.
While Duncan believes he’s above the world, Goldberg’s JoAnne knows she’s at the bottom of the Silicon Valley pyramid. That fuels Goldberg’s beautiful take on JoAnne’s building’s decay, as well as Duncan’s infidelity and his strained relationship with his son Orson (Everett Blunck). We’ve seen Goldberg play an out-of-control woman before, like BarrySally Reed. (Who can forget his Season 3 elevator?) Here, he instilled that same level of desperation, along with JoAnne’s highly named therapist. Viewing from therapist mode to panic mode is one of them AudacityThe best pictures of dark humor. Watching the two come together is even better.
Magnussen and Goldberg’s chemistry is great, with Duncan and JoAnne fighting for power in crazy ways. The highlight of the first season? JoAnne chooses to drive her car down the road to avoid dealing with the approaching Duncan. Draw a frame with goofiest a smile on his face, pretending to be his mate even though he was using his car’s data to track him. He believes he lives in a technological thriller, while JoAnne lives in a horror movie. That imbalance is a key part of why the JoAnne-Duncan dynamic works so well, but it’s also proof that Audacity‘s tech bros’ total delusion: They live so far away from everyone else that they feel they can do anything.
AudacitySilicon Valley is very dangerous.
Simon Helberg in “The Audacity.”
Credit: Ed Araquel / AMC
Audacity build a full, scary world around Duncan and JoAnne. Disillusioned tech pioneers like Carl Bardolph (Zach Galifianakis) look down on what Silicon Valley has become, all the while trying to find a way back. Parents like Duncan and his wife Lili (Lucy Punch) try to ensure that their daughter Jamison (Ava Telek) gets into Stanford by any means necessary, hiring her coaches even if her team is respectable. Elsewhere, inventor Martin Pfister (Simon Helberg) is hard at work perfecting an AI baby, while ignoring his daughter Tess (Thailey Roberge).
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In the teenage series of Orson, Jamison, and Tess, being separated from their parents is a common occurrence. In their eyes, Silicon Valley becomes a difficult place to grow up.
From the perspective of adults, the Valley doesn’t seem so beautiful, despite the luxury homes or luxury mud baths just a helicopter ride away in Napa. Instead of a technological heaven, it’s a surreal tech dystopia, where a single algorithm can play God and collect all human data for exploitation. It might sound like science fiction if this kind of data mining technology didn’t already exist, and that’s part of it Audacitydull appeal: making us laugh at that is one step removed from the truth.
“The world does not exist i in the world,” Orson said of Silicon Valley. He’s right. It’s a bubble full of big values and big egos. But, Audacity it reminds us, that the bubble has a big impact on the real world, and isn’t it a stupid, scary thing?
Audacity has been updated since its premiere at SXSW. It premieres April 12 at 9 pm ET on AMC and AMC+.
