The Audacity Recap: Privacy is Not a Thing Anymore

The Audacity
Sandbox
Season 1 Episode 6
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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“Sandbox” is now available on AMC+ ahead of its 9 p.m. ET broadcast next Sunday.

“The willingness is there to do what others dare not.” 

That line, uttered by Duncan in the last scene of this week’s episode, is as succinct a thesis statement as The Audacity has offered about the ethical wasteland of Silicon Valley. The common euphemism that the tech world tends to use is “disruption,” but the true titans of the field are the ones willing to kill established businesses and trample over privacy protections because it’s their shamelessness that makes them special. It doesn’t take some great visionary to spend a weekend “feeding USAID into the wood chipper” in the name of government efficiency, as Elon Musk did, but someone who’s comfortable with the unthinkable human cost of cutting lifesaving aid. The reward for doing business without a speck of conscience is potentially billions.

It’s a little strange that Duncan has been so slow to realize this quality in himself, but if you’re willing to do what others dare not, being dumb isn’t much of a hindrance to success. But having Hypergnosis swiped out from under him in last week’s episode has proven to be a clarifying moment, because he finally understands his true value. He tried to hold onto the idea that Fahfa took off because he collaborated with his late nerd partner Hamish, but it’s obvious that Hamish was a true tech visionary, and Duncan was a huckster who could bring their product to market. Through the humbling ordeal of losing his company to Carl and his ex-lover Anushka, who’s been tapped as the new CEO, Duncan has been reborn like a phoenix as a self-aware “bad guy,” and it’s given him a renewed sense of purpose. 

Knocking Duncan from his perch at Hypergnosis has helped give The Audacity a renewed sense of purpose, too, because it brings the major characters closer together and draws clear battle lines between them. It seemed like a joke, for example, for Anushka to have the role of “Chief Ethicist” at Cupertino, which found her proposing such ethical things as sending psychotherapists to ease a labor uprising in one of the company’s Chinese plants. Yet in her new role as CEO of Hypergnosis, Anushka wants to pivot away from the invasive spirit of Duncan’s data operation and offer customers the opposite, the assurance of privacy protections in an industry that’s been steadily chipping away at them. In her introduction to the team, she asks, “Who with half a brain wants to live under surveillance by their car, their television, toothbrush, refrigerator, fucking smart light bulbs? I’m sorry. Human dignity requires privacy.”

The Audacity has joked about the disparity between Silicon Valley types, who know enough about technology to limit their family’s exposure to it, and the ordinary dopes whose lives they can data-mine for profit. So naturally, the thought of turning Hypergnosis into an ethical company doesn’t compute, even to a seemingly conscientious person like Harper, who likens Anushka’s vision to buying a jet and asking where the brakes are. When the new CEO brings the executives of a car company into the office for a presentation, they’re disgusted by the thought of pitching buyers on privacy. Anushka complains about the agreement that asks users to accept 97 pages of terms and conditions in 7-point font, but these guys don’t even see themselves as car manufacturers. Selling customer information on cheap data is more lucrative than selling vehicles that cost a fortune to manufacture.

This is where Duncan steps in. His idea is to “zag” into a new business that sounds more or less like the company that just pushed him out the door. With Harper’s assistance, he could sell clients on the more aggressive theft of personal information. In the episode’s funniest scene, Duncan pitches these same car executives on a new venture with the acronym “PINATA,” meaning “privacy is not a thing anymore.” He envisions a subscription service where some can pay $29.99 a month to keep their data private, while others can pay a premium of $299 a month to see the world through the eyes of “Gnodin” and gobble up all the information they want. It’s an egregious violation of constitutionally protected rights, of course, but Congressional hearings, in Duncan’s experience, have no bite. 

It’s here that the clunky plotting that has often hampered the show comes into play. You might wonder why The Audacity would open with a sequence where Carl is leading a group of men through a World War I reenactment, especially since the comic payoff is so flat. (Carl furiously inquiring whether someone is wrecking the verisimilitude by playing Wordle is about as close to a joke as we get here.) Yet it sets the show up for an abrupt change of heart on Carl’s part after he seems initially hostile to Anushka’s new direction for Hypergnosis. After giving poor Tom Ruffage the runaround at Cupertino, Anushka wants his VA data project to be the cornerstone of her ethical vision for Hypergnosis, and she accidentally stumbles onto an idea that Carl can embrace, too. Carl and Anushka’s sudden, intense interest in Tom has the bonus of bringing Martin into the picture, too, because his AI chatbot can offer therapy to the vets that Hypergnosis’s “eye of Gnodin” identifies as traumatized.

All these machinations have the effect of firming up JoAnne and Duncan’s conspiratorial relationship. Despite her best efforts to use therapy sessions to raise the 20 percent down payment necessary to buy the rental home she shares with Gary and Orson, JoAnne loses the house to an all-cash bidder who turns out to be Duncan, a clever real estate deal in which JoAnne herself becomes part of the property. If she and Gary want to continue to soothe the egos of Palo Alto’s elite from their home, then she’s going to have to go into this illicit business with Duncan. What she doesn’t realize is that her creepy incel son and Anushka’s sneaky stepdaughter Tess are gaining blackmail material on the floor below. Whatever happens, it’s hard to imagine it’ll benefit veterans. Or humanity at large. 

Pixels

• Duncan’s sweaty attempt to win Anushka back as his romantic and business partner predictably fails, as she likens him to eating “a three-quarter can of cake frosting that I found at the back of the fridge that’s hard and crusty at the top.” (The first bite is yummy, “but the rest is self-hatred.”) 

• JoAnne’s explanation to Gary about how she suddenly has access to a million dollars is exactly the sort of nonsense that someone who knows nothing about money might buy: “It’s a financial instrument, a sort of advanced second mortgage introductory rate asset swap.” Shoutout to Gary, because I don’t understand the word “escrow,” either, no matter how many times it’s explained to me. 

• Orson’s lonely turn into the manosphere is leading him to a Clavicular-like influencer who does planks while offering insight into how the various signals “the fairer sex” sends out involuntarily through facial expressions. (“Look particularly at her pupils. If they’re dilated, it means she wants to see more of you. She’s interested in you, bro. Earlobes. If she’s flushed, she’s good to go. You can take her out to dinner later.”) None of this will work for Orson other than the misogyny. 

• Early scenes with Harper made it seem like they were reluctant to invade people’s privacy as recklessly as Duncan wanted, but that’s not the case. They’re as unscrupulous as he is. In this respect and others, Harper feels like a carbon copy of Asia Kate Dillon’s non-binary financial wizard Taylor Mason on Billions, one of the clearer influences on this series.

• Duncan and Harper’s vision for their data company goes beyond the mere targeting of consumers based on their personal habits, but seeks to read and predict mental and emotional states, too. As Duncan pitches it, “Basically, we know if you’re banging your secretary before you do. If the itch is there, we’ll provide the scratch.” 

• The pink Chekhov’s gun in JoAnne’s office somehow does not get fired, despite Orson waving it directly in Tess’s face. It’s a good reminder that it will be fired at some point, though.