The incredible thing aboutThe Dropoutisn’t the story that tons of people already know and love, or the masterful way it’s told. The really impressive aspect of the work is truncating the story to its trace element and dragging feelings out of the audience that they don’t want to feel.
This episode is the final entry in the series slated to be directedby sketch comedy legendMichael Showalter, and it’ll be interesting to see how it changes after his time on it. As it stands, his comedic style is a hugely important part of the show’s DNA. The episode was written by Dan LeFranc, who has previous credits onThe Romanoffsamong other shows, and series creator Elizabeth Meriwether.
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Ripped from the headlines and adapted from the hit ABC produced podcast, this tale of Elizabeth Holmes’s great corporate deception is hitting a fever pitch.The first three episodeswere all about Holmes' life, upbringing, and personality as she became the person that founded Theranos, but by episode 4, she’s hit her stride. Episode 4, “Old White Men” delivers a great deal of what it says on the tin. The new characters introduced start to blur together, which is kind of the point, but their inane dialogue is delivered with hilarious authenticity. It’s a testament to the direction that a series built almost entirely around characters talking in overpriced office complexes feels as tense and important as a thousand action projects.
Seyfried is, as everyonehas pointed out, spectacular. Her performance is well beyond the bounds of impression, she is embodying the narrative’s version of this character. She’s flawless, and her performance is the anchor that the entire show is built around. After her brush with being fired at the end of episode three, she finds a solution to her problems with the board by bringing Sunny into the business. There’s a time-skip, aided along by the ongoing court testimony framing device, and this episode takes place overwhelmingly in 2010, the heyday of Theranos’s fake success. This is the Elizabeth Holmes people know. The voice, the hyper-confident deceit, every aspect of her business as performance art persona carefully manicured, it’s perfect. The most impressive thing about her performance and the way its framed is the way the audience is forced to feel sorry for her one moment, then recognize her as the villain the next. The series is pulling many of the same stringsasThe Social Network, often with similar or even better results.
Amanda Seyfried isn’t the only performer bringing their all. Now that he’s a part of the team, Naveen Andrews' take on Sunny Balwani is allowed to flourish in all thebarely restrained hostility itdeserves. His addition and the atmosphere he brings along completely change the energy of the office. It’s not just a loose collaboration of engineers led by a charismatic dreamer anymore. It’s a soulless office up top and a closely held secret below. Stephen Fry as Ian Gibbons has a touching and often crushing arc as he tries desperately to fix the project he helped to create. He stands as a moral voice of reason, and the way people rally around him is hugely inspiring. Of course, he, like everyone, is brought crashing down to Earth by the weight of the projected profit.
This isa villain origin story, and it’s an excellent one. Holmes goes from barely keeping control of her company to her perfectly polished primetime appearance in the jump between episodes. That could’ve felt jarring, but the first episodes do such a great job of signposting her descent into heartless greed that it feels earned. Most of her victims, the eponymous old white men, are impossible to pity. Her own employees own the majority of the sympathy, they’re the real victims. The show is, in many ways, leveraging everyone’s existing perception of the Silicon Valley mogul. Now it becomes clear why the first three episodes dropped at once; they were paving a runway so that the later ones can give everyone what they came for. The story makes the two of them feel so immensely powerful, but the clever cutaways to her deposition keep needling the audience. It tips its hand, not to tease the future events, but to say to the audience “we all know the story, but you’ve never seen it quite like this”.
The Dropoutis the best possible version of this story. Thoseobsessed with the historymight find points to quibble with, but the show covers the years with perfect narrative instincts. The cinematography, the performance, the writing, all land with pinpoint accuracy to create the most satisfying retelling of this shocking true story. BetweenThe DropoutandPam & Tommy, Hulu is fast becoming the home of clever biopics. Fans of the genre, the true story, or of excellent dramedy filmmaking will loveThe Dropout.
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