In the United States, on January 3, 2022 entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes was indicted for four out of eleven charges by an American court. Theranos, a corporation with one drop of blood to test a human being that once claimed to revolutionize blood testing using only a finger prick finally led to this; Forbes had listed her as America’s wealthiest self-made woman until reality caught up with her. This is where Holmes became involved in an elaborate fraud scheme aimed at deceiving investors and the government in order to get funding. The four charges alluded to above are all about wire fraud and lying to investors about the company’s technology. Now, she may have to stay in prison for twenty years.
Indeed, if anything can be said about television trends recently it is that women too are quite into true crime. Netflix’s Inventing Anna will cover the real story of fake heir Anna Delvey while Elle Fanning’s much-awaited Hulu series The Girl from Plainville will narrate Michelle Carter’s tale again. Trying so hard it seems like the Dropout is trying to follow this trend but ends up being more of a docudrama.
This show premiered three years before Elizabeth Holmes’ luck ran out in 2019 when Hulu ordered its own miniseries based on her life. It was initially supposed to be between six and ten episodes long according to what they have used from The Dropout which is its name of this TV series adopted from a podcast done in 2019.Coming board as Elizabeth Holmes and replacing Kate McKinnon who abandoned, Amanda Seyfried was casted here for that purpose after one year in 2021.The aforementioned Laura Metcalf and Utkarsh Ambudkar together with Bill Irwin would also appear in this movie alongside Michael Gill among other big names such as Naveen Andrews who plays Sunny Balwani later (Holmes’ romantic partner).
The opening scene sets the tone right away. In this scene, Seyfried is totally in character as Holmes and interviews with a journalist about her company and career. “What is the best word to describe you?” After pausing briefly she grins faintly. “Mission-oriented,” she replied after a while. But what does a young woman really want so much to change things at any cost? We might understand this by looking at the next frame where we are told that her father lost his job because of ironically fraudulent practices of his employer.
Before delving into her corporate world, the show starts off in earlier times where she is just about finish high school and get ready to go study abroad in Beijing, China while heading for Stanford University. As one scene cuts to another from her trial where Holmes is asked about her business and intentions ,in this Shakespearean tragedy Holmes meanwhile becomes both an ambitious go-getter and someone who cannot reach out due to the people surrounding her; The Mandarin Chinese language classes on site of her studies end up in derision after she only breathes English language loudly making others laugh at themselves .Young as she may be, Holmes knows what she wants, which Sunny sees: it knows who she actually is
She told a wealthy family friend at a meeting that she will go to Stanford and build her company, becoming a billionaire. Unamused, the gentleman of the house postured and suggested she must be thinking she’s cleverer than him. Maybe we could consider Holmes’ situation this way: She is so full of confidence in her veneer that she might actually even believe it herself. This is just being a character as she practices her lines and pulls faces at herself in the mirror. She is such an obsessive worker with determination that borders on stubbornness and refuses to give up which eventually proves to be her undoing.
It is a toxic relationship between her motivations as well as between Sunny and her; an abusive one.
The show also highlighted what seemed like an interesting point about the world of startups in the mid-2000s through 2010s was made in The Dropout. It starts with Sunny who appears not very innocent when he meets Holmes, who has just graduated from high school but he’s twice older than her. At Stanford, there was rape where men repeatedly questioned whether or not she was worth anything. Even after opting out of college for entrepreneurship, every major decision made by this woman carries gender bias along with it,
How can such an empire come up from someone as young especially given that most industries are male dominated? Maybe there is a trap laid out for failure. It remains hard for women to achieve success in business because everything about their lives stands against them and consequently any woman who does make it up top tends to be resented just for being female.
Unlike other true-crime movies or series which often show how they sympathize with their subjects, The Dropout does not attempt to justify what Holmes did but rather presents it in plain terms. Despite successfully evading authorities for more than ten years over my career once I accomplished my dream of becoming a billionaire, it did not last long before my firm collapsed. It also didn’t mention that Holmes came from a rich family background. She could afford to withdraw from Stanford University with the help of her parents’ finances, yet the show implies that her father is going to hit rock bottom when he loses his job.
There is also an undersong that talks about American dream. Many people say that once they put in enough effort and work tirelessly towards their goals they will eventually be able to get anything they want, however this does not appear to be the case in The Dropout. Having had the privilege of coming from wealthy family and attended Stanford University, nevertheless, rather than slowing down and take it easy she hurried blindly into corruption hoping it would lead her to the top. In business sometimes things are just so wrong but there are many tales like this about unethicality which have become public knowledge. This was why she never really achieved what she aimed at doing.
To prepare for her role, Seyfried mastered Holmes’ deep voice, one of the traits she is best known. She has received various criticisms over the years about the same being fake which was invented to sell her potential brand and this version is consistent with it. Seyfried weaves in a deeper voice in some situations such as when she is surrounded by men. Such moments create striking contrasts revealing different story beyond Holmes’ real attitude and appearance. She was a woman who desperately needed to succeed in the ruthless world of business even if it required certain adjustments on herself, like mythologizing by using a deep voice, black turtleneck and red lips. If surviving means everything to her then she will do whatever needs be done.
As already nominated for an Oscar for her role as Marion Davies in Mank, Amanda Seyfried actually intertwines different parts of Holmes’ story as seamlessly as possible. Her performance contains many layers that range from the awkward teenager befriending an older man to young female CEOs navigating Silicon Valley’s competitive startup environment. At one point while quoting Yoda seriously to a chemistry professor (Laurie Metcalf) with no expression at all, after this incident she does not trust anyone who quotes Star Wars inside her lab anymore. While McKinnon was originally supposed to play Holmes but Seyfried just fits right into it; she hits all the marks & brings home what the story wants you to understand.
These performances are unified by The Dropout’s ensemble cast thereby making it more compelling than ever before. The way this show sequentially unfolds and its cast presents Holmes as an outcast that is nerdy yet amazing who has deceived everyone into thinking he had functioning technology up until now. This skepticism mixed with amazement makes for a good story. After taking us through her backstory so that we can empathize with what she went through, this sympathy is torn away by her choices alone. It examines those university dropouts who try to be successful in the world of business, but end up being consumed by their own ambition.
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