Valley of the Boom

An idea that works when it probably shouldn't and, in fact, generates a considerable amount of joy and entertainment as it moves quickly through an important and complicated retelling of not only the "browser wars" that kicked off when the internet was something people had never heard of, but also the myriad other elements at play in the period.

Each chapter’s pace flows well, but there can be a herky-jerky energetic inconsistency between episodes as Carnahan throws in one diversionary gimmick after another. ... Such contrivances come at the expense of gravitas, but given the frequent opacity of the stories behind what actually happened, a viewer can’t fault Carnahan too severely for doing all he could possibly do to keep the story light and limber.

A nutty sprawl that's often amusing, occasionally interesting, sporadically informative and almost completely off the rails. A hoot.

At just six one-hour episodes (two airing each Sunday for three weeks), “Valley of the Boom” runs out of gas well before its conclusion and begins to feel padded, especially in its last hour. The series also suffers from tension-free drama as the stories mostly go the way viewers will expect.

With everyone playing to the camera, from actors who break the fourth wall to their real-life counterparts who sit for interviews, the result is system overload. Boom is entertaining yet can be exhausting as it is illuminating. [7-20 Jan 2019, p.11]

The documentary doesn’t augment the scripted narrative so much as it doubles down to overwhelm viewers with information; to entertain at all costs, even when it means repeating facts and disconnecting the human cost from of all these technological advances.

The portion of this hybrid scripted-nonfiction show drawn from interviews with real-world tech pioneers and scenesters (among them, recognizable faces including Mark Cuban and Arianna Huffington) is light but enlightening. By contrast, the time the show spends dramatizing the stories its talking heads explain is poorly spent, spinning a relatively thin narrative into a six-episode run through repetitious and tiring use of post-modern storytelling techniques that are as tired today as a dial-up modem.

Valley of the Boom abounds with self-aware asides and fanciful fillips, and these are variously pandering, bizarre, and endearing. ... Where McKay’s scenes [in "The Big Short"] clarify, these tend to confuse and clutter. ... The show has no particular ambition to draw its characters as people. Rather, they are figures of Wild West lore and common cliché.

Valley of the Boom provides a fascinating, timely history lesson in misguided, utterly off-putting fashion. Simply put, a series that spends lots of time talking about initial public offerings and raking in billions doesn't come close to making the sale.