The Prestige TV Podcast - ’The Dropout’ Episodes 4 and 5

Episode Date: March 17, 2022

Joanna Robinson and Jodi Walker discuss episodes 4 and 5 of 'The Dropout' on Hulu. They recap the latest episodes by discussing the Four Stooges of Walgreens, humanizing Elizabeth Holmes, Dr. J, and a Katy Perry reference. Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Jodi Walker Associate Producer: Stefan Anderson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Benifer is back. Brad and Jen are friends again, and Paris Hilton is somehow still making headlines. 20 years later, we're living in the world that the 2000s tabloids created. On this series, I'm going to tell you the story of a decade of American life through the trash we love to consume. From Spotify and the Ringer podcast network, I'm Claire Malone, and this is just like us, the tabloids that changed America. Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. just quick heads up that we had a little bit of a technical difficulty when trying to record this episode. So Jody's audio might sound a little different than it normally does, but still filled with all of her great insights. So there you go.

Hello and welcome back into the prestige TV podcast feed. Neither of us are wearing black turtlenecks this week, but there's black and there's a turtleneck. So it kind of counts. I'm Jordan Robinson. We're here to talk about episodes four and five of the drop. out and I'm joined as before by the great Jody Walker. Hi, Jody. How are you? Hi, Joanna. I'm so good. It has been pure torture to wait this long to talk to you about Alan Ruck as it relays to Katie Perry's fireworks. So just thrilled to be here. We covered episodes one through three

previously on this feed on the Presti TV podcast feed. So if you haven't listened to that yet, you might want to go back and listen to that episode before you hear us talk about four and five because we were going to be building on some stuff that we talked about then. And elsewhere in the Prestige TV podcast, there's a lot going on. Jody and the lovely Juliet Litman just gave a little Bridgeton preview where were we at the end of season one with Bridgeton. So if you want to get caught up with that, there's that.

Mallory Rubin and I talked about the finale of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, season four. And we tried to do it in a calm and composed manner, but we weren't that composed. And then on the theme of sort of grifters and Silicon Valley and all of that, that Sean Benetysi and I will be talking about WeCrashed, the WeWork show that's debuting on Apple TV Plus. That'll be out for you on Friday.

So there's a lot going on this feed as ever. So stay tuned for coverage of all your favorite shows. We're here today. Talk some more about some grips. I'm really excited about this. Specifically, as I said, we're covering Old White Men, episode four, which is directed by Michael Show Walter, written by Dan LaFranc, and episode five, Flower of Life,

which was directed by Francesca Gregorini and written by Liz Hannah. A blanket spoiler warning for history, for the fact that this is something that actually happened in the real world. So we will try to keep it relatively contained to where the show is so far. But, you know, just a gentle spoiler warning.

These things actually happens. We might talk about all of that. I want to start. We have some. some specific things that I want to get into, but I want to start with a blanket sort of overall impressions of old white men, episode four, the fulcrum, the middle point of the season, which I think is exactly the best of what this show could possibly be, Jody. We talked about how this show originally started maybe as more of a comedy. Kate McKinnon was originally supposed to be

playing Elizabeth Holmes. A lot of things changed. We've seen a lot of darker, more serious stuff happening in the show that doesn't really lend itself to a comedic tone, but episode four manages to really nail a balance of comedy and pathos. So what are your overall impressions of this episode? Oh, I loved it just like I've loved the other ones, but it is, it's a totally different, not tone, but overall viewing experience. There are a lot of true laughs. I mean, these three and then four stooges of Walgreens are really funny, but it's also realistic in the way that they're working together as these sort of character archetypes. You know, Alan Ruck as Dr. Jay, just kind of like this older man who wants to feel young again and wants to feel cool in Silicon Valley,

put it up against Kevin Hunter, who's this like lab guy who's super serious and just wants to get in the lab and check things out. It's funny, but it all makes sense together. And I think that while this while I think everyone will walk away from this season saying that this is their favorite episode because it is so good, I don't think that every episode could be like this. Like, every episode couldn't have this many jokes and have the tone of the show land the same. But to do it right here in the middle at such a pivotal point for the story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos is the perfect way to insert it, I think. And I think, so our core comedians here, right, we've got Alan Ramos. Rock, Josh Pice, Rich Summer, and Andrew Leeds is the core for here. All incredible stuff from each and every one of them. Great little jokes going around everywhere, like talking about

tiny salad or the way the episode closes out with Andrew Leeds doing performance of what I like about blood. I mean, Andrew Leeds is going to be cast in everything now. He runs away with it. I mean, Everyone is funny and everyone is great. But he's sort of pure comic relief. And the way that he's able to do that, almost every line he says is like under his breath because he's this yes man and that's the role that he's playing. He's so funny.

I mean, just making a line of like, what are microgreens? Oh, it's tiny salad. Like making a line like that's so funny is so hard to do. And he just nails it. He's so good. And I'm pretty sure the button on that scene is him saying spicy. Like about salad. Yes.

To diffuse. To diffuse tension, he talks about how spicy the salad is. Yeah. Something that, the reason why I think that works so perfectly. So old white men refers to these, I mean, Andrew Leeds is not that old, nor is which summer, but like it refers to these white men, but also just in general, the target of Elizabeth Holmes' grift. It closes out with a, with a bona fide old white man, George Schultz, played by Sam

Waterston, right? So these are the kind of men that Elizabeth Holmes was targeting. because her particular grift worked well on their vulnerabilities. And so I think it makes sense to stoojify these four guys to make them ridiculous in a way that you wouldn't want to make other characters like the counterbalance of the episode is Stephen Fry's character Ian Gibbons. That is a very sympathetic, poignant, tragic figure, as we'll talk about a little bit more when we talk about episode five.

but to make these four guys so goofy is perfect. Something that I want to talk about more generally on the show is P-O-V because the first three episodes of the series were definitely in Elizabeth's head, right? We follow her from childhood to college to, you know, as we talked about the end of episode three, her like villain origin story. But once she puts on the turtleneck and the red lipstick, I feel like the show is less interested in being inside of her head with flashes here and there and more interested in some of these other figures that come in. And so because this show is so closely based on Rebecca Jarvis's podcast, The Dropout, a lot of these Keogh characters are the people that Rebecca got interviews with. And so Kevin Hunter is played by Mad Men, Mellum, Rich Summer. is kind of our POV character in this episode. He's coming in and he's like, excuse me,

why can't I see the lab? And all of those guys looking at Silicon Valley with their fresh eyes are POV, but I think specifically Kevin, how does that work for you in this episode? Yeah, I think that it's giving so many points of view that it offers you a number of ways to look at, at Theranos and how this happened. And ultimately, I'm finding episode per episode that that's the question that this show is asking is, how did this happen? It's not just a character study of

Elizabeth Holmes, who we already know a lot about. I mean, there's so much content, so much media out there about her that, like, just telling the story of Elizabeth Holmes and how weird she is and how eccentric and her turtlenecks and her voice. And even if Amanda Cyfried is doing a perfect voice, that's not that interesting. What's interesting is finally cracking the code for like a much wider audience of how this happened and how it went on for so long. And that all comes down to the context of the world around Elizabeth Holmes and the people around Elizabeth Holmes and who she is being forced to interact with and also who she's

bringing to her. And it ultimately ends up being all of these old white men. And I think they do such a good job. job of showing how the world around her is working, but so many people could fall susceptible to this because of their own egos, because of their own concerns about the economy and about their businesses. And, you know, it's not just this one charming character. It's about the world that she works within. And I think episode four just nails that with both with Walgreens and with her finally pulling George

Schultz in. The Walgreens versus Safeway versus CVS battle in this episode is a thing of beauty. But I think, and on a deeper level, I think you're completely right because the episode ends with not just a Katie Perry inspired, you know,

run from Alan Ruck's character, Dr. Jay, but also what he says to Wade right when he gets into the car, when he talks about them being dinosaurs. You know, we're old. There are kids here running multi-million dollar companies. We're old. We're dinosaurs. He earnestly quotes the Katie Perry song. But, you know, it's just like this idea of like these old white men coming in and saying they feel like they

know how business should work, but they've seen so many examples in Silicon Valley of a younger generation coming in and disrupting how business has worked. And so it unmoors them from their usual standards and practices. So you have Kevin Hunter being like, excuse me, I just need to look at the lab, but you've got these other guys, I mean, specifically, Dr. Jay, who if you've read some interviews with him since, like, just, it's kind of delightful to hear from someone who has been that duped and then has to talk about it. But I just think that the way in which she is able to manipulate them, not just with this, like, showy grift of claiming to get a flight to Boston to go get CVS and stuff like that, all of that,

or putting them in the brainstorm room for an hour and a half or all the things that she does that are, that is like, you know, clever and manipulative and incisive. And the research she does, you know, like when she hits them at dinner with, you know, retail is failing, you need us, like all this sort of stuff. Like all of that is smart. But if her target weren't so vulnerable,

I don't think her grift works. What do you think? Right, because she seems to understand that these people, these men in some way want to like project themselves on there onto her and you know if there's one thing that's been made clear to me in pop culture it is that men really value legacy and like leaving a legacy behind not something that I'm personally interested in or chasing every day but you see that in like someone like dr j who's had this huge invention in his past who's done the startup life and is now kind of settled into like a regular, very highly profitable. I mean, he, he must live a good life.

But when he meets Elizabeth, he sees a different, he sees the world changing. That's what these men keep seeing in her is like, weird dinosaurs now and the world is changing. And you can either be on the side of kind of using her as an on-ramp to the world changing, or you can be like Richard Fuse, who is resisting change and resisting a woman sort of coming to power. and ultimately having the world trample you and pass you by and turn you jaded. Of course, there's some middle ground there that we're not exploring, but those aren't the people who are circling Theranos like sharks. I think that Fuse, William H. Macy's characters,

are really good foray to talk about these other POVs because he is essentially one of the POV characters and he's an uncomfortable POV character to be with. You talked about this when we were discussing episode. as one through three, but it's like, what is his real motivation here? He might be technically on the right side of his crusade, but as is evident in some of the

deposition scenes, like, what really is motivating here? What is he after? We get the introduction of the Theranos legal team. We've got Michaela Watkins as Linda Tanner. McKella Watkins, incredible comedian. Love to see her anywhere. She's great here. And then

we've got Kurtwood Smith as David Boyce. And, you know, I think there's funny bits with the cheez-its with the David Boyce character in both episodes, etc. But there's also just a real menace here. Like these are the sharks. Right. Yeah. And like you said, Michaela Watkins is so funny. And she's funny in this.

Like watching her have to juggle a glass of green juice that she like could not want to be holding any less or anymore is so funny. but that that humor in it and in David Boyce somewhat as well makes it more menacing because like these are the adults at the table. These are the people who should and probably do know better. You get a sense from a lot of the other characters that they're doing, you know, going through hoops and tricks to convince themselves that this works and that this is a good idea and that if we just chase it long enough, it'll work. But you get the sense from these lawyers that they know best. matter. This is just their job. Their job is to defend their client. And that's a rough place to be in a difficult point of view through which to view the world. And I think the fuse of it all, I think it's really important. I really love the point you made when we were talking about

episodes one through three about this idea of his agenda, however quote unquote correct he might be, is underlined by this sort of misogyny, this idea of why didn't she come, why didn't this little girl who grew up next to me come to me? There's this interesting way in which the show is dealing with this idea of Elizabeth Holmes as a little girl, right? Like we see her in episode five. We see her with her mom at her uncle's funeral, right? Sunny tells you to stop acting like a little girl when she's like dodging calls and claiming to be in meetings when she's not all of that. She has her brother at Theranos Christian, a real nepotism hire.

Did you know that he went to Duke? He went to Duke, though. Did you know? Actually, I looked this up. The show never covers it, so I feel fine to talk about it. Do you know that he hired a bunch of his frat brothers? Who also went to Duke? Did you know they went to Duke?

To join Theranos and they called themselves the Therobros. That's a real thing. like unironically called themselves the Thera Bros. They were like, we're going to get there before anyone else can name us this with a Therbrose. We'll just own it. We're taking it back. Or just the, like looking at her and her, her wizard costume, which is something that, you know, I saw a photo online of The Realist with Homes, wearing this wizard costume at the Halloween party, jumping in a bounce house. Like all of that child like stuff arounder, what do you make of that?

What is the show trying to say with that? I have heard some people call this an empathetic portrayal of Elizabeth Holmes. And I don't think that at all. What I think the show is successfully doing is showing her as a very human character. Over and over, it tells us again that Elizabeth Holmes knows what she's doing. She may be young and she may be immature, but she's also aware of what's happening. There's a complete awareness there. In one of her, in the conversation where she fires Ian Gibbons, she says, he says, you don't know the science.

You don't know the implications of this. And she says, I know exactly what I'm doing. And that's such an indictment on her character. I think they go out of their way to show that she's not like some straightforward sociopath out of a lifetime movie. She's a human woman who is making these decisions. And there's not a lot of empathy in that. In fact, it's almost more menacing to think about how much she knows what she's doing. As far as the little girl portrayal, I mean, there's just some reality in it, which is that her growth got stunted.

She started a business at 19 and everyone around her, her whole life, has been telling her she's right. And that's not to say that it's okay that she internalized that in a way that ultimately hurt a lot of people, but it does explain how she may have internalized that, which is that she also always thinks that she's right. Or even when she thinks she's wrong, she moves forward as though she's right because that's the only way that she knows how to do it, because there's just not the emotional maturity there. I do think there's this interesting arrested development. You know, we talked before about the Yoda line on the wall of Phaeranos. And we talked before about the way in which some of these older white men think of her more as like a daughter figure than they do necessarily like a, you know, a cute blonde who's seducing them in another way that like women, you know, that this sort of, there's a sort of patronizing. I'll take care of you. I believe in you. You're brilliant. It makes me feel good to support you. You know, the way in which Bill Irwin's character Channing Robertson like betrays a lifelong friendship with Ian Gibbons for this.

woman is is confusing. But I mean, to go back to a little girl thing and your question of sympathy, I think there are moments of sympathy as much sympathy as you can have for like a rabbit you see in a trap that they themselves have made. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, like a classic circumstance of a rabbit setting its own trap in the video. Talk in it. Listen, you know, you know I'm known for my Cracker Jack analogy. Like a Bugs Bunny situation. but I think that when we see her with the finger puppets in episode five, a very childlike thing to do. And when we see her, so we might be like, oh my gosh, poor thing.

She's having like a reality break or whatever. Ian Gibbons has died. Sunny is coming to her with sympathies. Like, I know you two were close, which is something that we understand from Ian. You know, we saw, I suppose, in episode one through three a bit that he was there at the beginning, that they used to have a relationship. and then they stopped. But when she's sort of tracing the little dragon finger puppet across her face and saying,

we won, you know, there's no way he can testify now. We won the lawsuit. I don't know how you could call that a sympathetic portrayal of anyone. That is a nightmare reaction from an ice cold person. And something that Rochelle Gibbons, who is another one of the sources on Rebecca Jarvis's podcast. So I think Ian as a POV character comes a lot through his wife's testimony and her and what she's told Rebecca Jarvis, played here brilliantly, I think, by Kate Burton. But is this idea of, I mean, I think the idea is to really, really humanize the cost of what Elizabeth did here.

And we will further down the line, we'll get into the cost of putting these machines. jeans that don't really work out there in the world. But this is such a personal face of tragedy when it comes to what happened at Theranos. And the way in which the show cast Ian with Stephen Fry, the way in which the show has taken its time, letting us get to know him, letting us sit with him, showing us how much affection the lab has for him, giving us the Brendan Moore's character, who I think is like one of the only like not based in reality. composite characters in the in the show. Right.

Who apparently, who seems to get fired for sending an, an obituary via email, etc. I think that's a really smart way to make this not just, here's what happened or isn't a grift fun because it can be fun. But like, here's why this is a really, really, really, she's not just bilking rich guys for their money. This is what else happened here. Yeah, I think that it shows the human cost.

I mean, you mentioned earlier these paternal characters that they see in her. What I think in some of the other reporting has been sort of just portrayed as because she's blonde and because she's pretty. And maybe it is some of that, but it is like you mentioned earlier in a pretty childlike way. And so as opposed to sort of being seduced by her as though like these old men want to be with her, it's like they want to be her dad. They want to be in some way responsible for the way that she turns out. And they see that in her.

But what I think the show is showing me that I hadn't really thought about before is that she doesn't see that in turn. She knows how to play it and how to. So I think she plays her waspiness so much to her advantage by like demureing to these men's accomplishments. And she understands their egos and the way that they want to be respected and the way that they want their, you know, what they've achieved to be. honored through these new achievements, but she doesn't see them as father figures. She doesn't

take their advice. She, you know, she wants their money and she wants them to see her in a certain way, but she doesn't give it in return. However, that is a little different in the Ian Gibbons character because he's on the science side. Like, he's not on this money side where no one understands anything. He is the foundation of Faranos. He was also in there much earlier sort of before Elizabeth went through a lot of for changes. And he sees those changes, not just in her physicality and how she dresses now, but in how she acts and how she disregards him. And you see her just completely ignoring him because I think when she faces him, she has to face the humanity of what she's doing. And she has to face the way that she's disappointing him and the way that you might have to face the disappointment

of a parent. Like when you're upset and then you get on the phone with your mom and just immediately start crying and you didn't even know you needed to cry. Like that's what she's avoiding, I think. with him and and i mean yeah they could not have made a better casting called than stephen fry his his face it just displays both happiness and sadness in such dramatic ways it's it's so upsetting to see him sad and and you know what ultimately happens is a true story Rochella testified and also I think said in interviews that when her husband killed himself, Theranos didn't reach out with any kind of condolences. They reached out with two messages, one email saying or one message saying,

we're coming to collect all of his stuff that he has that pertains to the company. And the other was to threaten her should she ever choose to speak about the company. And, you know, something she said in her interview with Rebecca Jarvis, she's like, you know, they can't do that. Like, I didn't sign an NDA. Like, they have no power over me here. So, I mean, just the absolute heartlessness of this. And I think what's interesting, something that I talked to, you know, Chris Ryan about when we were talking about super pumped, which seems very much interested in being like, even more of a Wikipedia show, even more of the rise of Uber, even more of a, whoa, this happened.

And then this happened. Isn't this wild? that this happened, you know? And then we crashed, you know, which I'll get into with Sean, seems a little bit more trying to understand the psychology of these core grifters, I suppose. And I think, did you watch all of inventing Anna? I know you love a grift. I know. I had to stop at like episode five. I just, I preferred the story in my head. My sense is that that show also was sort of content to stay very much inside of. of Anna's POV to a certain degree. And I think that I think that this show,

with its overlapping external POVs, because in these episodes, we get the introduction of a couple people who will be important down the road. We meet Tyler Schultz, played by Dylan Manette, and also Mark Rossler, who's the new head of the lab,

when Brendan leaves, played by Kevin Sussman. These are like important figures going forward. We meet them just at the tail end of these episodes, but I think it's really smart to overlap those POVs a little bit. You know, we follow Tyler into his first day as Theronos as Brandon is leaving and saying, get out, you know, and I think that overlap of POV is a little different than some other shows might handle it where they would just hold open an episode with a new POV.

I think sort of lacing these things through, like we get a little bit of Walgreens in episode five, even though they could have been contained to one episode and episode four. I think all of that is really smart storytelling and a way to crack this that keeps it emotionally engaging and not just like, it's completely wild that this happened, you know? I love that moment at the beginning of episode five when we're seeing Dr. Jay again in a way that we kind of, I'm maybe expected to not see him again. He'd been this kind of, you know, powerful character in episode four. But in episode five, he said, she says, I thought you knew what you were signing on for. This is going to take time. And he says, it's

been three years. I think they're, they're doing such a good job of the timeline in this show, which has always been a kind of difficult thing for me to understand about the Elizabeth home story when I'm just listening to podcasts or even watching a documentary where they're using timestamps. And they do that in the show as well. But the way that you can watch these characters who we grow close to very quickly and watch them as they become wary and as they experienced the change around them is a great way of showing time. And yeah, I also really love Tyler Schultz. I mean, the way that they filmed that scene is literally like Tyler Schultz has

entered the building to ruin your life in a clunky pair of kings. It's so good. I think what I was really feeling during episode four and five is what a good job the series is doing of showing and not telling. because as someone who's listened to all the podcast and read all the articles, I know a lot of little details about this, about this story that I get a little thrill out of seeing in the show. Like when the Shiat Day advertising agency guys in the podcast to drop out

talk about those finger puppets, they're like, they're talking about all the weird stuff that happened that happened during their time with there. And I was like, yeah, I mean, we were trying to tell her that legally we have to change all of the language because this technology is not what you said it was.

And she was just obsessed with us marketing these finger puppets that she had had made. But instead of having those characters rolling their eyes in the conference room and talking about that, they show us that Elizabeth Holmes is obsessed with these finger puppets. And they leave it into this extremely emotional moment with the death by suicide of Ian Gibbons. Yeah, I just, I think that they're really doing some pretty, some pretty masterful writing. throughout this pretty challenging story to tell. I think to go back to that sort of is Elizabeth Holmes being portrayed as childlike in some way. And if she is, it's not as a bid for our sympathy.

And it's not a patronizing look at like women in business. I think it's just a look at this distinctive person and their sort of arrested development. When you look at both Elizabeth and Sunny, it feels like, they're playing at something. And part of that comes through with with the security and the paranoia and the armed guards and keeping various departments from each other. All of that is part of like the grift, obviously.

But as the Walgreens guys point out in episode four, the fact that they say let's stagger our departure from the office, let's stagger our rival at the restaurant so no one knows this happening. But then Sunny parks his immediately identifiable Lambo in front of the restaurant. And so they're like, it's all, it's all show. None of it is actually like planned out. It's all just posturing of security. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. I think they make a joke of the right things. Like they make a joke of the things that were so obviously absurd to the people at the time. And that makes it even more powerful that then so motivated by

their greed, so motivated by their fear to be surpassed by CVS or by time itself or by the industry. Walgreens, despite seeing all that silliness, like, despite never seeing the labs, even though they hired someone specifically to advise them on this, who advised them not to do it, they still made this decision. And I think that's how they use the humor is like, yeah, this is a joke. I mean, it's a joke that the world operates this way. But it does. And we're going to tell the story of it. I think a couple other things are at play here. One, the other thing that Walgreens is afraid of in addition to CVS and or Safeway, is Amazon, which Elizabeth very intelligently raises when they're having sushi.

She's like, I see you've invested in widgets. Is that how you plan to compete with Amazon? This idea that like retail, because it's a recession, we get a lot of like, you know, Obama, Afghan war, Angry Birds, reminder of when we are because it's a recession because online retail is gutting storefronts. you know, how are you going to keep up? And as you say, they can latch onto this, which feels new and exciting and shiny and innovative. Maybe they could beat Jeff Bezos if they have an Elizabeth Holmes in their pocket,

or at least keep pace with Jeff Bezos, you know. Speaking of which, I want to talk about one part of episode five that I think is really important because when we are in the timeline of Theranos, and you know this because you know this story so much better than I do, We're right on the precipice of a big explosion of the cult of Elizabeth Holmes because I think up until now, yeah, she's like a Silicon Valley story, but she comes a national story. And in episode five, we see Shidey the marketing firm that you mentioned telling her, you are the face. You are there. She's like, what about this interlocking flower logo that I like so much? And they're like, no, it's you. It's your face. This is. the identity. And when she's talking to her mom about maybe quitting, she's like, well, it's not like, this is who I am. And her mom is like, no, this is who you are. This is exactly. This is you. You are it. And by the end of the episode, you know, she seems to have completely absorbed what her mom says.

And by the end of the episode, she's like, Theranos is me. If you don't believe in Theranos, you doubt me. If you doubt Theranos, you doubt me. So she is fully come on board after resistance, after fear, knowing that she is hooking her own identity to a scam, she comes on board and around to it. And so we're about to see Elizabeth Holmes on the cover of magazines, Elizabeth Holmes, like her face everywhere. And how that relates to the cult of like the technocrat Silicon Valley people. You know, we've always, and we talked about this last time,

we've always worshipped Titans of Industry. It's one of the worst parts about our culture, right? But the fact that you can say Amazon, oh, Jeff Bezos, you could say Tesla, oh, Elon Musk. You can say Facebook. You say Mark Zuckerberg. You know, like the fact that we have put these people on a pedestal and Elizabeth Holmes is sort of deciding to climb up there herself. And that's all part of her downfall. What do you think? Yeah. Well, I think we, we or the people themselves, you bring in the pedestal in place of a problem. Like when Shiat Day first proposes that to her, Theranos is you. You're the face of Theranos.

She stares at her own face and she says, no, I'm not. Because the story of Theranos to her has always been this proprietary technology that nobody else has, she's going to invent and that's going to change the world. But in episodes four and five, as we are, like you said, approaching a time when Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes become ubiquitous. they're on the cover of, she's on the cover of every magazine. The technology of Theranos could not be in a worst place. Machines are exploding.

They're opening up machines that aren't theirs of the old technology, the very technology that they were trying to innovate on and to put out of business because it hurts people and it doesn't work. So when the, from her point of view, presumably, when the tech isn't working and that aspect isn't there, then what is the business? It can only be her. And of course, the extent to which she leaned into that and accepted that into her own mind and then started promoting it herself in that speech that you were just referencing where

she says, if you doubt my company, you doubt me, she says, Serenos is my religion. And no one blinks an eye. Their eyes are too full of tears to possibly blink. They're just staring on her an adoration. And it's literally all she has at this point. The tech isn't there. So she only has herself to promote.

Yeah. The way in which a mind works that it could not be looking towards the end point of saying, what do I do when this all explodes in my face? I think is the part of Elizabeth Holmes that remains fascinating and the part of most scripts and most scammers that remains fascinating because your average human is always thinking about consequences and is always thinking, maybe not always. I shouldn't speak for everyone. And that's not even true of myself. But in that kind of territory, you're thinking about what's going to happen and what happens if this goes wrong. And she's just moving too fast and people are

pumping her up too much to really take those kinds of things into account. I think the, I think a perfect encapsulation of that is when Sunday, shows her the Simon's machine that they have opened up and talks about how they'll use that machine, reprogram it with therein-o software, use that machine, no one needs to be the wiser. And she keeps saying, okay, this is phase one. This is phase one while we figure the, and this is just phase one. So it feels like, yes, she's aware, she has to be aware of a lot of, a lot of the elements of the grift, but she's also deeply in denial. Like, I think she's like a lot of people, who are, not all, but like plenty of people who are grifting.

They're like, we're going to fake it until we do make it. Like she wants, she's like, eventually we'll figure these machines out. And so everything I'm doing now is in service of that. I'm just buying myself some time, buy myself more money, because I believe that eventually I'm going to figure this out. And I, I don't know. I don't know how you feel, but I feel like at this point, she still believes that. She might lose touch with that eventually, but like, what do you think?

Well, yeah, I think she's the extent to when which she's distancing to herself from the labs, from the science side of things seems to be kind of like a coping mechanism and a protection of herself. I think legally there's no denying that she knew what was happening. But she doesn't, I mean, Ian Gibbon tells her this. Like she doesn't have the scientific knowledge to really understand what's going on in the labs. And I think she leans on that as a crutch to like, if I don't understand what's happening, can't really understand how bad this is. And I can't really understand that these machines should not be going into

Walgreens stores and touching patience blood. She can, she can at least in her own mind kind of claim some ignorance to that, to what she's truly doing, like the hurt that she's truly putting up against people. Of course, the thing that she knows that she's doing is putting Sunny Balwani in charge of lab operations. and his ass doesn't know science either. Like he does not know what he's talking about. And his refusal to listen to experts, to listen to scientists is even more aggressive and even more volatile than hers.

Joina, I have to ask you, how is it going watching Nevin in this role? Is it, is your heart so broken it can't be mended or? It's tough. It's a tough watch. Every time he explodes in anger. I mean, everything. It's tough. He's very convincing.

He's excellent. He's excellent in this. Yeah, but it is heartbreaking for lovers of Saeed on Lost. Yeah, Navin, who's very good. I think, again, it circles back to this interesting thread, like this needle that the show is trying to thread. Because if you look at Elizabeth Holmes when she goes to her deposition in 2017, which we see, parts of or the ongoing court case, which I think, or not ongoing, it's over, but, no, that she hasn't been sentenced yet, but it started in, what, 2019? The fact that, you know,

I was reading this one interview where, you know, the character of Phyllis Gardner is played by Lori Metcalf on the show, Phyllis gave us interview because Elizabeth Holmes was pregnant when she went on trial. And Phyllis was accusing her of getting pregnant intentionally to curry, you know, sympathy and favor from the jury. So the question, question is like how sociopathic and manipulative is someone like elizabeth holmes is she someone who would get pregnant just to cut a more sympathetic figure at a trial she's got a new she's she's married someone else she's distanced herself from sonny bolwani as we mentioned in episodes one through three she's in her trial tried to blame everything on sunny said she was just manipulated manipulated

she's trying to paint herself as a sort of like innocent childlike figure so for the show to give us moments like her putting the little potted plants in the Wellness Center model, acting like a child with a dollhouse, then also see her do these other very chilling things. I think the show is trying to give us both. And I think it's succeeding where it's like, yes, there are these weird childlike aspects, but her hands are not clean in any sense of the word. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, it's interesting. I don't think that when watching I pegged down on this idea of her being childlike quite as much. I, in fact, when I watched that scene of her putting the little potted plants in the Walgreens

mock up, I thought, oh, she's playing God. Like that, that was the thought that I had is she sees this as her kingdom. She's just made this comment about religion. And she thinks that she can control every aspect of this. And of course, like the harsh irony is that she has no control over anything except for these old white men. And that's not going to, that's not enough. As much as the world may tell you, that's not enough. But I, but I do think that there's another, another scene in, in regards to her not being childlike that I, that I noted in, I think it's episode four when we're very first

introduced to Tyler Schultz when, when Elizabeth Holmes is talking to his grandfather, George Schultz, about a pretty big issue at the company. And she's reassuring him that, that, they are ready for this Walgreens deal, I believe, at the table. And he says, I want you to meet my grandson. He's about to graduate from college. And he wants to work at Theranos. And when you see Tyler Schultz walk in and then watching her come face to face with someone who is actually her peer is always very unsettling.

And they don't dwell on it. I don't even know if they meant it. I mean, they probably did. The show seems very intentional. But of course, you know, he's around 22. And I think she's like 2930 at that time or maybe not even. fight. But they're certainly closer in age than she and George Schultz are. And it seems totally normal for her to be sitting at this table with a 90 year old man talking business. And then when this

young man walks in, it's like, ah, there's no level of relation here. Yeah, I think that's really smart. And I think that connects back to her relationship with Sunny, right? Like she's never had relationships with anyone her age, friendships or otherwise. The closest she has is her. her idiot brother who she's installed in her company, you know. That's a great excuse to rattle off who comprised the board of Theranos, and we're talking about the old white men. So here we go. A retired U.S. Navy Admiral, a U.S. Marine Corps general,

three former U.S. Cabinet secretaries, two former senators, and more. As she mentions, Kissinger's involved, Mattis is involved, all this stuff is going on. No scientists. you know, we have no one really there to understand the technology other than like, there's an epidemiologist and former Senator Bill Frist, who was a surgeon. But she is inoculating her company from scientific scrutiny by installing all these government people and hoping those government people will help grease the wheels with the FDA. It's brilliant.

I mean, that's the thing about Elizabeth Holmes. It's like, again, I think it's so sad that she decided she had to go the grift way because she is very smart and you would wish that she could have used that intelligence for not her own glory game. But I think the question is like, can that kind of intelligence ever be used for anything else? Because if we're saying that it's smart for her to, you know,

hire all of these people who offer her no checks and balances, it's like, yeah, that's smart. But it does kind of feel like that kind of intelligence that can only be used for bad. You know, you see that on her board. She's not hiring any scientists. And then in the place where she is hiring scientists in her company, she's siloing the business side and the science side so that neither one can keep the other accountable.

And I think that in Amanda Seifre's performance and in the way that the show is written, it kind of seems like she's doing that stuff innately. Like she's not thinking about it in such a Machiavellian way. She's just, she had the influence of Sunny. And she also just instinctually understands that like if I'm going to be able to to keep moving forward with no one checking what's really going on here, then I have to keep people from talking to one another. And she is, that's the skill of a scammer, right?

It's just survival instincts. It's like survival instincts with absolutely no borders or boundaries on when to stop. I love it. So as we mentioned in our first installment, so we're in episode five, we only three episodes left of the season. we're about to enter the the journalism thriller section of the story

which maybe my favorite I mean episode four is my favorite but like I love a journalism thriller so we're about to meet some new so new characters. Joanna and Jody have entered the chat oh shocking that we're interested in the journalism aspect

and how we might imagine ourselves characters in this thrilling story oh sure I could take down there no problem anything else you want to talk about before we sign off I just think a not like not enough can be said about how good the performances are in this show. I should have looked up who did the casting before we got on because it is dynamite.

And I hope that there are some awards and some honors in in these futures because I mean, Amanda Cypric continues to kill it. Nevin Andrews, like we noted earlier, is just so unsettling in this role in a way that is pretty hurtful to my heart, but he, he's so good. And then, and, you know, like we've noted throughout, a lot of these characters come in for one episode and, and we get really attached to them or attached to the performance they're giving and then they're gone. But that's really representative of the company and how much turnover there was and how that kept the scam afloat. I honestly could have done an entire season of The Four Idiots from Wall grains, honestly. No problem.

The casting director is Jeannie Backrack, who has, who has an Emmy. But she cast the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as well as Station 11, which is one of the best casts I've ever seen in my life, Station 11. So, yeah, keep an eye on Jeannie. Mm-hmm. In the Pressy TV podcast feed, exactly. all right well that does it for this coverage of episodes four and five of the dropout we'll be back for more i don't know that kind of depends on you all if you want to hear us talk about the conclusion of this series i hope we get a chance to do that but let us know if that's something you want to hear from us jody until then and we will see you back here in the prestige feed for a number of other things this episode was produced by the great stephan anderson thank you so much we'll see you again