Greed is Good in Showtime’s Compelling Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber | TV/Streaming

Recognizing that it’s working with a familiar cool, the series has a narration from none other than Quentin Tarantino. For a show that never hesitates for an animated diversion of what’s going on (a little Adam McKay being thrown in the mix), Tarantino’s voice does add a sharp edge, especially when he says “motherf**ker” to emphasize the power of some figure given a snazzy entrance. Tarantino becomes the spirit of it: this is a show about boardroom violence; it can be fun to watch until it gets redundant, or numbing. 

Adapted from the book by Mike Isaac and created by “Billions” storytellers Brian Koppelman, David Levien, and Beth Shacter, the show is informative most of all about the long, scandalous saga of one of the most popular rideshare apps, and a Silicon Valley movement. Much of it is reenacted here with a focused sense on how these many developments were personal. It’s about Travis’ ego to be the next Zuck or Bezos, or to crush John Zimmer of Lyft, or show such and such who is the real boss. It’s all about winning. 

This can be compelling up to a point, and it is exciting to see this highlight reel reenacted with such detail to events that the public might have forgotten. But the series can lose some of its juice when trying to create any larger dramatic stakes out of Travis’ latest power play, or sneaky move that’s illegal. There are long passages in which the series doesn’t have a gut punch, in part because we can only look in on the horror show. And there are so many scenes that take place in modern conference rooms, where quick-witted metaphors about velvet ropes, unicorns, sports, or what have you, are thrown around by men all speaking in the same gruff voice. It’s all part of style, and sometimes it makes the script’s creative spins on real events seem extra hokey. 

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