My boyfriend asked me if I wanted to watch The Dropout with him (group watch on Disney+ is such a great function!) and since I really liked Bad Blood by John Carreyrou, I decided to give it a shot. Well, turns out the show made me mad all over again about Theranos.

The Dropout, which has the same name as the ABC podcast on Theranos, is a pretty faithful dramatisation of how Elizabeth Holmes started Theranos and how she was exposed by John Carreyrou, Erika Cheung, Tyler Shultz, Richard Fuisz, and a few other heroic people. If you’ve read Bad Blood or listened to the podcast, probably none of what happened will be new to you. But it is definitely a different experience watching it in video – I think Amanda Seyfriend did a great job playing Elizabeth.

The cinematography is also great; there were some moments in the series that legitimately scared me, and some that made me laugh (no spoilers, but one funny moment was between Carreyrou and his boss). I did wonder at the beginning if this was going to be a sympathetic portrayal of Holmes as someone who got in over her head, but I think the show did a good job showing how she had completely lost her sense of morality, although the transition from getting more and more morally grey to full-on villain felt a little fast.

What surprised me this time was how early on the cracks began to show at Theranos. Yet Elizabeth and Sunny kept on raising money – even after key employees quit, even though they had no working prototype, even thought they couldn’t get any pharmacy companies to sign. She even successfully convinced her board not to fire her even though they were close to doing so! The Walgreens episode was another one that made me sigh – how did these people bring on an expert (Kevin Hunter) and then completely disregard his concerns? It’s honestly ridiculous.

Overall, I really enjoyed this series. If you’ve not read Bad Blood, or even if you have, you may be interested in watching this.

Featured Image: Taken from the Guardian