The Good Grift

The big lie of Theranos, rendered on a human scale.

- By Kathryn Vanarendonk

What do we want in a show about a scam? Most of the series out this year—Inventing Anna, Super Pumped, Joe vs. Carole, and, starting March 18, WeCrashed—leave the question unanswered, or answered in the negative (“Not this”). Scam shows’ appeal is achingly obvious. Most are about recent high-profile news stories, about money and power and at least one idiot. There’s the corporate-America aspect and the Robin Hood–esque, rob-from-the-rich potential. All seem like such clear targets. The trouble is it’s easy to be sloppy. Too often, it feels as though we’re being insufficiently scammed.

It turns out that what I want in a scam show is The Dropout, Hulu’s new series about Elizabeth Holmes, creator of the blood-testing company Theranos. None of it would work without the lead performance by Amanda Seyfried, who conveys all of Holmes’s eccentricities and tics without begging for laughs or denying their absurdity. Her Holmes has elements of impersonation, but it’s much more an interpretation— of a person who desperately wants success and can’t interrogate that desire, who imagines sweeping social improvement but lacks empathy, and who feels she can be comfortable in the world only if she remakes it to fit herself.