“Today we’re taking the first step to making health care accessible to everyone in this country.” That was probably Elizabeth Holmes’ initial mistake in terms of founding a company, as the lawmakers of America in bed with health insurance and pharmaceutical companies never really wanted that to happen. And yes, like the Anna Delvey of Inventing Anna, Elizabeth Holmes is given the “villain origin story” treatment. Which is why The Dropout, created by Elizabeth Meriwether, is certain to posit that were it not for a rapist asshole frat guy at Stanford, millions of lives might never have been put in jeopardy. It’s almost as good a reason to explain away her behavior as Russian Anna Delvey wanting so badly to be rich because of being looked at as a peon upon arriving in Germany.
In both women’s cases, a much more attractive actress was cast to play them—as is the Hollywood way. While Julia Garner took on Delvey, Holmes has been upgraded by Amanda Seyfried, herself a kind of millennial queen by virtue of having appeared in one of the most landmark films of that generation: Mean Girls. But while Seyfried was filming the iconic teen movie in ’03 (for release in ’04), Holmes was busy instead dropping out of Stanford by pitching her parents on the idea of using the rest of what would have been her tuition funds as seed money for a startup. Now infamously known as Theranos, a “clever” portmanteau of “therapy” and “diagnosis” (“why not Theranosis?” a reporter asks early on in the show—and it’s a fair question).
But it’s in 2002 that Elizabeth meets Sunny Balwani (Naveen Andrews, who also majorly upgrades the real Balwani) on a study abroad trip to Beijing, an equally affecting catalyst to her CEO journey. Before taking this trip, however, there’s a key scene of Elizabeth informing her mother, Noel (Elizabeth Marvel), at a doctor’s office that she plans to have sex for the first time over the summer. Noel cautions her to be careful—that men are scary, etc.—before taking one look at the nurse about to draw blood and saying, “I can’t look at this. I’ll be outside.” And it is in this very moment that we can understand why 1) Theranos was such a brilliant idea (if it had been workable) and 2) why so many people wanted to believe in it for so long. For to blot out the unpleasantness of getting blood drawn is to blot out the unpleasantness of how the human body itself functions. Elizabeth pleads, “Mom, wait! Wait!” Not wanting to be left alone with the nurse and the needle seems to establish a series of escalating traumatic events over the course of the year that will lead to her dropping out.
Her general loneliness is further compounded by never quite fitting in with those in her age group—always far more ambitious and studious than the others. While she’s genuinely committed to immersing herself in Mandarin, for example, the other girls in the dorm write her off as a nerd and a freak. Enter the older Balwani, who strikes up a conversation in Mandarin with her in the communal kitchen, whereupon she proceeds to correct his grammar. Soon, the two are spending all their time together, complete with riding bikes in surgical masks (and one thing The Dropout does fail to mention is that Holmes tested positive for SARS after working in a Singapore lab where she was collecting blood samples with syringes). After all, this was just around the height of the ’02-’04 SARS outbreak. The first wave of a novel virus that would give only a small preview of COVID-19. And, in so many ways, the historical context that The Dropout highlights is an insight into why we are where we are at this particular moment in our culture. With the “shortcut” route being promoted for so long to the millennial generation, it adds further poeticism that Holmes’ own father, Chris (Michel Gill), was employed by one of the biggest frauds in corporate history: Enron.
In fact, it is at the beginning of the first episode, “I’m in a Hurry,” that Meriwether chooses to accent this piece of Holmes’ personal background not only as a motive for her simply “leading by example,” but also how she came to be a target for her next-door neighbor, Richard Fuisz (William H. Macy), who would play an integral role in taking her down.
As Holmes begins to establish her CEO persona, she decides to deepen her voice. In this regard, it feels worthwhile to note that both scammers—Holmes and Delvey—felt obliged to put on a fake intonation, Elizabeth’s being more consistent with Mira Sorvino’s as Romy in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. Maybe because it’s easier to lie and feel less guilty about it when one wields the safety of a “persona.” In doing this, it allows a person to feel as though they’re not really the ones enacting this behavior—it’s just their alter ego. What’s more, both women used men to their benefit in terms of getting ahead with making the right contacts and connections. Even if said men resented them later on in a way that males who rise to the top never are. It’s simply presumed that men are “allowed” to act this way.
The attention to detail in terms of framing Inventing Anna and The Dropout within a historical lens for better understanding the millennial mindset is most apparent in song selection, as well as technology presented. For example, “Green Juice” opens on a title card that reads “June 2007.” To emphasize that, Feist’s “1234” starts to play as an ad that announces “Say hello to iPhone” is prominently displayed just before Sunny and Elizabeth message back and forth on their now-antiquated Blackberries.
In point of fact, Apple and Steve Jobs played such a distinguished part in spawning Elizabeth’s own false brand as she became enamored with the company’s innovation. So enamored that she not only adopted Jobs’ black turtleneck aesthetic, but also hired one of the original designers of the iPhone, Ana Arriola (Nicky Endres) to come on board with Theranos, dropping Avie Tavanian’s name to further allure her. It works. And all the pieces start to fall into place in terms of Holmes realizing that what it really takes to convince people of one’s success is having enough high-powered names back the project.
To further remind us of the period we’re in, Passion Pit’s “Sleepyhead” plays in Elizabeth’s Prius—a song that was almost as ubiquitous on “indie” playlists as Feist’s “1234” around this time. But music isn’t the only indicator of the era; there’s also literature. Called out specifically when the design team quits and tells Elizabeth’s assistant to give her a copy of The No Asshole Rule.
Elizabeth remains undeterred by the setback as we see a snatch of a motivational poster behind her that reads: “Spontaneous Combustion. You Must Set Yourself on Fire.” It is motivational phrases like these (including Yoda’s, “Do or do not. There is no try”) that serve as the means to buttress her smoke and mirrors operation. To obfuscate the very real fact that “there’s no there there.” And even Sunny calls her out later on for being a “ghost.” A projection of whatever people want her to be. Which, in so many senses, speaks to what it is to be a woman in general.
She adds the aforementioned Yoda quote to the lobby of Theranos as a means to at least partially spite her former professor at Stanford, Phyllis Gardner (Laurie Metcalf), who balked at Holmes’ idea from the start. Who told her that science is literally based on trial and error. But not for the “can-do-anything” (and instantaneously!) spirit of the millennial. At the end of “Green Juice,” another unavoidable song of 2007 plays: Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black.” Which is only too appropriate considering Elizabeth’s sartorial changes to all-black everything. In addition to her emotional state becoming even darker than it might have if she had just addressed her rape in a healthier way that dropping out of school and starting a company based on an illegitimate product.
In episode four, “Old White Men,” music again holds the key as Jay Rosan (Alan Ruck) of Walgreen’s is eager to feel relevant again based on listening to Katy Perry’s “Firework” on the way to corporate headquarters. Holmes capitalizes on Rosan’s fear of obsolescence in her drive to seem as “cutting edge” as Mark Zuckerberg (yes, that seems ironic in the present), which comes through when she quotes the Facebook founder to Rosan with, “Break things and move fast”—in response to whether or not she’s gotten FDA approval.
KT Tunstall’s “Suddenly I See” then plays as Rosan and his cronies drive to the Theranos office. But it’s, of course, ultimately Katy singing, yet again, “Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?” that gets Rosan to run to his boss’ car and give one final pitch: “There’s kids here running billion-dollar companies. It’s all changing, everything’s changing. It’s a new world. These kids, they don’t overthink, they don’t get bogged down in the way things always used to be done. They don’t want review committees, bureaucracy—they wanna get things done now.” Obviously, we’ve seen where certain “kids” have ended up by wanting to “get things done now,” and it isn’t as glamorous as it once seemed.
But if one wants to look to the source of millennial ineptitude, baby boomer progenitors are plenty eye-opening. In episode five, “Flower of Life,” this much is made evident when Elizabeth’s mother tells her, “You can’t stop. Why would you stop? I am so proud of who you’ve become.” Another prime example of a boomer parent who projected way too many expectations onto their precious spawn—viewed merely as an “investment” rather than a human being with their own feelings and interests.
And while Sunny scrambles to figure out how to keep the scam going, Elizabeth is more focused on coming up with more “pleasant” things, like a new logo. To placate Sunny’s flaring temper, her predilection for dancing to and singing along with hip hop songs du moment is something that gets used as a character device thanks to an employee account of seeing Elizabeth singing alone in her car, featured on the podcast the series is based on. Thus, as she strolls into Sunny’s office singing Lil’ Wayne’s “How to Love,” the lyrics take on an icky tinge when considering the nature of their own relationship. One that Lil’ Wayne could just as easily be describing when he raps, “You had a lot of crooks try to steal your heart/Never really had luck, couldn’t never figure out/How to love/How to love, mmm/You had a lot of moments that didn’t last forever/Now you in a corner, tryna put it together/How to love.” Indeed, Sunny rages at Elizabeth for her inability to feel anything as their business and romance comes crashing down all around them circa 2016, after the CMS shutdown. And the question The Dropout wants to ask is: was that Elizabeth’s fault? That she couldn’t feel anything. That said “mechanism” was broken. What with being part of the most desensitized generation (before Gen Z came along) and being told by her mother to “put it away” with regard to addressing the trauma of her sexual assault.
With every other millennial startup founder of the day appearing to “break down barriers” so easily, it did seem, somehow, even with the 9/11 “end of empire” cataclysm, that said generation would still manage to be on the cusp of something “great”—before all that promise went up in smoke that was suddenly no longer there to mitigate the ruse.
What’s more, millennials remaking the idea of work is something that clashes with the very nature of a boomer like Ian Gibbons (Stephen Fry). The chemist who tragically ended up killing himself after the pressure of Theranos-related lawsuits and cover-ups became too great. At one point, he tells Theranos’ lead counsel, Linda Tanner (Michaela Watkins), “If I can’t work—if I’m not a chemist…” He then trails off. Not finishing the thought that if he’s not a chemist then what is he? Because everything we’re conditioned to believe as humans makes us think that our entire identity is our profession. That is, until millennials came along to suggest a different path. With Holmes herself continuing to be an example—however “complicated”—of reinvention. Even after something as presumably damning as her level of fraud. Naturally, being a more white-bread scammer than Delvey, Holmes has perhaps had greater success in side-stepping consequences (thus far). And, after shedding the skin of “Theranos CEO,” Meriwether wanted “to dramatize that change in her, and what that change meant.” This was done by playing up her new appearance after meeting hotel heir Billy Evans (Garrett Coffey), complete with a dog to underscore a freshly-minted persona: “Lizzy.” Fittingly, the title of the series finale.
To this point, there was some theory put forward a while back that millennials would have at least seven career changes in their lifetime. This, of course, was before gig work came along to make the term “career” rather irrelevant. And with the overall sense of impermanence and catastrophe that millennials have known for most of their lives, Elizabeth isn’t wrong to ask, “If you choose to forget certain things, do you think that’s lying?” “Things,” of course, referring to traumatic instances which one would prefer to “file away” in order to go on functioning.
Whatever happens to Holmes in the future—due comeuppance or not—the only thing that’s for sure is that the next time you’re at Quest getting stuck with a needle, you’ll of course wish that Theranos could have been real. Along with all that millennial promise that has gone down the drain in the years since the mid-00s.
