Mike Judge on ‘Silicon Valley,’ T.J. Miller’s Exit and How ‘Idiocracy’ Endures

“Silicon Valley” returns to HBO Sunday after a particularly terrible week for Silicon Valley, as Facebook dealt with fallout from revelations about the Cambridge Analytica data breach and Uber notched a horrific milestone: The first pedestrian killed by a driverless car.

“The tech world of four or five years ago is definitely different than now,” said Mike Judge, the creator of the show. The public conception of Silicon Valley as a place of whiz kids in hoodies “boldly claiming all the time that they were making the world a better place” has been replaced with something darker, he said.

For its fifth season, TV’s “Silicon Valley” has undergone changes of its own, albeit of the less tragic variety. The largely luckless Pied Piper crew finally finds itself in charge, as well as a man down. T.J. Miller, the excitable comic who played the feckless blowhard Erlich Bachman, last seen in a Tibetan opium den in Season 4, left the show, bashing colleagues in interviews on the way out. (In December, after Miller had quit the series, he was the subject of sexual assault allegations involving a former college classmate; he has denied the allegations.)

Judge was previously best known for creating the long-running “King of the Hill” as well as diverse cult favorites that have had equally lengthy afterlives, like “Beavis and Butt-Head,” “Office Space” and “Idiocracy.” The new direction of “Silicon Valley,” along with the changes and struggles in the tech world, has him reassessing his original plan to end the show after six seasons. “It’s taken on a second wind,” he said.

“How many seasons did ‘Dallas’ go?” he added. “I think it could go that long.” (For the record: 14.)

In a phone conversation, Judge discussed the new season, Miller’s departure, possible reboots of “King of the Hill” and “Idiocracy” and which of his creations are his favorites. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

A: It felt pretty natural. In a way, some of this to me is analogous to stuff that happens in Hollywood. I started out making animated shorts in my house by myself. Then when “Beavis and Butt-Head” happened, I had people fighting over it — there was the stress of, am I getting screwed here? And eventually I had about as many people working for me on “Beavis and Butt-Head” as Richard [Thomas Middleditch] does in Season 5, and that became just as stressful. I’m not someone who enjoys telling people to do something they don’t want to do, and Richard is the same way. So there’s plenty of comedy that can come from stuff like that.

A: Had he left after Season 1 or 2, it would have been really rough to try to make it work. But now it’s actually kind of perfect timing because we were having trouble keeping him in the story. Not because of him, just because his character is not a programmer. He’s just the guy who owned the house. We had done a bunch of comedy about that, about how he’s kind of marginal and trying to make himself relevant. We have a lot of really great characters and actors, and I try to service them all. So it actually freed us up in the writing. [Judge declined to comment on reports that Miller had been a disruptive presence on the set.]

A: [Laughs.] It seemed very much like T.J. — I’m sure he wouldn’t have it any other way. He’s a brilliantly funny guy. I’ve seen these quotes — he’s always been a good put-down artist. But yeah, I don’t know what to really make of it, and it’s not any of my business anymore, you know?

Jian-Yang [Jimmy O. Yang] has been the new [expletive] of the house for a while, and he becomes a bigger one, like on a grander scale. And there are a lot of other characters picking up the slack. Laurie [Suzanne Cryer], there’s more of her and Monica [Amanda Crew]. There’s definitely a lot more Jared [Zach Woods]. And we’ve got a really great robot coming up.

A: Yeah, and actually we deal with this season, with what Richard’s building. People are starting to realize that when you’re on Gmail, with your terms of service, you’re allowing all kinds of things. It’s like that quote: If you’re getting the service for free, then you’re the product. You’re not paying for Gmail, and those servers and all the infrastructure and engineers cost money. So, you’re paying by them looking for keywords in your email and popping ads up.

A: Yeah a friend of mine told me through text message what hotel he was going to be staying at in Nashville, and the next thing I know, there’s an ad for it on my Facebook page. It’s all tied together.

A: Yeah, if they did. There have been a couple discussions about it, and about how we would do it, but nothing concrete yet. I think you’d have to have Bobby and all of them be older. The Simpsons are such iconic characters; Bart could be that age forever because it’s a more surreal show. But with “King of the Hill” being on 13 years, I think people were really starting to wonder why Bobby’s still the same age.

A: That’s what was really weird for me, specific things like that. There’s Carl’s Jr. [The company had a notably unflattering presence in the film.] There was the WWE thing. [The president in the movie was a former professional wrestler; in real life, President Donald Trump appeared in a World Wrestling Entertainment match in 2007.]

Even when we were shooting the movie, the wardrobe designer showed me these shoes — they weren’t out in the world yet. And she said, “This is a startup, they’re making these shoes and they’re going to look completely ridiculous.” Plastic shoes with holes in them. And I said to her, “The only thing I’m worried about is, what if these things blow up and by the time the movie comes out, they’re everywhere?” And she said, “Oh, that’s never going to happen. No one is going to buy these things.” And then, the movie comes out, and they are all wearing Crocs, and those shoes were just becoming huge. So, I think that was a sign that maybe a lot of these dumb things are going to come to pass.

A: [Laughs.] Oh man.

A: That’s a hard one to pick. I’m probably a little partial to Beavis. Beavis and Butt-Head, but mostly Beavis. I’d say Lumbergh [from “Office Space"] is another one. I’d say those two probably come to mind the most because … well, I don’t know.

Well for Lumbergh — I’m old enough to remember when an office job sounded great. I worked at Jack in the Box and worked construction, those kinds of jobs, and I remember thinking, “Oh my God, you can work in an office? That would be wonderful.” And then the first time I did it, I had that type of boss — that passive-aggressive boss. I would rather have a guy yelling at me on a construction site. I had done an animated version but the way Gary Cole played that character, I thought that was something really great that hadn’t been done yet. So, I don’t know. I’m pretty proud of that one.