It's a sitcom, so it's hardly a surprise that things end back where they began. But with that said I thought they did a decent job of undercutting the kind of Hail Mary efforts that's saved them in the past.
First it was Anton, the workhorse they used to keep the company viable during the live streaming catastrophe a couple seasons back, not being enough this time. Then, they go to Big Head to save them, and that doesn't work. Finally, it's just petty fuckaround behavior that proves to be their salvation, which is a recurring theme.
I don't know if Erlich is as expendable as they've made him out to be. He was definitely useless as a character trait, but he ultimately drove all of the major plotting this season. He had leave Richard alone with the insurance guy's wife, he provided the inspiration for Jin Yiang's breakthrough that got him rich, and in turn introduced the smart fridge. He put the team contact with the VR guy, adding merging their technologies and making it sensible for him to connect with Hooli, creating the exploding phone problem. Basically, without him, it's a few guys trying to get a utility app off the ground.
