At one point, network TV dramas were the best place to find the mix of casual familiarity and challenging storytelling that seems so irresistible to the television medium. These days, however, the balance has shifted, and a new type of watchable drama has sprung up to take their place: the "burst from the spotlight" prestige miniseries.
The year saw an explosion of them, from the '90s saga of "Pam and Tommy" to the contemporary scammer story "Inventing Anna," the Silicon Valley drama "Super Pump: The Battle for Uber," to Peacock's "Joe vs. Carole." has offered. "And the upcoming series "Vcrashed."
Beneath the glut of their movie star casts and dazzling cinematography, these types of limited series often get a little cramped in the way they stretch their stories to fill 8-10 episode orders. Hanging over him is the question of whether he could have done better than a mini-series as long as a two-hour film. And although they're not really something you throw in the background, they are heavy on dialogue and exposition in a way that ensures that they don't completely lose their punch if you say, the laundry. While you are watching them too.
Hulu's new Elizabeth Holmes drama "The Dropout" fits that mold perfectly—and it's not entirely a knock against it. Like a lot of these ripped-off-the-headlines series, "The Dropout" is insanely watchable, with solid-to-great performances and a story so audacious you wouldn't believe it if it wasn't based on real life. Is. Yet this jaw-dropping true story ultimately feels less like a genuinely original piece of television than just a touching thread.
What "The Dropout" has to do with recommends Amanda Seyfried. The "Mamma Mia" star plays Holmes, a rookie turned biotech entrepreneur, from his late high school years to his mid-30s, a period that includes the rise and fall of Theranos, his health. The tech startup that promised portable, health screening accessible from a drop of blood. (If this sounds like a pipe dream, that's because it turned out to be one.)
Seyfried especially shines in the first three episodes, which tell an origin story for the black turtleneck-clad Holmes persona who captured the public's imagination even before he became the poster child for technological hoaxes. Teenage Elizabeth is impressive in both her steadfast confidence and her lack of arrogance and social spontaneity. It's a duality that explains the divisive way people react to her - either hailing her as the next generation of kick-ass female tech disruptors or immediately discovering her as a hawker.
Seyfried excels at locking into Elizabeth's strange duck qualities, especially the way her great big picture aims to contend with her lack of mutual empathy on a smaller scale. One scene is a stunner in which Elizabeth coldly examines a stranger's feelings and then applies them, as an actor, in a last-ditch effort to salvage her role in her company—weaponizing her age and gender. She can use to manipulate the people around her. Any core of naivete and idealism may have quickly soured Elizabeth's early ambitions as she undergoes a pointed shift in an "whatever it takes" mindset.
The trouble is, once the show locks Elizabeth into CEO mode, the story loses its central driving force, instead turning the details of this stranger-than-fiction story into a more nuts-and-bolts thriller/thriller. makes it procedural. Based on Rebecca Jarvis' podcast of the same name, "The Dropout" is almost in its straightforward reckoning of the Holmes saga.
There's a sliver of talented supporting players like Stephen Fry, William H. Massey, Laurie Metcalf, Sam Waterston, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Michaela Watkins, Alan Rook and Naveen Andrews, including Elizabeth's longtime boyfriend/business partner Sunny Balwani. , But his various roles within the Theranos saga often feel tangential and relevant in a way that always adds up to nothing more than the sum of its parts. And although producer Elizabeth Meriweather ("New Girl") and frequent director Michael Showalter ("The Big Sick") sometimes offer glimpses of satirical dark comedy (especially Elizabeth's exuberant dance to pop hits of the mid-2000s). In the hobby of parties), the series relies on Seyfried's performance and its wild real-life story far more than any defining sense of the genre.
This makes "The Dropout" interesting but also a bit challenging. However – given the role these limited series now fill our contemporary TV landscape – this is probably as much of a feature as it is a bug.