8/2/2023 0 Comments Anna delvey documentary![]() Streamers know viewers are fascinated by unlikeable central figures, however, which translates into views. But even in this mildly sympathetic look at Holmes, she isn’t a likable character. This version of Holmes that Hulu created mourns Gibbons’ death, worries about her company’s lack of viable technology and even asks her mother what would happen if she quit Theranos. “The Dropout” still tries to humanize her, taking a bit of creative license to imagine personal aspects of her life that we will never know. His widow, Rochelle Gibbons, said that when her husband died, Holmes never reached out - instead, an office manager just asked that she return Ian’s laptop.Īs we watch Rochelle learn of Ian’s death, Holmes no longer feels like a young woman who’s in over her head. In 2013, Gibbons died by suicide shortly before he was required to testify in a lawsuit about Theranos’ technology. But for viewers who know Gibbons’ fate, each of his jovial appearances summons a sense of foreboding. In early episodes, Stephen Fry’s performance as chief scientist Ian Gibbons is a highlight of the show. She recalled in court last year, “I decided I was going to build a life by building this company.” The show also recounts Holmes’ alleged rape when she was a Stanford freshman in an attempt to contextualize the personal catastrophes that made her so hellbent on achieving fame and success. But as she dives head-first into being a CEO, the stomach-turning dynamics of her secretive relationship with Balwani are glossed over in a way that’s difficult to watch. “The Dropout” makes it clear that Balwani isn’t a hero in the Theranos story. We’re also forced to watch as she falls in love with Sunny Balwani, her eventual COO who’s 18 years older than her, despite knowing that in 2021, Holmes would tearfully allege in court that he routinely abused her over their 12-year relationship. Seyfried’s interpretation of Holmes is reasonably convincing as she goes to deranged lengths to convince investors, board members, Walgreens partners and her devoted employees that she isn’t full of shit (spoiler alert: she’s full of shit). ![]() You can’t look away, but you don’t really enjoy the sight. From this perspective, “The Dropout” feels like watching a car crash in slow motion. The series opens with fictionalized footage of Holmes on trial, but other than these brief asides, the story of Theranos is told in a straightforward, linear narrative. These online streamers keep churning out this content because they know we will watch - we’re desperate and eager to understand how people can be so corrupted by the promise of money and fame that they will sacrifice their morality.įeaturing Amanda Seyfried in the lead role, “The Dropout” is the first fictional re-telling of Holmes’ story, which we know so well by now: The youngest female self-made billionaire vows to change the healthcare system with ground-breaking technology, only for the world to discover that the woman they compared to Steve Jobs was peddling technology that never even worked. Yet today, Hulu will release the first three episodes of “The Dropout,” and soon, Apple TV+ will unveil its “Bad Blood” movie, starring Jennifer Lawrence as Holmes. We read “Bad Blood,” the Theranos tell-all by journalist John Carreyrou, whose reporting directly contributed to Theranos’ downfall from a $10 billion valuation to nothing we watched the HBO documentary “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley ” and we observed in real time as Silicon Valley journalists live-tweeted her four-month-long trial, which was so popular that onlookers had to wake up at 3 a.m. Even before Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty of defrauding investors in January, we had little left to learn from her story, which has already birthed true crime podcasts, books and documentaries. And lest we forget when Netflix and Hulu both released Fyre Fest documentaries the same week, or when Netflix rushed to option a film about the alleged husband-wife bitcoin launderers before their case has been resolved.īut when you’re told the same story again and again without gleaning anything new, it loses its charm. ![]() There’s also Apple TV+’s upcoming “WeCrashed” series, based on the podcast “WeCrashed: The Rise and Fall of WeWork,” and then there’s Showtime’s recent “Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber,” featuring stars like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Uma Thurman. Hulu’s “The Dropout,” which focuses on the fall of Theranos, is the latest. That’s the premise of an entire emerging genre of media, mostly produced by streaming platforms, which chronicle the most salacious stories in tech, startups and wealth gone wrong. Just because you know how the story ends doesn’t mean that it’s not fun to watch how it all went so horribly wrong. ![]()
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