TV keeps telling the same stories about "evil tech dweebs"

Paste Magazine

Hulu's The Dropout, Showtime's Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber and Apple TV+'s WeCrashed premiering in the span of three weeks "isn’t just a crowd; it’s a pattern," says Ilana Gordon. "Content creators of today appear to have developed a pattern of churning out shows about tech startups and their dubiously-behaved founders. And it’s concerning that, despite how much critical analysis or Twitter navel gazing takes place on the subject of representation and whose stories deserve to be told, the people we keep choosing to highlight are evil tech dweebs...There are so many interesting stories to be told about Silicon Valley, but it feels like we keep hearing the same ones over and over again. The tragedy of what happened to regular employees at Theranos is overshadowed by the spectacle that is Elizabeth Holmes. In an oversaturated celebrity market, tech billionaires, grifters, and startup founders have emerged as a new kind of star. And the only thing more compelling than watching their rise is anticipating their inevitable fall. All three of these new shows have positioned their protagonists as anti-heroes, blinded by their missions and millions of dollars. And in our increasingly superhero loving, 'eat the rich' leaning society, there is a sense that tech leaders like these exhibit vaguely supervillain-esque qualities and these shows provide insight into their origin stories. There’s also a sense that stories about the chaos these founders create might offer more insight if they were told from any perspective other than their own."

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• The Dropout avoids the "silly mistakes" of Inventing Anna: "On the surface, it seems The Dropout should have a lot in common with Netflix and Shonda Rhimes’ take on the 'Soho grifter' Anna Delvey," says Laura Bradley. "Both focus on white women whose confidence, energy, and (most importantly) knack for lying vaulted them to the top echelons of society—and both allow viewers to revel as their respective houses of cards come crashing down. But one key difference sets these scammy shows apart: While The Dropout imagines the human story behind the viral news saga, Inventing Anna gets lost in the legend. Beyond the obvious similarities between their respective bottle blondes, Inventing Anna and The Dropout tap into a shared thematic landscape. For instance: Both deal with some seriously sh*tty men." Bradley adds: "The irony that both of these women were unqualified for the spaces they sought to enter—Delvey wanted to build her own foundation with zero business experience, and Holmes saw no issue with founding her own company as a college dropout also with zero business experience—only underscores the incompetence of the supposed gatekeepers themselves."
• The Dropout and Inventing Anna have a lot of empathy for "fake white feminists": Elizabeth Holmes "got as far as she did — including being named the youngest female self-made billionaire in 2015 — because she’s a white woman," says Candice Frederick. "And to be white and female is to automatically be supported. We’ve seen this happen across various elements of culture, including with the #MeToo fallout, so this is not new information. But in the context of recent small-screen narratives of real-life white female scammers, it is blatantly disingenuous when the story goes out of its way to depict that, for instance, patriarchal barriers contributed to their transgressions. Because that, in turn, suggests to women that she could have been any one of us. And with that comes empathy."
• The Dropout proves scam shows can be done right: "It’s outrageous," Kevin Fallon says of the Theranos scandal. "One of the greatest what in the actual hell?! stories of modern times. It’s obviously fodder for good TV, but that’s where we become the skeptics. As our collective obsession with scams and hustles—particularly girl-boss grifters—reaches a fever pitch, television hasn’t quite known what to do with them. The stories on face value are juicy, but a TV treatment is pointless if it doesn’t have something to say about it, or an understanding of how to marry entertainment value with real-world stakes. Netflix’s Inventing Anna was an abomination in that regard—man, I hated that show—so much so that, at a moment of peak exhaustion with these kinds of stories, it was hard to shake the suspicion that The Dropout would follow as its own TV version of a scam: the false promise of a shocking true story spun into an unwieldy mess with a lack of focus or perspective. But The Dropout, which premiered its first three episodes Thursday on Hulu, pulls off a miracle, in that it actually pulls it off. And the gamble that makes it all work is the all-in, career-best performance from Amanda Seyfried as Holmes."
• The Dropout owes its success to Amanda Seyfried: "The Dropout will be tough to top, or even match, because of the way Seyfried, along with (Liz) Meriwether and her writers, marry the visible facets of Holmes' put-on with her skewed ethical paradigm," says Melanie McFarland. "She's a study in toxic ambition, a woman willing to punish herself and crush others in her grueling quest to succeed. Early scenes from her school days depict a noble version of will, but fame and pressure mutate it into something more sinister. Precisely capturing a subject's physical quirks is the heart of impersonation, but Seyfried takes her depiction several steps beyond this by realistically depicting the calculations that resulted in Elizabeth Holmes that was convicted on four counts of fraud in January. The actor steadily evolves her portrayal from that of an enthusiastic teenager to the 30-something executive who refuses to accept that she's conning everyone, despite the lies and deceptions she deploys to prevent the world from finding her out. She and Meriwether also plausibly find humor, even joy, in this story without asking us to excuse Holmes or feel sorry for her."
• The Dropout is a twisted compliment to Elizabeth Holmes: "While attempting to hold a range of possible Holmeses in tension, The Dropout does indulge in some paint-by-numbers psychologizing, as if the desire and drive to be phenomenally successful were one that needed special explanation," says Lidija Haas. "As a little girl, Holmes ranks last in a race; her daddy loses his job at Enron (a detail one couldn’t, or perhaps wouldn’t, make up). Even her fake voice is implicitly connected to a kind of trauma, as she starts robotically practicing it in the mirror soon after Sunny, in a rage, has yelled and flung at her the green juice he prescribed to sculpt her into a leader, splattering it on her white shirt like slasher-movie blood. There are distinct advantages, though, to this instability of tone and interpretation. It allows the audience to choose our own adventure, letting our sympathies roam around—even I caught myself making a fist when Holmes gave an investor her impassioned speech about the monopolistic corruption and price-gouging of the lab-testing industry she planned to disrupt."