The Dropout is a Success Story about an Iconic Failure

I am immediately skeptical of any artistic project that tells a story it’s audience has already been told, so you can imagine how skeptical I was when The Dropout was announced nearly two years ago. The eight-part miniseries ⁠ — the first three parts of which premiered on Hulu last week ⁠ — tells the story of Elizabeth Holmes, the “entrepreneur” who founded Theranos, a company that claimed to have revolutionized blood testing.

I’ll spare any more details, because I suspect that everyone reading this already knows the big picture. After all, Holmes’ story has now been told plenty of times, in dozens of news stories, a book, a documentary based on that book, a podcast, and now, of course, a miniseries based on that podcast.

I was especially skeptical about The Dropout because anyone who would potentially be interested in this story already knows it. The allure of a startup story is its ability to answer the “what happened when I wasn’t looking?” (see: The Social Network). I wasn’t convinced The Dropout could reveal anything beyond minor details.

Right from the start of the first episode, though, The Dropout shows off an impressive self-awareness about its audience. The series opens with a montage: clips from Holmes’ deposition, a video interview from before the scandal, magazine cover stories, and audio from news clips in the immediate aftermath of Theranos’ downfall, discussing just how she managed to scam so many people. “You want it to work. We all want that to work,” one person says.

That opening sequence leaves you with the same question you get every time you hear about Elizabeth Holmes ⁠ — the one question that none of the other stories were able to really answer: how did so many people fall for this? It’s obviously a question benefitted by hindsight, but every other depiction of Holmes has made it seem like everything she did should have obviously been fake to anyone with a brain. The Dropout wants you to ask that question, though, because it wants you to think it will finally deliver on the answer. In reality, it never does. Instead, The Dropout’s greatest trick is scamming you into rooting for Elizabeth Holmes, too.

There is an alternate universe where Theranos succeeds, where the company somehow creates a working product, and really does revolutionize the blood-testing industry. In that world, a miniseries, probably called The Dropout, would be made about it. It would be a success story, one that reveals all the behind-the-curtain debauchery that had to occur in order to create a successful product and company. After all, success stories are often results-oriented. They present everything that happens ⁠ — the good, the bad, and the ugly ⁠ — as a means to an end. You aren’t necessarily supposed to forgive all the bad that happens, but you are supposed to understand how the protagonist got from point A to point B.

The Dropout (the one in our universe, not the alternate one) succeeds in giving its audience something new because it presents the story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos not as a con, but as a success story. Unlike in other renditions of Holmes’ story, The Dropout never really discusses the viability of the technology they’re making. It’s just a given to all the characters that they will eventually make it work, and not in a positive-thinking way. It’s as if the show wants you to forget that this technology isn’t viable.

The series also presents Holmes not as a con-woman, but as a downtrodden, tragic hero ⁠ — someone who does everything right but fails anyway, like a Silicon Valley Arthur Miller protagonist. Repeatedly, the show makes an effort to reveal the larger cultural explanations (note: not excuses) for Holmes’ actions. In one scene, a successful tech entrepreneur tells Holmes to do anything to get funding, which convinces her to lie to investors. In other scenes, successful women remind Holmes that in a misogynistic world, one wrong move could cost her everything, which makes her believe that she can never admit to any failures.

And then there are the moments when Holmes meets adversity, when people start to call her out for her lies and tell her she cannot and will not succeed. In those moments, because of how the series is structured, I found myself actually wanting her to prove them wrong, but everytime I would start to feel that way, The Dropout would flash forward to the present, to those depositions. It’s a reminder that this is not a success story, and that even if it was, that doesn’t make what Holmes did okay.

That kind of scam ⁠ — making you root for someone you already know is bad ⁠ — is the kind of trick that can only be done in a dramatization, and while I still remain skeptical of any repeat story, The Dropout is self-aware enough to make its case for existence very effectively.