In AMC’s The Audacity, many people throw their weight around as they negotiate, maneuver, and threaten their way through Silicon Valley. Power and intimidation are used to bargain and coerce even as they try to keep their business private from everyone else. With all the peacocking around the Valley, there is one man holed up in his home trying to create something that can make the world a better place. Simon Helberg’s Martin Phister is a genius left to his own devices, as his wife and daughter come second to him edging closer to a new breakthrough. Does Martin worry about backing up claims of his own prowess? Does a genius feel pressure to capitalize on his legacy?
With his grizzled beard and quiet voice, Helberg establishes a character who is more than comfortable being on his own. His wife, Meghan Rath’s Anushka, is living a life on her own terms, and Martin may or may not know the details of it. Would Martin feel that threatened by Billy Magnussen’s Duncan Park if they went completely toe-to-toe? I kept wondering what Martin have to offer over the cocky owner of Hypergnosis?
Martin is working on a breakthrough technology to help young people with their anxieties and inner troubles. Xander, but he isn’t exactly paying attention to his own daughter, Tess. Would Martin be able to tend to his daughter’s needs as much as Xander’s? At one point he tells her, ‘You live in a bubble, you have no idea what teens today are going through’ when she tells her father that online trophies are a form of dopamine that don’t really exist in the real world.
Martin represents the kind of loneliness that other men of Silicon Valley might be too afraid to approach. When was the last time that they locked themselves up in a room with their ideas? Helberg is the kind of actor that gives himself over to the character and can mingle together absurdity and pathos. It’s the kind of performance that feels entirely lived in but fresh and drawn on its own terms.
The Audacity is streaming on AMC+.
