The Prestige TV Podcast - Founder TV Roundup: ‘The Dropout,’ ‘WeCrashed,’ and ‘Super Pumped’

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

Chris and Joanna team up to discuss the sudden boom in shows focused on startups. They compare and contrast ‘The Dropout,’ ‘WeCrashed,’ and ‘Super Pumped’ and then rank which shows they’re enjoying the most. Plus, they discuss the performances and episodes that stood out and reflect on the impact that ‘The Social Network’ had on these shows. Hosts: Chris Ryan and Joanna Robinson Associate Producers: Mike Wargon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Dave Chang and Chris Ying. We are the hosts of Recipe Club. You may have listened to it before, but we are now back on the air, new and improved, with the same host that lose every week. I still don't know what the rules are because they've changed as well. Chris, can you give a quick rundown? Every week, we debate the best way to cook the things you want to eat. We take a user, listener submitted recipe, and we all cook it with our friends,

Priya Krishna, Rachel Kong, Brian Ford, and John DeBerry. and then we talk about what went right and what went wrong. No, I actually really don't want to do this podcast. And they are hardly our friends. They are enemies. They are enemies. It's Dave's civil disobedience. If you want to see Dave Chang in an act of civil disobedience,

tune in to Recipe Club where he will not follow the recipe. I'm contractually obligated to make this podcast. But I'm here to have a good time. So listen to Recipe Club every week on the Ringer Podcast Network. It's time to refresh your year. during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill three-burner gas grill, or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill and bring big flavor to your backyard.

Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together. Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot. Now through May 6th, Exclusion supplies to homedipo.com slash price match for details. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost.

Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your oceanfront room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay.

Hilton. for this day. Hello and welcome to the Ringer Prestige TV podcast. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm joined by Joanna Robinson. What's up, Joanna? Oh, hi, Chris. We are talking about founders and the TV that we make out of their glorious stories. Joanna and I are going to do a little recap of a check-in, a little gut check on the dropout, on We-Crashed, and on Super Pumped, three shows, which are essentially running parallel to one another. We-crash has a couple of more episodes. It's going to run until the end of April, but dropout and super pumped are coming up on their final episodes. And we thought, what better time to kind of say, hey, what are these shows done well?

What are these shows done poorly? How are we feeling about them? So, Joanna, why don't we start here, actually? Generally speaking, are you foundered out yet? Do you feel like you've hit maximum founder? Yeah, I'm all fulled up. I'm really glad we're moving into a different genre in April. It feels like this is all concentrated here in March. We got a little bit more time to spend with Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway. Other than that, we're moving on to a new genre I'm calling it. Well, not new. A new old favorite, the mentally unwell genre, I think, is going to dominate April. But yeah, so. Is that like Barry or what's the meant? It's Russian doll. It's Barry. It's a flight attendant. It's a flight attendant. It's moon night. It's the girl from Plainville. Like, you know, gut check, we are not okay. And our TV is not.

That guy is still reeling from trauma, you know? Just sitting in a cave in the desert thinking about his life and his choices. But yeah, if I think I've reached my capacity on founders. I have no more taste for green juice. I am all good. How about you, Chris? Well, this is my first question that I thought we could unpack, which is how much these shows being on at the same? time impacted our appreciation, enjoyment, processing of the actual shows themselves. Because

I was racking my brain. There are sometimes where two Steve Prefontein movies come out in a two-year period or something. There's a couple of shows that might have similar vibes, and they're on it the same year. But I can't think of a time where we had three series told, yes, we're going to get into the differences between the shows, but I would say, generally speaking, in similar ways, about very similar stories at the same time. And I personally have found it a little bit difficult to separate one from the other in terms of being able to appreciate the merits

of any given one of them because there's just so much more of them on it at this point. I agree with you. And I think you and I agree in our general ranking order of them. But I do think that there is a benefit. I had fallen behind on Super Pump. So before we recorded this, I caught up on a bunch of episodes. And I, thinking about it in the context of the dropout, I think was actually really helpful

and helped me enjoy it more as a sort of more rounded view of the valley, of what it means to be a founder-like character like this, what it means to hero worship Steve Jobs, what it means, like all of that sort of stuff. I think those two in tandem are additive. But I think when you add we crashed, which isn't a valley story anyway because they weren't really based out here. Like, that then starts to feel like overload. What do you think?

I had this experience when I was the same thing you were doing except for me. It was catching up with We Crash. I think We Crash going, being released last, made me very, very hesitant to even start it, to be completely honest. And it was only because of text messages that I would get about Ann Hathaway's performance that I was like, I guess I got to see this. But there's a moment in We crashed, I think, in, Masha, Masha, Masha, I can't remember.

Whenever Adam Newman gives his sort of speech at an investment bank, to a bunch of investors with Scott Galloway hosting. And Anthony Edwards' character walks up to him and says, I'm from Benchmark. And I'm like, we don't need two shows where benchmark is a character. You know? Like, we have Bill Gurley played by Kyle Chandler and super pumped. And now we've got this guy, Bruce, played by Anthony Edwards in We Crash. I'm like, I just have too much benchmark in my life.

You're like one benchmark at a time. Wait, does this mean that you two are getting text messages from Mallory Rubin of Anne Hathaway with like a Kleenex on her face? Yes, I am part of like that circle of friends. But you know, it's funny. It's like I guess on the other hand, it's not like I've ever had like an allergic reaction to having more than one detective on television at once. So maybe it's just the side of the times and it's different strokes.

But yeah, let's talk a little bit about where these shows are. sort of fall in terms of a preferential meter, you know? Like, which one of these three have you found to be the strongest? For me, and I actually, I mean, just taking the temperature of most people I've talked to and people I've seen online, I think the dropout is the clear frontrunner for most people. And then for me, it goes super pump below that and then we crashed. I think it would have ranked it differently. The last time we talked, you and I talked about super pumped.

Super Pump was trailing third for me, but I think it's sort of shaped up a bit. better later in the season, so it pulled ahead. So that's my ranking. What about you? It's exactly the same. It's exactly the same. And I think that I find we crashed to be really slow. So that's been kind of like my tough thing is that I almost would rather we crashed be like a weird show about Rebecca Newman, you know, and that we could just watch this woman kind of go through whatever it is she's going through and see this entire thing through her

eyes and have this husband who's like a rocket ship that she's sort of grabbing onto, but it has some misgivings about. And all the stuff that Anne Hathaway is doing is pretty incredible. But I think that just the combination of fatigue with storylines that these shows share and honestly just not really caring very much about WeWork as like a concept, it's just been a little bit of a struggle for me to keep up with it. Whereas Super Pump has, I think, a little bit of like, Copelman-Levin-Ponash that I like.

And then the dropout, I think, is actually just exceptional. So why don't we chat a little bit about the dropout? I think all these shows have some really great performances. I think Amanda Seifred

is in a class of her own right now. And the idea that she got this role because Kate McKinn didn't do it, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like, the idea that basically this was like, oh, cool.

Like, I picked this one up. The run she's on. between this and Mank is such a great, I wouldn't say career revival because she's not exactly, she didn't exactly go anywhere, but I think she's like one of my favorite actors right now. What she's done with this is incredible, and it's unclear. I don't think anyone is being 100% transparent or honest about the switchover from Kate McKinnon to Amanda Seifred. Not that this is just usually the case. It's just sort of like, well, a conflict arose or we went in a different direction, something like that. But it seems to me, given the piece,

and some of the tones associated with the dropout that initially they want to do something more comedic and then they landed on something that didn't quite suit a Kate McKinnon performance, but better suited Amanda Seiford. That's just me guessing. And I think she's just been incredible in the role. And even more so, I think the dropout has done such a good job of balancing some comedy. You know, there's like a straight comedy episode, episode four, but balancing some comedy with some, you know, chewy drama, whereas super pumped, and I'm not here to knock it, I'm just sort of, I'm trying to find the best version of the show underneath some of my questions around it. Yeah. And there are some times on the dropout where they'll veer from something very serious, like sexual harassment in the workplace to like, you know, a big jokey bit.

Sometimes the whiplash, there was one episode where they go from a driver being murdered, like his throat slit. to a boardroom that they decided to frame as a video game. So they're like, you know, smash down in the boardroom. And I was like, that, that whiplash of tone is hard for me to hold on to because it feels like super pumped does want to do that more meaningful stuff, the more meaningful repercussions of what Uber was, but also maintain exactly that compliment-lavin, sort of excitement. So that's sort of where I am with that. Yeah, you know, the dropout, I think, is, most of these shows, I think all three of them,

well, you know, I think a week crash is a little bit different, but like, especially dropout and super pumped, I think, have a desire to tell complete stories. So they're almost, you know, they're almost documentaries with really cool reenactments going on in a lot of ways. Like, I think there's a version of the dropout that is almost, that is treating Elizabeth Holmes the way that we crashed just treating Adam and Rebecca, which is to say, like, they're the POV characters. And any scene that we see is usually going to have one of them in it. Right.

The dropout, if it's just Elizabeth's story, is a fascinating character study. And I think probably would have been more comic, you know, a little bit. I think that, like, her transformation over the years is, while rooted in some messy stuff is, like, ultimately has, like, some comic elements. It's when you go into this,

Stephen Fry and the Lori Metcalf and the Wall Street Journal and this desire to kind of hit every single data point of a story, which documentaries do, that it kind of changes the complexion of the show a little bit for me. And it's almost a handoff, a baton handoff of the POV, right? Like the episode four that I mentioned is like the Walgreens guys coming in and there are POV in that episode. You get Stephen Fry. You get the handoff to like Dylan Minette's character when he comes in. You know, it's a passing of the POV. We start the, the, I think the first three are kind of Elizabeth Holmes POV, and then it passes it around. And I think it is a stronger show for that. And I think we crash flirts with that. You know, like I think if when they brought in America Ferreira, it was much more from her point of view rather than how she interacts with Rebecca's character, other character Rebecca. I think that, again, that would have been a stronger way to go. I think it's a really smart way to go.

And what's interesting about Super Pumpt is that Super Pump doesn't do the handoff. We're either in Travis's point of view or we're in Bill's point of view is sort of how everything is divided. And once it becomes a versus, I thought Super Pump really jelled together. Once it becomes Travis versus Bill, once Kyle Chandler gets to be in this sort of beleaguered dad role that we know him to do so well. I think that's when the show really coalesces. Yeah, I mean, it's like, there's like, it's basically like the premise of like a lot of talk radio. It's like nobody likes to listen to people agree.

You know, so when Gurley is enamored with Travis, and maybe he's got like a few misgivings, but for the most part is like, I've got myself a unicorn here. He doesn't have a lot to do. You know, like he go to his wife and talk about like, oh, like Phil Jackson and the Bulls and like they can make their analogies and stuff. but it's only when he starts becoming Travis's antagonist that the show kind of like comes to life.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that one issue that I've been having with these shows and I wanted to see what you thought about this. And this has been nagging at me with other shows, like whether it's even winning time, which I really like and Plainville, which I thought I think is really good in some ways,

is how literal the shows are. Their depictions of life are really like, for the most part, only in service of either the context that the stories take place in. So basically, like, if you see, like, an episode of Winning Time and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is talking to Spencer Haywood, the thing that they are talking about is, like, Spencer Haywood's historical importance. Now, they may have talked about that at some point, but it's highly unlikely that they did it like at the exact time that they're doing it and the exact way that they're doing it. And I find that this happens a lot in these three shows that we're talking about,

where it's like the only thing people are interested in talking about is whether or not they're getting their VC funding and who's going to take their VC funding away and whether or not they can scam their way to more VC funding and whether or not this thing works or it doesn't and there are people who don't believe in me but I believe in myself and there's just really little life to it. Well it remind me of when you and Chris, when you and Andy were talking about slow horses and you were talking about this discussion that happens episode one of Slow Horses about, you know, how to store a lemon basically or what's a good lemon or whatever. And it's just sort of something that has nothing to do with the plot, but it's just good character work and tells us something about

the character and is there to add, you know, to build a believable world. And you're absolutely right that none of these shows have this. And I think what's also sort of sitting in their way, whether or not it's fair, the main comparison that we keep coming back to for all these shows, I think is the social network, the gold standard of a story like this. That's a feature film versus a TV series. And that is a feature film where famously Sorkin took massive liberties with the stories he's telling, right? But he created a human story, right? It's like Zuckerberg, for all of his flaws, feels like a human that we understand his

human emotions that we can glom onto. And these shows, sometimes literally characters will say you are not a human to our central character. And so I'm like, well, what show am I watching then if this is not a show about humans? I care about human stories. And so I think that's the challenge. And I think if these were shows about more human characters at the center of them, then we would have more room for some of that.

But then sometimes they go too far afield. Like I would argue some of the we crashed episodes, like specifically the summer camp one with centering on Rebecca's character. I'm just like, I feel like we lost the plot at this point on what we're doing here. So, it's tricky. Yeah. So let's look into the, I kind of want to do a little taxonomy of each of these.

Because I kind of don't want them all to be the same thing. So if you were in a vacuum, going to tell somebody like, here's why you should watch this show. And you know, you could pretend basically that like the other shows don't exist, that the other episodes out, the other series don't exist.

So you don't have to worry about We Crash. You don't have to worry about super bummed. You're just trying to tell somebody like why the dropout is good. Yeah. What would you say? Again, I mean, we've already mentioned it, but I think Amanda Seifre, when I have recommended it to people, I was like, this is a performance you can't this, right? Whatever Amanda Seiford is doing. But the thing is, I would say a similar thing about We crashed. Only my recommendation would be less enthusiastic. But I would say there are two, there's one tremendous and one very good performance at the center of We crashed. But is that enough to fire it off. And I think also the Liz is Liz Hannah and Liz Merriweather. behind the dropout are trying to say

something about women in tech or women in general a story that we haven't quite seen before was that's not really existent for the other two shows. What would you say in a vacuum? Yeah, I mean, I think that I would think I would say

like the dropout is a black comedy masquerading as a procedural or a procedural masquerading as a black comedy or that there's like elements of both kind of maybe sometimes at war but often working in tandem to create this story

which I kind of I really dig. I also found the dropout to be pretty compelling. I watched that like the most as a binge and I found that to be just the right amount of character work and just the right amount of like twistiness which

I probably don't know that much about the nuances of the Theranos story compared to the Uber story. Like, I feel like I'm more familiar with things that happen on super pumped. I'm like, oh, yeah, I remember that Ben Smith thing. Like, you know, like, whereas on Theranos, I'm like, damn, is she really that famous? Like, I don't know how I missed Elizabeth Holmes's moment in the sun. But, like, when they're like, here she is with Bill Clinton and here she is with Joe Biden, like, giving her that.

I'm like, really? I feel like I was living under a rock for all this. This is a conversation I had with Nora about the girl from Plainville, because I miss that case entirely. And I knew absolutely zero about it. And so watching the show, binging that show for me, I was sort of on the edge of my seat, trying to follow all the twists and turns of what happened here, uncover what really happened. And I think for all of these shows, because the girl from Plainville isn't quite under this umbrella, but it kind of is at the same time, the less familiarity you have with the thing, the more compelled perhaps you're going to be. Yeah. And with We work,

I think I didn't really know anything about the culture. We were. but I was always just kind of like, so like they put like some neon signs and some free coffee up in lock office spaces. Like, cold brew, baby. It definitely doesn't. Yeah, it definitely didn't rise to like the level of stakes that I'm usually accustomed to.

If I was going to pitch somebody on, on super pumped, I think I'd probably say, you know, it's a war of the border in roses. It's essentially like a power struggle. My sort of preference for the super pumped episodes, I think my favorite one is the, the Tim Cook deposition interrogation episode

because I think that's where it kind of fell into place formally where it was like there's, you can kind of have like a storytelling mechanism beyond the animation or the voiceover from Quentin Tarantino or whatever. And it's playful, but it's also like he has to answer certain questions plus Hank Azaria and Rob Morrow

and Joseph Gordon Levin is kind of like a fun trio. Yeah, and there's a little bit of a social network light thing going down to even the music. that they play other than the 55 Pearl Jam songs that they've licensed. You and I talked about the Pearl Jam the first time, but it's just been more and more and more an astonishing amount.

All the Pearl Jam is in this. For that episode, I also think of these shows as Wikipedia shows, right? Like shows that you can look up. Like, when did this actually happen? That show is, that episode was kind of tough for me. I really liked it, and I love Rob Morrow and Hank Azaria. But there are three or four

main incidents in that episode, and they all took place wildly different times in the actual timeline of Uber. And so I was trying to wrestle with this, because as much as I enjoy something like the social network that takes extreme liberties, if there's something that includes so much, so many real life events, but told kind of out of order or told as if they're all happening at once, then I'm wondering what service does it do for us trying to track the evolution of Travis' character of like so when do you stop caring or you know when do you evolve into the quote unquote monster if that's the story we're trying to tell whereas at least with the dropout which is so much more linear um i feel like i understand the moments when elizabeth holmes is like personality

and humanity is is ebbing away yeah it's interesting how many of these shows use um some sort of like family tragedy to show the inhumanity of the main character where it's just like, oh, no, I can't go to this funeral. I mean, Elizabeth Holmes does go to the funeral, but their reactions to deaths in the family or to, you know, whatever. It's funny how these beats show up in, like, each of the shows or each of these people's stories. You know, with super pumped, you know, it's funny.

You should mention the inconsistencies or the inaccuracies because there's also things like random benchmark guy making a really elaborate big wave surfing analogy that is like clearly somebody who wrote for super pumped watched 100 foot wave and was like we got to make a Nazare joke and also like at the end of that

I think it's of the Tim Cook episode when Sergi and Larry from Google are discovering the self-driving car information has been stolen from them the greatest replacement song, Here Comes a Regular is playing. It's like, has nothing to do with Google. Nobody in the scene would be listening to this. But I was like, go ahead, guys. Just pay Paul Westervor. It's an incredible needle drop. And it's not even like the closing needle drop of the episode

because then, of course, they had another Pearl Jam. I was like, how is here comes a regular, not the closing track to this? Because it's starting to fade out. Also, why is it being played, though? It's like, it's like about self-driving car algorithms. Yeah, a true flex. Also, shout out to Ben Feldman's incredible wig. Yes. As he plays Larry. Yeah, it's, I don't know.

I don't know how to talk about them separate from each other. And I don't know who all is watching one. And I feel like most people are watching at least two, you know, if not all three. And the two, they're probably watching are super pumped in the dropout. But they're so interwoven in my mind because it's funny you bring up those family tragedy in the family, there's so much, you know, parental issues running through this. Because the ultimate question is how there's a couple of things. The reason why we're stuck in this founder right now, I think, is number one, that IP thing, I think that you and I talked about before,

this idea of a person, a podcast, a magazine article, a memoir, whatever, as IP. But then also, the question of these tech figures, politics makes its way into super pumped and the dropout in a way that feeds into our maybe spoken or unspoken fear about these figures who wield tremendous power without being elected. And so they're mysteries. So who are these characters? Who are these personalities? Who were their parents?

How did they get this way? Who are their parents? How did they get this way? seems to be like a very important thread for all of this. And something I do love about super pumped is we get, you know, the parental element, Elizabeth Shoe is here to serve her role. Then we also get Bill Gurley and Ariana Huffington is like tech mommy and daddy, like at war with each other.

I mean, that's such a great parallel to me in that show. The We Crash element is, I think, an interesting pitch. Because I'm trying to think of like what the argument is for that show. show. And I guess honestly, it is just like, if you like Jared Letto, I would honestly say if you, even if you are lukewarm about Anne Hathaway at the past, you should at least watch a couple of episodes of We Crash to see what she is doing. Because not only the accent, but like, I actually like really do associate her with full commitment. Like in her, in all of her performances, I just think that so there's a quality about her that's just like, wow, she is going.

for it. But she has rarely gotten a role like this where she can have so much fun and be such a freak and be so vulnerable and weird and also be like, you know, I think honestly like in some ways, like steals some scenes from Leto who is going still full house of Gucci on everybody here. Let's talk a little bit about Hathaway because I think that aside from Amanda Seifred, like she's she's kind of the big winner of all these shows. Yeah, I mean, I've, I'm long been an Anne Hathaway loyalist. But yeah, she's got that theater kid energy that famously like turned people off of her in the culture for a while, right around when she won her Oscar. And that was that whole like Jennifer Lawrence.

What are the Oscars even doing for people anymore? You know, it's like where she's like, she hosted the Oscars, comes out on the negative. Like, it's just, cool, guys. While you were talking about that, I was about Ann Hathaway. I was just thinking about the Oscars and how, you know, they people. kick James Franco the antithesis of her theater kid energy and just like set them both up to fail. Whereas I'm not saying Jared Leto would make a good Oscar host at all, but he at least always brings that like fake nose big accent level of commitment that Anne Hathaway might do any

project. I love the two. I actually love Jared Leto in this show. I don't love this show, but I love him in it and like having just talked about Morbius for two hours this morning, in that world. I'm like, this is the energy I want Jared Leto to bring to his comic book vampire movie. This completely unhinged performance that he's giving in the show. I absolutely love it when he goes full Gucci. So, yeah, the biggest selling point are those two performances and Hathaway, I think, especially. Absolutely.

For me, the other selling point for We crashed would be it feels a little bit more in the world. world. Like, it feels like they shot it a little bit more out and about. Like, I, I don't have any evidence to prove that one way or the other. But one thing that has kind of, not frustrated me, but I think over the course of seven, eight episodes gets a little bit monotonous with super pumped and dropout is the interiority of it, the like feeling like you're watching stuff on sets, the feeling like it never leaves like one of three kind of backgrounds. And like, it's not, not even like a COVID way. I think it's actually a. cost-effective way to make a show is to have it largely be on a soundstage and stuff.

But that Apple money is kind of raining from the ceiling on We crashed, you know, and you can kind of feel like when they go into that floor of this building that they're going to create the first WeWork office in, it looks like what a WeWork office looks like? It doesn't look like this is just this background wall. This is just this kind of cramped feeling. I think it's I think it has a little bit more life to it. I, for the life of me, do not know what they're going to do

for another three hours on this show, though. No, and I think it just really is struggling to justify its existence outside of those two central performances. And I think is it maybe the show that would benefit the most from being a movie?

But at the end of the day, I just don't know what it's trying to say at all. And again, to go back, you know, you and I talked about this when we first talked about super pumped. I agree with Bill's point that I don't need a big moral lesson from any of these things, but I need them to have something to say at the end of the day. And I feel that's so strongly with the dropout. And WeCross just feels like an aimless exploration of these completely zany characters,

which, sure, but what is it telling me, you know? I think that that goes back to the social network thing that you were kind of which is the liberties that Sorkin took in service of creating a memorable character. And part of why I think social network has such staying power aside from Facebook having such a monstrous effect on society, and aside from Fincher's kind of God-level filmmaking, is the fact that they kind of get into the pathology behind, like, why would you do something like this or why would you create something like this or how does someone become so powerful and wealthy like what are the things that have to go into that and you know it's a much much critiqued

scene when he the opening scene with runy mera of social network but his explicit sort of openness about what he wants in the world is not actually about facebook it's about himself you know what i mean and you know we get like some of those kind of origin stories like in the dropout see Elizabeth, like, sees her father get fired from Enron. And that's like this kind of moment where I think she's kind of like never, not, not me. Not me. That will be happening to me. God is my witness. But it's not the same thing. It's not the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, social network begins and ends with that thread. And again, even if it's invented, it gives us a human understanding of a, of all these founders, Mark Zuckerberg, is the least

human seeming of all of them. Something that I thought was really interesting is I was, I was, you know, I was doing some supplemental Googling exploration. And the journalist character that's in Super Pump, that's a, it's not her actual name. The actual journalist is named Sarah Lacey. So I was reading some of her articles or some of her interviews. She gave this great interview to Vox after, spoiler alert for Super Pump's, Travis leaves the company. And she said something super interesting about the social network, where she talked about how the social network is like the film Wall Street. opera is the same way the film Wall Street did,

in that it was supposed to be a cautionary tale but wound up being an aspirational tale for a lot of people, right? And so what we're watching, you know, the specter of Jobs is hanging over explicitly the dropout and super pumped, you know, where both Elizabeth and Travis are like obsessed with Steve Jobs and like people who knew him.

But even more so, the timing of all of this, I mean, Elizabeth Holmes a little bit predates the social network, but this idea of, Zuckerberg, whether fictional or not, is an aspirational cult of the founder sort of figure. So that's another way in which, you know, I don't want to be unfairly comparing one thing to another thing, but if these actual people are chasing the social network,

the promise of the founder rock star, I think that's such an interesting textual thing woven into all of these stories. Are there any particular episodes, from any of these shows that you think have leapt out. So I thought like we could talk a little bit about that because, you know, these stories being adapted from podcasts, being adapted from nonfiction books are not necessarily like

preconstructed to have dramatic highs. Maybe they may have twists, they may have cliffhangers, but I don't know. I found that Dropout especially has had some pretty exceptional episodes, but I was curious whether you had any standouts. I think, you know, so you mentioned with Super Pump that you like, the charm offensive, the Tim Cook sort of interrogation episode.

I think for me, War, which I think was episode three, really co-jelled for me. It's, you know, it's Lyft v. Uber. And something I think that I talked about when we talked about episode two was that some of these episodes of Super Pumped are so long

that they almost don't have a unifying thread through them. And I felt like War really just sort of jelled around one idea, one moment that, you know, worked super well. So that's where Super Pump came together for me. And for the dropout, I've mentioned episode four, Old White Men.

I think that one where I could watch a whole season of television with Rich Summer and Allen Rock and the rest doing what they do in that episode. How about you? I loved Old White Men. I really liked Heroes, which is the most recent one, which is the publication of the Wall Street Journal story and the defense of the Wall Street Journal story. partially because I thought Evan Moss backrack and Lisa Gaye Hamilton are so fun. I had a little bit of Wire Season 5.

Like that's not totally like, would they really be having those kinds of conversations at the newspaper? But man, like Lisa Gaye Hamilton's Sicilian fisherman story will, that was just a great, great scene. And that episode specifically speaks to the fact that I think the dropout might have like the best cast of performers. of any show in like the last three or four years. Like when you go through the dropout cast list and you get down to like people like Anne Archer who are in like four scenes.

Yeah. It just doesn't. I don't like maybe like they just anybody over the age of 55 just can't really get a job in anything other than I'm, you know, I don't know, playing some superhero's dad

or appearing on a law and order spinoff. But like it's crazy to see how many fucking amazing actors are just like, oh, it's like Lori McHaff and, you know, Stephen Fry and William Macy are just like in this scene. It's just amazing. Yeah. Speaking of which, you know, Campbell Scott showed up

in the most recent episode of, oh, we crashed. You're just like, oh, Campbell Scott is here with zero fanfare. Here's Campbell Scott, you know, old Uncle Ben version 2.0 himself. Yeah, the fact that Alan Ruck is in one and a half episodes of the dropout really underlines that. And to your point, I mean, I love that both the dropout and Super Bowl. super pumped, turn into, like, journalism thrillers, essentially. I'm a big fan of a journalism thriller. And I think that interaction of journalism, tech, and politics altogether in the same soup

is really interesting. If We Crash wants to turn into a journalism thriller for the next three episodes, I'd be delighted. Bring me another member of the cast of the practice. And I will be happy to join it. But, yeah. Do you have any high hopes or any expectations? for the final episodes of We Crash in Super Pumped.

Or not, sorry, drop out in Super Pumped. I think, so the last shoe that's really to drop, I think, in Super Pumpt, is the fallout of the Susan Fowler POV. So I think, and that would be my standout performance as Eva Victor, who I know mostly from social media skits. I think she's really good as Susan Fowler. She had to carry like a really long section of an episode. talking about.

That monologue, yeah. So I think she's great in this. I'm loving her in this. And so I think we're going to see a lot more of her in the finale. So actually, I have really high hopes for that. I have seen the dropout finale already, and I really loved it as well. So, yeah. Good.

It's really funny. I don't know why I have Elizabeth Holmes blindness, but I honestly cannot remember how, like, Elizabeth Holmes's story where I wound up. So I'm actually like, I'm actually blissfully like, ooh, what happens on the finale of the dropout? She's fine. Like, I think she got in trouble. right? Like, I can't remember. You can't still get Theranos, right?

Well, there is this framing device of a deposition in the whole show. So, yeah, that's all. So that seems bad. That seems not great. Yeah, what they did with the finale, I thought was really interesting for the dropout, a really, like, really confident ending to a story and, like, we know where we're going. And not just, and again, to that point, again, I don't, I mean, I don't want to, like, put too many smudge my fingerprints on it, but, like, that idea of we have something to say, is so clear in that show

versus we've reached the bottom of the Wikipedia article page and this is what happens here, you know. That's what I'm worried about with We Crash is that that they, I mean,

maybe there's just so much more Rebecca to come, but I just, I was just kind of like, isn't it we were, we were still there, right? Like, you can still go in those, right?

Do they still exist? Yeah, I think if you need some cold brew, you can find a wewer. Well, we can wrap it up there. Joanna, we're almost done. We're almost outside of Founder TV. You're giving me so much to look forward to with mentally unwell. April.

Thank you so much for joining me. Thanks so much to Mike Warren for producing us today. We'll have another episode of Prestige TV podcast for you. I'm sure soon.