SummaryStandford students Trey Barrett (Joe Dinicol) and Avinash "Nash" Dagavi (Karan Soni) dropout of college to work on their beta social network app BRB when they find a potential investor in "The Murch," George Murchison Jr. (Ed Begley Jr.).
SummaryStandford students Trey Barrett (Joe Dinicol) and Avinash "Nash" Dagavi (Karan Soni) dropout of college to work on their beta social network app BRB when they find a potential investor in "The Murch," George Murchison Jr. (Ed Begley Jr.).
It helps enormously that Dinicol and Soni find the right mix of vulnerability and awkwardness in the leading roles. The show also captures a general atmosphere of Silicon Valley as a youthful place not far removed from absorbing the Harry Potter books.
Likable and entertaining, "betas" is a more conventional version of HBO's "Silicon Valley."
In some ways the show is more accessible to a general audience than it's pay-cable rival and well worth the download.
I don't know the metric by which Amazon is judging its originals but since this series didn't get a second season pick-up - I think they're doing it wrong.
I watched the first episode and enjoyed the story about a group of app developers who are pitching their newest app to a local bigwig. Moby made a guest appearance which peaked my interest. Also, each of the protagonist males has some sort of quirky romance thing going on, which I liked. Lisa, played by Margo Harshman is sharp and Hobbes grew on me (despite his introduction).
I had a vague sense that I had seen these people before, but the dialogue pushed it into unique territory and I'm curious to know how it will develop.
The show crackles with witty (and jargony) banter and mostly succeeds at making its tech world fun and engaging -- something Randi Zuckerberg's "Start-Up: Silicon Valley" reality series too often failed to do. But the problem with Betas is that it's an uneven endeavor that's just good enough to make you wish it were better.
After watching Betas first season ...and though I am NOT (perhaps) in the "target demographic" (older female) I find this show to be disarmingly touching.
The characters are fleshing out and the journey they are on, seems to me to be closer to being ones of parallel Don Quixotes...I am curious how these separate paths will converge.
I want to see more.
The pilot was surprisingly promising. An underdog story, but the underdogs are app programmers in a world of it-geeks. So, there is no traditional juxtaposition of geeks versus jocks. I really want their app to succeed; that's all that matters at this point (that's a hook, which Alpha House lacks). There were story-lines tangential to the main one that I was much less interested in, but this is just a beginning. Hopefully, the show will find its focus and heart through the humor as it develops.
I had hoped this show would improve after the pilot, which was a little shaky. But no. In fact, it actually got worse. The characters are completely unlikeable. Imagine Entourage without the charm (which is really saying something). I was hard pressed to care in the slightest what happens to any of them.
The writers of Betas seem to think comedy stems from having their characters say the most crude and insensitive things possible with nonchalant bravado as quickly as possible. They also seem to think that strong female characters are simply female characters who are just as misogynistic as their male counterparts.
And it's not that I "don't get it" I am firmly in the target demographic. I understand all the geeky references about startups and MySpace etc. I really wanted to like this show because it's a great concept. It's just a shame it's SO charmless. Think Entourage with Aspergers.
I seriously don't understand the currently 7.3 rating of this show. It's like Silicon Valley, without all the professionalism in writing, characters, storylines, realisticness (if this is a word).
It's got some youth we barely have backgrounds for, who are weird and can't relate to, they're absolutely unlikeable, every single one of them. I don't care about the smug little "CEO", I can't believe he's a visionary like Richard in SV. Is he even a tech guy, or he's just a man with an idea? We NEVER really know if he can even code.
Nash is just an annoying crybaby. All the "twists" are as serious as "I'm going to do the opposite what everyone told me otherwise nothing would happen in the show". Also, all the Venture Capitalist ping-pong has been done better in SV. Yes, I'm bringing up SV a lot, since the whole show just feels like huuuuuuuuge, but really really cheap knockoff of that show. It's a shiny but empty shell.
If you kindof-sortof liked Silicon Valley, but it was too distant for you, maybe this show is a better choice. As a tech geek, I think this show is simply lame, but might have more commercial success compared to SV.
I just finished the whole first season and I could not care less what will happen to these unrealistic, unlikeable, boring cardboard-cutout "characters".