Since it’s summer and I’m spending most of my time holed up in my room clutching to the digital epicenters of culture, media and news, I’ve found the time to venture down the latest junction of a micro-genre that borders true crime fascination and Emmy bait at its finest. Everybody shut up about Dimes Square, we’re talking about the world’s fave grifter girlies and their sudden influx of biopics.
To clarify and also broaden, the pieces of media I’m discussing today fall under the general scambrella of fraud and deception but span many topics and locations. Failed (and not failed) startups, biotech, Hollywood, Oxbridge, and everywhere in between. I do this to highlight the fact that each masterful lead performance, meta monologue and in depth reporting that builds each of these biopics aims to discover something deeper than failure and more visceral than public humiliation; no matter how scandalous the real life response to watching the mighty fall, TV requires even more of its idols and its audiences. Whether they succeed depends upon a fine line of apologetics, prosthetics and some heavy lifting in the writers room that distinguishes that 8 hours of TV from the last podcast you listened to. Let’s discuss.
The Dropout
The crown jewel of scammerina media, worn proudly by HRH Amanda Seyfried, is The Dropout on Hulu. This limited series was adapted from the rights to an eponymous podcast which delved into the various coverups and one core deception that allowed biotech startup Theranos to make millions before being shuttered and sending founder Elizabeth Holmes to court. I was definitely familiar with this story before watching the series, and sufficiently gagged by the headlines proclaiming that Holmes made the statement “I don’t know” over 600 times during her depositions.
The interesting thing about this show, beyond the fact that it's very good, is that it spends little time with the story behind the story past the pilot; we see young Elizabeth and adolescent Elizabeth, both as precedents for the present, but we don’t laboriously watch their every move to armchair psychoanalyze the way they brush their hair or something. Audiences get to know a full cast of peers, employees, foes and naysayers that orbit Elizabeth, which provides an even greater insight to how she interacted with the world than a sappy flashback could. Though Seyfried obviously stands out in what I consider an Emmy-nominated performance, she doesn’t have to prop up the entire series with her - or Elizabeth’s - star power because of its strength as a eulogy of chronological fine-tuning.
Angelyne
Opposing series such as The Dropout which dispel and display myths on a wide scale, this Peacock miniseries zeroes in on one mythological unicorn that confounded Los Angeles for decades - and they’re not a scrappy startup. Angelyne’s origin story and various transformations have been well documented in journalistic efforts to tell her story, and by her own proclamations, she herself will be the next to show the world the “real” Angelyne. The buxom blonde may be losing some of her mystery with time, but she continues to captivate the consciousness of many.
Five episodes isn’t that long, but they feel right and tight for this campy, just-a-little-kitschy biopic that revolves around a fictional documentary and news story that seek firsthand accounts from Angelyne and those closest to her regarding her rise to fame and notoriety. The star makes no appearance (after walking out of involvement with the series post approving her casting and production plans), but is presented to the audience by Emmy Rossum of sad sitcom fame under 7 hours of boobs, plaster, makeup, wigs, prosthetics, two sets of contact lenses and over 700 costumes. Seeing Rossum’s dedication to portraying and producing a telling of Angelyne’s life was fascinating, and a masterclass in character work that makes me excited for her future endeavors. The show’s themes of reinvention, verity and what determines success for those who are single minded in attempting to achieve it make for a resonating watch that I’ll probably revisit again and again. Angelyne is less of a scam story than a success story, depending on how you take it. Then again, she’s always been that way.
On Becoming a God in Central Florida
I’d like to add a brief honorary nod to this series as well, given that I admittedly have only seen the pilot. If you ever wanted to see Kirsten Dunst dominate an 80s pyramid scheme, or watch Alexander Skaarsgard be a husband for the umpteenth time, this is the show for you. Off the bat, I appreciated how the demonstrations of material want and insecurity were shown in contrast to the confidence and glee that commercial affirmation yielded when shown to the central family. Even if it wasn’t clear to you before, the pilot makes it easy to see how the seduction of wealth, or even just the creature comforts it guarantees for those who need it the most, can lead to vicious and deceptive behavior (as is the case for this next show).
WeCrashed
I feel strongly that at this point in my life I didn’t need to see Jared Leto (famous for being a predator and cult leader) parade around Midtown barefoot, yet clad in an unnerving Israeli accent and a prosthetic nose. After having done so, am I better for it? Is he? I’m still wondering on those points, but Leto’s Adam Neumann — founder of capitalistic wellness real estate company WeWork — is the wrong kind of over the top. As others have noted, his world accent tour is not enough to ground his performance, which is overshadowed by Anne Hathway(famous for being talented)’s Rebekah Paltrow Neumann in almost every scene they share.
The one thing that weakens this Dropout minion of a series is that it declares that it will balance chronologizing both the Neumann’s so-delusional-I’m-laughing love affair and the birth, death, and resurrection of WeWork at the same time. Yes, they’re obviously intertwined, but the screen time dedicated to both is simultaneously bloated and weighed down by an inability to pursue the individual stories of supporting characters. More America Ferrera! More Cricket Brown! What happened to Chloe’s Birkin bag! This isn’t to say this approach can’t be done, but I just felt that all the development, emotional work, and true meaning of the show was loaded into the girlboss-maleboss pairing while audiences here to witness the story of the best kind of bad business were left to starve. Once again, Amanda Seyfried comes out on top.
Super Pumped
There’s not much to say on this, because it is basically indistinguishable from WeCrashed except I actually like seeing Joseph Gordon Levitt on my screen. This time, the series tackles the dysfunction at Uber that actively endangered customers and staff, with a hefty dose of focus on Travis Kalanick, founder and CEO. Where WeCrashed shows directly how and why Neumann made poor business decisions to feed his fantasy, Super Pumped kind of abandons humanizing Kalanick and just makes him seem like every other douchey tech bro while simultaneously numbing me to any other key players in the company’s story, because they pale in comparison. The constant fourth-wall breaking was also a little too much for my taste, so I’m gonna designate this a skip.
With all of those blurbs considered, I’m intrigued by this new niche. Or at least, I was enough to watch all of that. My main concern is that the homogenous flops that bleed together with their peers (cough cough Super Pumped) are just so many in number. There’s enough scandal and allure in a grift — or better yet a delusional rich person — so if they must, I want those stories to be told with little apology, adequate pacing and magnetic casting.
We love to watch the mighty fall, and even more so we love to watch them flop. That’s why we watch Succession. Grandeur and overconfidence make great TV when portrayed with earnestness and a good bit of research. The fascination with disasters diverges from exploitative true crime by pursuing more “victimless crimes” that don’t claim their victims with immediacy, but many months down a supply chain and investor feeding tube production line. Combine that with intense speculation about why someone did it, how they did it, and what made them like that: you have a miniseries.
My verdict is, proceed carefully. Discern when first-hand involvement of the figures being portrayed is meaningful and helpful, or if a good amount of distance is required. What is being brought attention in this spectacle, and how does it weigh in the consequences of the crime? If all in this world was just and right, I’d have my dir. Sofia Coppola Caroline Calloway biopic by now. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week!