Did you know Elizabeth Holmes liked to dance?
Who the hell cares?
Can we make the four-part miniseries a thing?
Amanda Seyfriend in ‘The Dropout’.Beth Dubber/Hulu
Every limited TV event I’ve seen lately would benefit from further limiting.
TakeThe Dropout, Hulu’s erratic relitigation of the Theranos scandal, which debuts March 3.
In the meandering drama,Amanda Seyfrieddoes her best trailer voice as Silicon monster Elizabeth Holmes.
Naveen Andrews and Amanda Seyfried in ‘The Dropout’.Beth Dubber/Hulu
It takes three hours to get to the juiciest phase of Holmes' vampiric con job.
Seyfried has to play Holmes from teenage ambition through young adult fame and thirtysomething disgrace.
The premiere introduces Elizabeth at every point in her time continuum.
Here’s the CEO at the magazine-cover apex, barely blinking as she preaches her billion-dollar biotech gospel.
Here’s the infamous liar caught on tape mid-testimony.
Elizabeth seems bred into the entrepreneur caste, surrounded by great fortune and potential failure.
Her relationship with Sunny deepens right alongside her devotion to her company.
Then the money starts running out.
More funding is necessary, so the statistics get fuzzy.
Phony tests get performed on genuine patients.
At a certain point, the truth just seems to stop mattering for the Theranos investors and employees.
This thing could be the next Google; who cares if the numbers get pulled out of their anos?
Executive producerLiz Meriwetherseems to be trying out different explanations for Holmes' deceit.
She has noble ambitions and doesn’t want to run out of money.
She worries her status as a female CEO amidst the dudebrocracy requires absolute perfection.
She actually believes her researchers are perpetuallythiscloseto a final breakthrough.
(A reported campus assault is a pivotal, if somewhat oblique, event in the premiere.)
I also think thewhyhere is just much less interesting than thewhat.
Theranos snowball rolls into a billion-dollar phenomenon.
The company earns institutional credibility.
Major corporations and grumpy old men desperately seek Elizabeth’s approval.
“I met Rupert Murdoch tonight at the thing!”
Elizabeth exclaims at one point, which captures the general screechy-biopic tenor of the dialogue.
(Another chestnut: “What are they calling you these days?
Even funnier because the person is speaking in 2002.)
Meriwether has a long sitcom track record, and hallowedWet Hot American SummerMichael Showalteralum directs key episodes.
Theranos is certainly a funny story, in a modern-capitalism-is-anti-human sort of way.
ButThe Dropoutoften uses comedy as a crutch, aiming way too often for thatPam & Tommytone of needle-drop hysteria.
Everyone seems encouraged to go big.
Macy looks and acts like a cartoon.
Fry is quietly charming and then devastating.
The real-life Carreyrou was hounded in every direction.
(His boss' boss' boss' boss was, of course, Theranos investor Rupert Murdoch.)
Much of the material around him feels overly composited, though.
Worth pointing out that Carreyrou wrote the (great) Holmes textBad Blood.
This blood’s gone bad.C
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