Stream It Or Skip It: ‘King Of Stonks’ On Netflix, About A German Tech Mogul-To-Be Dealing With Mafia, Porn Kings And An Egotistical CEO

You’ve probably seen the stonks meme before; a metal humanoid in a suit looking at a graph pointing upwards. It’s a signal of overconfidence when it comes to tech stocks, with companies feeling that they’re doing something right when a WeWork-style explosion happens. But it’s all a mirage, and usually the tech bro who could be in that empty suit is exposed. That’s the idea behind a new German dramedy that happens to use the word “stonks” in its name.

Opening Shot: Euro notes floating around a blue sky background with wispy clouds. A graphic mentions that this is a story about one of the biggest financial scandals in German history. Then we see two men jump into the picture.

The Gist: Felix Armand (Thomas Schubert) created the tech behind the up-and-coming payment processing company CableCash, and he’s about to make the most important presentation of his life: One that will convince potential investors that their upcoming IPO is worthwhile. He’s counting on this so that he can become co-CEO with the face of the company, Magnus Cramer (Matthias Brandt), which is why he crawls all over a plane during turbulence looking for the USB stick that has the presentation (he doesn’t trust the cloud at all).

The IPO is also contingent on getting a huge federal government contract, which will be decided at an upcoming tech conference. One problem: Reporters are digging up the company’s association with their earliest customers, porn kings Till (Wilson Gonzalez) and Fabian Hermann (Ali Salman). Magnus seems to be untroubled as he prepares to give a keynote at the tech conference, telling Felix that if they’re not pissing people off, then they should be concerned.

During the speech, Felix helps Magnus deal with the reporter that keeps digging up the story, then Magnus goes off-book to leak the federal deal, with the finance minister in the audience, before a decision was even made. Also in the audience is Sheila Williams (Larissa Sirah Herden), who cons her way into the conference claiming that she has family money to invest. Felix has to find the Hermann’s elsewhere in the hotel and beg them not to come to the party with the minister. When one of their thugs puts a gun to his head, Felix tells him to shoot, saying that without a deal, he has nothing anyway.

Mangus’ adlibbing gets them the contract, and at the party to celebrate — which Sheila attends — Felix demands Magnus give him the papers to sign to make him Co-CEO. At Felix’s flat, a drunken Magnus tricks Felix into singing termination papers, which will kick in if he doesn’t agree to become the COO, still reporting to Magnus. All of this comes into play the next day, during the company’s successful IPO, when the Hermann’s end up giving Felix up to the police, due to his connections with the Sicilian Mafia.

King Of Stonks
Photo: Netflix

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? King Of Stonks would fit right in with WeCrashedSuperPumped: The Battle For Uber and The Dropout, but it has comedic elements that remind us of Silicon Valley.

Our Take: It’s risky to name a show after a meme, but King Of Stonks is appropriate, considering what the show is about. The stonks meme basically indicates a lack of financial knowledge, and that seems to be in abundance at CableCash. Both Felix and Magnus have built this company on a house of cards, and it seems that Felix is going to take the brunt of the blame for that. But that’s what we like about King Of Stonks: It’s less about being a tech bro trying to fake it until he makes it and more about a techie who wants to get his due but will always have someone there to put him in his place.

That’s why we compared this show to Silicon Valley. Felix is earnest and constantly put-upon, always striving to reach the top of the tech heap; Magnus feels like an obnoxious empty suit who thinks that appearing in a superhero costume in his company’s hype video is a good idea, but he’s damn good at manipulating people. So it’ll be a constant battle between the two, and it feels like we’re going to root for Felix, despite his own douchey tendencies.

Felix is the lesser of two evils in this scenario, and when you get that choice, you tend to align with that less evil person. Either way, it’s a lot better than showing some arrogant prick of a tech mogul railing against journalists, government regulators and his/her own delusions. Felix is fixing to go down for CableCash’s associations with the Sicilian Mafia, but how many people will he take with him?

It also seems that there will be a cat-and-mouse, will-they-won’t-they element with Sheila, who likely has no money but a good capacity for lying. Is this additional piece of the puzzle necessary? We’re not sure; it really depends on what she’s there to do. Is it to siphon money from Felix and the company, or is it to expose him?

Sex and Skin: Sheila sleeps with the conference worker who let her in without a ticket, but we just see them the next morning.

Parting Shot: Magnus directs the cops to Felix, and tells them he’s responsible “for keeping things on the up and up.” Felix points back at the smiling Magnus, realizing that Magnus making him the COO was setting him up to take the fall.

Sleeper Star: The wild card that is Sheila Williams is why we’ll pick Herden for this. She plays a con artist quite well, and she even seems somewhat sincere by the end of the first episode.

Most Pilot-y Line: Felix hires a telecom worker to be his assistant, and tells her that their lawyer “has more balls than Rudy Giuliani and Robert Kardashian combined,” which will help her get out of her contract. Are those two of the best people to compare someone to?

Our Call: STREAM IT. King Of Stonks might be a bit of an “of the moment” show, but it certainly shows more humanity than at least a couple of the “tech bro” series we’ve seen lately.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

source: nypost.com