I have to admit: I was initially skeptical of The Dropout, Hulu’s new limited series about the rise and fall of Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes, the billionaire Silicon Valley darling turned convicted corporate fraudster. I’ve been struggling with based-on-a-true-story fatigue. In recent weeks, a wave of TV shows trained on some locus of tech culture, the myth of the messianic founder, the gall of a scam – especially if the scammer is a (white, blonde) woman – and the thrill of exposing a scheme have largely fallen flat.
Inventing Anna, Shonda Rhimes’s nine-part Netflix limited series on the “fake heiress” Anna Delvey, was largely an overlong and underwhelming disappointment that cast its inscrutable subject’s ambition in too hazy a glow. Super Pumped, Showtime’s anthology series on the ruthless rise of Uber under disgraced CEO Travis Kalanick, lacquered fourth wall breaks and narration by Quentin Tarantino over paper-thin insight into the relentless drive for profit. Peacock’s Joe v Carole was an uneven and generally unwelcome rehash of Tiger King, the curdled Netflix docuseries on violence and enmity in the world of private zoos – call it the scam of one’s personal realm – but with Kate McKinnon in a wig. It’s yet to be seen how Apple TV’s WeCrashed, out later this month, handles the story of WeWork and its eccentric founders, Adam Neumann (Jared Leto) and wife Rebekah (Anne Hathaway), but safe to say it will fly or flail by the same basic recipe of scam intrigue.
