The Dropout has been well reviewed, and, yes, it’s a pretty good TV show, though your enjoyment may vary, depending on your scammer-related ennui. But it’s also boring for people who already followed the case in the news, read John Carreyrou’s deeply reported book about the downfall of Theranos, Bad Blood, binged The Dropout in podcast form, or watched The Inventor in 2019. It’s boring because you likely already know what happened, and so the journey has to be the destination. Many people watching the show already know the company didn’t really function, that the technology never worked, and that Holmes and her coconspirators are likely to face legal consequences for their malfeasance. So what’s left for a dramatization to explore? Nothing beyond the humanization of someone who maybe doesn’t deserve it.
Throughout the series, the show tries to explain how Theranos got so out of hand for Holmes. Was she predisposed to being a scam artist because her father was laid off from Enron, one of the most famous business scams of the 21st century? Was it because she was an overachieving misfit who didn’t know how to have a social life so she poured herself into her work and couldn’t accept it being anything less than a success? Or maybe it was because she banked her college tuition on Theranos and had to keep the lie going? Or maybe it was the fault of Theranos’s unqualified president and COO, Sunny Balwani, a much older man who probably shouldn’t…
