Review: 'Start-Ups: Silicon Valley'

In that so-terrible-it’s-great James Bond film A View to a Kill, the diabolical Max Zorin (Christopher Walken) intends to destroy Silicon Valley by means of a man-made earthquake, giving him a monopoly on semiconductor production. If Silicon Valley resembled anything like what was being shown in the first episode of Bravo’s new reality series Start-Ups: Silicon Valley, I would gladly have been Mr. Zorin’s henchman. When I’m on my deathbed, I won’t be accepting of my demise. I’ll be angry because I’ll know there are 44 minutes owed to me from 2012, minutes lost to this sham of a show.

Here’s the premise of Start-Ups: A half-dozen not-very-bright young things are living in the Bay Area seeking fame and fortune. They all sort of know each other in that manufactured Bravo way. There’s a nod to the idea that “tech” is the central theme, and venture capitalists and angel investors are the means to a lucrative end, but those terms are heard so rarely that they could just as easily have been “record producer,” “Donald Trump,” or “Alaskan crab boat.”