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PiedPiperID
COO
Jared-dunn
Donald "Jared" Dunn
Portrayed by: Zach Woods
First appearance: Minimum Viable Product
Last appearance: Exit Event
Date of birth: Unknown
Home town: Unknown
Occupation: COO of Pied Piper, Caretaker, Former Executive at Hooli
Family: Mother
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Donald "Jared" Dunn is one of the main characters of HBO's Silicon Valley who works as part of the Pied Piper team. Although his real first name is Donald, Gavin Belson started calling him 'Jared' on his first day at Hooli, and the name stuck.

Character History[]

Early Life[]

Like with most of the main character of the series, we don't know much about Jared's history before the start of the series, though it is implied to be dark. In Season three Jared tells Erlich that he doesn't know his date of birth as his first CPS worker never located his birth certificate. In season Six Jared tracks down his parents and finds that they had children before and after him and that they give him up because they wanted to simplify their first-class air travel. It's implied that Jared was placed in the American adoption system where he wasn't treated well and which leads him to yell in German whilst asleep. His best friends were Winnie, a stuffed animal made out of a Ziploc bag, old newspaper, and marker, and an imaginary Harriet Tubman. "We were always planning our big escape," he has said of the latter.

At some point Jared must have been adopted as he refers to an Aunt and Uncle Jerry and the mean comments they make about him such as his Uncle saying that he has "Ghost like features" and that he "looks like somebody tried to starve a virgin to death". His Aunt also refer to him as glasshole due to his the fragility of his posterior. Despite this rocky early life he went on to study at Vassar College, earning a B. A. in Economics and is working at Hooli

Show History[]

At the start of the first season of the show, Jared is working at Hooli as an exective member of staff. He witnesses the programming Bros looking at the Pied Piper music app who realise that the algorithm is revolutionary and runs off to inform Gavin Belson what they have discovered. He is seen to have been a member of staff who worked closely with Gavin and is seen around him a lot during the first episode. After Richard turns down Gavin's offer of $6 Million to build the company himself, Jared quits Hooli and begs to join Pied Piper which he sees as having a huge potential. He is hired by Richard for his Business expertise and helps Richard create business plans and the registering of the business.

In "Third Party Insourcing" he takes a meeting with Monica Hall to get some Business documents signed and is offered the use of Peter Gregory’s driverless car to get home. He gives the address and everything is going well until the car is overridden and with the address redirected to the new island Peter is build in the middle of the sea. He is unable to stop this or get out of the car and ends up traveling 1,000 of miles over seas to the Island which is occupied only by the series of Robots. Whilst not stated how he got back, it's shown that he was only able to get back just a day before the start of the next episode.

In "Server Space", it is revealed Jared has been sleeping in the Hacker Hostel's garage having converted it into a bedroom so he could take less of a salary, saving the company money. Once his belongings are discovered, it is decided that he'll room with Richard, as the others are unwilling to, creating an uncomfortable sleeping arrangement for Richard due to his unconscious conversations in German. At the end of the episode, after essentially blackmailing a mutually assured destruction of their neighbor, Noah, it is agreed that Jared will stay in Noah's guest house for an "exceedingly reasonable" amount of rent, utilities included.

We find out in "Two in the Box" that Jared's looking forward to returning to his condo and moving out of Noah's guest house due to Noah using a lot of hate speech towards him. When he returns to his condo, he realizes that his AirBnB tenant has decided to squat in his home after Jared asks him to leave. After Jared finds out that the eviction process can take up to a year, Dinesh asks him where he will stay in the mean time, to which Jared replies "I always have my trick: I simply imagine my skeleton is me, and my body is my house and that way I'm always home." Afterwards we find out he's occupying a corner of the garage again.

Hobbies and interests[]

In college, Jared sang second alto with the "Joyce Carol Notes A Capella Confrontation". He participated in competitive rowing as the coxswain of the Women's Heavyweight Crew. He was also the writer and assistant stage manager of the opera "American HerStory XX"[1]

In "Bad Money", Jared makes several analogies using examples from several Julia Roberts movies, showing he's a fan of her films. However, Jared's never seen My Best Friend's Wedding.

He makes reference to being into bird watching but its implied that the activity has gone wrong for him in the past when he says "It's like when somebody says they want to go birding with you, but really they just want to get you alone in the woods so they can take your binoculars". His interest in bird watching actually saves the company at one point due to suggesting that they convert a livestream they had made for the energy drink company Homicide after they betrayed Pied Piper into a livestream of a condor nest, which while his suggestion was mocked by the team at first, becomes vital for their leg-up against Nucleus and EndFrame after an animal rescue worker becomes injured and trapped, raking in millions of views from people entertained by the sight.

Relationships[]

Despite the dark and traumatic childhood he went through, he is easily the most together and socially and financially stable member of Pied Piper. He says that he voluntarily stopped dating in order to give Pied Piper his full attention which proves to be true as he is shown to easily get dates with women who enjoy their time with him and are easily willing to spend the night in his garage bedroom.

Out of all of the Pied Piper team, Jared gets on best with Richard Hendricks, who he acts as his righthand man during Pied Piper related business matters. He is shown to have become a very dedicated with Richard and Pied Piper and is often personally hurt when Richard lies or does something dishonest. When Richard, Gilfoyle and Dinesh get caught setting up Wifi Pineapples at Hooli-Con in order to get people on their network, Jared is angry that Richard risked Pied Pipers future after a immature prank on a fellow convention member and yells at the rest of the team.

He is frequently roasted by the other employees of Pied Piper though he tends to be oblivious of this or too uptight to actually understand the insult. Jared is usually depicted as the most empathetic person on the team, given most of the team's moral ambiguity. At the start of the series Gilfoyle and Dinesh are openly hostile to Jared and treat him as an outsider but admit that he is good at the business side of things. They are resistant to many of his business schemes such as the SWOT system, SCRUM, or his attempts to get them to work faster.

In "Artificial Emotional Intelligence" Jared hires Holden to become Richard's new secretary, but as the course of the series goes on their relationship grows increasingly from your average training experience to one that even other members of the main three Pied Piper team begin questioning how intensely devastating Jared's influence over Holden had become with side remarks about "Jared really did a number on him," during a particularly zealous show of excitement from Holden after the company had begun to succeed again. Jared's training method's are never revealed, but we can see some of how terrified Holden is of Jared poking through in scenes where they're featured together throughout the season.

In "Artificial Lack of Intelligence", after feeling like there's little else he can do for Richard and the company, he heads back to the hostel to regain some sense of himself and finds Big Head has created a new incubator with Jin-Yang. After having a "walk down memory-lane", he meets Gwart, an anti-social mute incubee (who actually has a cameo lasting less than a minute in the first season's episode "Fiduciary Duties" at the toga party), and immediately transfers his caretaker role from Richard to Gwart. Jared is fiercely defensive of Gwart and assumes her every need with only looks from her as confirmation or disappointment. In the episode "Blood Money", Jared becomes enraged at Richard after he insults Gwart, showing a side of Jared before unseen where he tells Richard to "keep her name out of your skanky little mouth, you little, little bitch!" Jared then shoots at Richard with a BB-gun yelling at Richard while he flees "Dope-led, peckerwood motherfucker!" After kicking the bathroom door Richard has locked himself into, he asks him "you wanna dance on the blacktop, homie!?" And continues to shoot at Richard from the front lawn. In the episode "Hooli Smokes!" Jared finds out Richard told Gavin Belson about Gwart's "sexy" tech, causing Jin-Yang to sell Gwart's company to Gavin for pocket change. Jared angrily calls Richard to confront him about it, thinking that Richard's actions were out of spite he tells him that if he wanted revenge against Jared, that was fine with him, but to go after Gwart was unforgiveable. He comes into the office later in semi-disguise to give Pied Piper information about Hooli revealing that the company has been run into the ground by Gavin, meaning Pied Piper could buy Hooli and thereby releasing Gwart and Jared to become independent. By the end of the episode, Richard apologizes to Jared, repairing their relationship and offering a workspace for Gwart in his office. In "Maximizing Alphaness" after Gwart meets with Laurie Bream, the two take a liking to one another and Gwart decides to dissolve her company to seek a job elsewhere, and fires Jared from her company. Jared immediately returns to work for Richard, getting rid of Holden as his previous secretary.

Memorable quotes[]

From "Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency"[]

Trying to encourage the Pied Piper team before the Tech Crunch Disrupt presentation, Erlich says "Yeah, we're gonna win even if I have to go into the auditorium and personally jerk off every guy in the audience." This prompts everyone else to ponder the idea of Erlich masturbating every man in the audience, and Jared has at least a couple of thoughts on the matter.

  • "That's a lot of jerking."
  • "Guys, does girth-similarity affect Erlich's ability to jerk different dicks simultaneously?"

From other episodes[]

  • "It's like when somebody says they want to go birding with you, but really they just wanna get you alone in the woods so they can take your binoculars"
  • "I like this new angry side to you. Being around angry people relaxes me, because I know where I stand."
  • "Sorry if I scared you; I know I have slightly ghost-like features."
  • "You know, Hitler actually played the bassoon. So Hitler was the Hitler of music."
  • "I have a lot of elderly friends."
  • “I found my retainer in a school dumpster. I found my biological father in a militia in the ozarks. This should be no problem."
  • "Hey Dinesh do you use that chain to choke your mom while you stick your penis in her butthole"
  • Jared: Sorry, Django. Dinesh: Django? Jared: (laughing) Unchained.
  • "Did that pussy Jared keep you on hold long? I eat that motherfucker’s lunch every day. No, man, I literally eat his food."
  • "I've always wanted to be part of a suicide pact."
  • You're the belle of the ball, and these are all your swains, hoping for a glimpse of ankle."

Gallery[]

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References[]

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