Tangled web
Sorvino gathers dark secrets in new season of ‘StartUp’
For its third season, “StartUp” gets an infusion of star power.
Academy Awardwinner Mira Sorvino (“Mighty Aphrodite”) joins the cast as NSA agent Rebecca Stroud.
She’s there to make hell for the tech lords who think they’ve created the perfect web platform. And maybe enjoy the chaos she creates.
Not that the folks behind Araknet need any more help in self-destructing.
More than ever, “StartUp” resembles the comic strip “Dilbert” or the sitcom “The Office” — if they were dramas, with millions at stake and lots of horrible people grasping for power.
Wes (Ron Perlman) is tired and cranky (more than usual, OK) of burning through money to fund the operation and is trying to woo two venture capitalist bros (“Tucker and Dale vs. Evil’s” Tylor Labine and “Santa Clarita Diet’s” Zachary Knighton) into investing.
They aren’t taking the bait, but they do enjoy making him beg for it. They challenge him: If he can raise the number of visitors — currently at 60 million — to 100 million by the end of the quarter, they’ll invest.
It seems like a fool’s bet, but Wes takes it.
Nick (Adam Brody) seems to have his personal life in order but is eager for Araknet to take over the world. It’s not hard to imagine him chaining his coders to their desks and flogging them every hour. Oh, he’s a horrible boss — and part of the satisfaction of the season is seeing him get his comeuppance.
Ron (Edi Gathegi) has a wife and a daughter and the trappings of a middle-class life and it’s not enough. He can’t stay away from the friends he grew up with, only now they are running drugs and guns — right through Araknet.
What of Izzy (Otmara Marrero)?
Seems everyone would like to know where the tech wizard is. She’s enjoying a life faraway but soon realizes her notoriety is like a shadow stalking her. A return to her old environment is fraught with more danger than she anticipated and she becomes a pawn in a dangerous struggle.
“StartUp” is about a lot of things this season — technology’s untrustworthiness, government overreach and toxic work environments. The pacing shouldn’t work, yet it does. The private stories pull you in. This is a great cast playing. Sorvino might remind you of Kyra Sedgwick in “The Closer”: Her NSA agent has a way of disarming everyone with small talk. She has her own equally weird relationship with junk food (here, burgers) and, oh, yes, she knows everyone’s darkest secrets and she’s ready to use them to get what she wants.
“They think they still have rights,” she tells one ally on her cellphone. “They think they still have agency. But one day soon they’ll wake up and they will realize they are in my world now.”
It’s a scary world. But it’s fun to visit.