Carl stabs Duncan in the hand with a fork, and later his security detail pummels the Hypergnosis CEO. But Dunacn’s so shameless that he’ll risk further bodily harm from Mother Nature to make his pitch one more time. Maybe he fancies himself the spider, but the guy who’s “not perfect” but “impossible to ignore” (in Anushka’s words) is coming off a little more cockroach-like considering the circumstances.
So long as its main character remains more pathetic than sympathetic, comedy will remain The Audacity’s strongest suit. There’s a great deal of surprise in this episode’s physical gags. Zach Galifianakis’ momentary restraint is a great misdirection in the stabbing scene, and the security guys coming out of nowhere to tackle Duncan makes that laugh hit hard. There’s a lot of catharsis in seeing a tech titan like him get tossed around like a rag doll, but Billy Magnussen puts in the work to make this particular tech titan a particularly funny target. Duncan has, as they say, a very punchable face, and the actor playing him gets that across in both the smug, self-satisfied smiles of his final address to Carl and the barely-holding-it-together, speaking-through-gritted teeth grins he puts on when he’s at wit’s end or trying to save face.
And there continues to be a genuine spark and tartness to the punchlines. The reveal that Orson’s middle name is, improbably, Barack is a well-played peek into the mindset his parents were in when he was born as well as some primo, well-meaning white-liberal nonsense. (It’s not for nothing that it shares an inspiration with the most meme’d line from Get Out.) Magnussen adds a couple of zingers to The Quotable Duncan Park in “Valley Of Heart’s Delight”: “Typical? That sounds like a slur” he says when Gary delivers the results of last week’s neuropsych exam. With Carl in his sights, he says with utmost confidence, “I feel like Jane Goodall about to shoot a gorilla.” And when the writing isn’t up to those standards, there’s a whole cast of top-notch line readers to rely on. I was really tickled by the mustard Sarah Goldberg puts on “And were you planning on spending all of ninth grade jacking it off back here?”
If only the higher, cataclysmic register of “Valley Of Heart’s Delight” worked as well for everyone else’s stories as it does for Duncan’s. Between his cowboy outfit for the abandoned barbecue with Tom’s boss and the climactic showdown with Carl, he’s got a whole “lone gunslinger of the wasteland” thing going for him this week. But try as the frantic camerawork, editing, and score might, JoAnne’s race to deliver Orson’s stool sample in time fails to reach similar heights. The sense of absurdity is in the right place, and yet, with everything else going on in her life, would timely poop delivery really feel this life-or-death for her? The way that sequence drags on, we have a lot of time to ponder that question. There’s also the matter of why someone who’s trying so hard to bury some damaging secrets would leave one of the keys to those secrets in the hands of a doped-up teenager. You could say that external factors are keeping her from thinking straight, but she managed to be pretty on the ball under the threat of exposure in episode two.
The end-times vibe of “Valley Of Heart’s Delight” gets a major boost from a runner about the death and music of invented singer-songwriter Linus Po. His sorta Leonard Cohen, sorta Nick Cave songs unite characters across the show: JoAnne credits the aptly named Po with getting her through high school, while Lili, already neck deep in gloom thanks to the fires, reminds Duncan that Po headlined the first concert they saw together. It’s a neat addition to the world of The Audacity, and I’m eager to learn who’s providing the musician’s vocals. But like other attempts to humanize the characters in “Valley Of Heart’s Delight,” I find this one more intriguing than 100-percent successful.
Whatever Po meant to the people in Duncan’s orbit, the musician is just one more data point for the unraveling founder to harvest and manipulate to his advantage. His connection to Po is one of clout and domination: Having capitalized on and drained the man’s credibility with a performance at a company party years back, Duncan then uses his not-yet-cold corpse as a ventriloquist dummy, celebrating his newly forged alliance with Carl with a bespoke, AI-generated song in the style of Po.
As he rides into the blotted-out sunset on the high of a victory he earned through foolhardy obstinance and a grave-robbing musical tribute he has not earned, The Audacity bares its teeth once more. In Lili’s doomscrolling and Tom’s Gulf War flashbacks, “Valley Of Heart’s Delight” shows us there are characters on this show whose fear and pain run deeper than an IPO belly flop. But notice how Tom’s breakthrough with Xander plays out onscreen. He’s behind the glass wall of a conference room, being observed like some exotic, emotional species by Anushka, Martin, and Harp. Martin even describes what he’s watching as “an experiment.” The true creatures of the Valley are still a few recovered shards shy of repairing their shattered souls.
Stray observations
- • Fun fact: The episode’s title comes from the nickname that people used for the Santa Clara Valley before they called it Silicon Valley.
- • Great, understated bit of physical comedy from Galifianakis: the weird, arm wrist-flapping way Carl runs to grab that frisbee from JoAnne’s yard.
Erik Adams is a contributor to The A.V. Club.
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