The Dropout Review: I’m in a Hurry / Satori / Green Juice (Season 1 Episodes 1-3)

Even if you don’t know anything about Elizabeth Holmes and the real-life story of Theranos, The Dropout lets you know right from the start that this is not a story with a happy ending.

On The Dropout Season 1 Episode 1, “I’m in a Hurry,” we meet Elizabeth. She’s a senior in high school and newly-accepted to Stanford University. With emotionally-distant parents struggling financially, Elizabeth vows that she will one day invent something that will make her a billionaire. 

Episode 1 quickly gets on in rapid-fire fashion to establish some truths about Elizabeth. Ten minutes in, we already know she doesn’t have a lot of friends, she’s not especially close to her parents, and she really wants to lose her virginity on a school trip to Beijing.

Sometimes Elizabeth seems almost sympathetic. She dances in her bedroom while gazing longingly at a poster of Steve Jobs, or she tries in vain to offer her father comfort after he loses his job. It’s easy to feel bad and even identify with Elizabeth.

But just as soon as we start to think she was just a kid caught up in a mess, she does things that lean more obnoxious. Like telling her roommates on her trip to Beijing that they should only speak Mandarin or isolating herself to her bunk instead of trying to immerse herself in the culture. 

And then we meet Sunny Balwani. He says he’s in Beijing to learn Mandarin, but it’s not clear why he has to travel with a bunch of teenagers in order to do that. He immediately befriends Elizabeth, and despite their 18-year age gap, she’s only too happy to let him take her out. I guess no one taught this girl about red flags.

If being a 40-something-year-old man on a school trip isn’t creepy enough, Sunny also starts grooming Elizabeth. He takes her out, he tells her how rich he is, he helps her through food poisoning. If we’re meant to see him as a caretaker figure, that’s not the message we get.  

And then Beijing is over, and Elizabeth is at Stanford. The first scene of her at the university is both comical and extremely telling of who she is as a person. Her boyfriend is singing while they have sex, and it’s just as ridiculous as a scenario like that can ever be. Instead of saying anything, though, Elizabeth just stares at him in a way that says more than any words could. 

And this is when I knew we’d all be blown away by Amanda Seyfried’s performance. 

Between working her way into a post-grad tech program, inventing (in her mind only) a new, miraculous medical device, and breaking up with her boyfriend, Elizabeth’s ambition begins to turn into obsession. She’s impatient to get rich, but she’s unwilling to accept the truth about… well, most things.

Personally, my favorite moment from Episode 1 is Laurie Metcalf as Dr. Phyllis Gardner. Though she only has about 5 minutes of screen time, she becomes the side character that really leaves the most lasting impression. And not just because she tells Elizabeth not to quote Yoda ever again. But also not not because of that.

No mess or hurdle or tragedy is going to keep Elizabeth from what she wants, that much we know. 

Elizabeth is a genius. She’s a liar. She’s a survivor. She’s a bully. I must have had at least fifteen different opinions on her by the time I got to the end of the first episode. And if that’s not a reflection on good writing, I don’t know what is.

Then we move on to The Dropout Season 1 Episode 2, “Satori.” Now, with Elizabeth’s new lab underway, she recruits the help of engineers like Edmond and Rakesh (among others) to develop a prototype that she can show to would-be investors. This is when Elizabeth shifts strictly to bringing in the money.

Almost immediately, their first prototype is a complete failure. Money quickly runs out, her employees are getting tired, and they’re just about out of ideas. Things are looking pretty grim, and this kind of failure and hopelessness is something we’re going to be seeing a lot.

But again, Elizabeth won’t give up. She meets with Larry Ellison, who assures her that as long as she can secure the money, she can keep trying to work on the prototype. In a theme that will become repetitive in the series, she is told that appearances are all that really matter.

The scenes in which the team develops and tests the prototypes are efficiently emotional. I was actually laughing when they all jumped around her office shouting “We’ve got Sepsis!” And then, just minutes later, I was leaning forward in my seat while they all huddled together in the hotel room trying to get the device to work again. 

Which also shows just how important the score and soundtrack of this series is. You might not think a scene in which a group of entrepreneurs bleeds all over a hotel room before lying to a room full of billionaires would require music, but the added effect results in nail-biting intensity. 

Seriously, the soundtrack is one of the most important characters on the show. 

Finally, we get to start seeing a truly dark side of Elizabeth. She fakes the demonstration for the investors (with Rakesh’s reluctant help), secures millions of dollars in funding, and never once shows even a hint of guilt about it. By the end of this episode, we no longer see Elizabeth as ambitious. Now, she’s just bloodthirsty. 

On The Dropout Season 1 Episode 3, “Green Juice,” the focus shifts more toward the relationship between Sunny and Elizabeth. 

Even Sunny can be seen as sympathetic sometimes. He’s racially profiled at an airport, he’s restricted from seeing any of Elizabeth’s work, and he’s got this tragic backstory that he tells Elizabeth all about the first time he meets her. 

But let’s not forget that this is the same guy who lured Elizabeth away from her peers in a country with which she was not familiar. He is, and I cannot stress this enough, a creep. Even when Elizabeth becomes an adult, Sunny keeps her close and dependent on him, and he actually grows visibly upset as soon as she becomes successful enough to take care of herself.

To me, the relationship between the two of them is one of the most compelling aspects of this series. Both of these people are complicated and kind of awful, but at the same time, it’s hard not to see why Elizabeth keeps coming back to him. And even though Sunny throws things and punches walls when they fight, he also brings her healthy drinks and encourages her to take care of herself.

Yes, it’s all part of the grooming process. But it’s not hard to see why she gives in. 

Again, we see more of Elizabeth’s dark side. When Theranos is thriving, she’s independent and confident and doesn’t need anyone but herself.

She fires Edmond, even though he’s the one who worked hardest on all the tech. She lies to cancer patients as they’re dying in order to get them to agree to highly unethical human testing for her device that, let’s remember, isn’t even real and does not work. She sees everyone around her as either a paycheck or a boundary. 

So why don’t we hate her yet?

It can’t be stressed enough that this is a huge credit to Amanda Seyfried’s acting. Though Elizabeth isn’t what I’d call lovable, I still, even as she blatantly hurt people around her, kind of hated to see when everything startled to crumble in her kingdom. 

While the board starts losing confidence in Elizabeth and it seems they’re going to fire her, she goes to the Genius Bar to get her phone replaced. By far, this is my favorite scene in the episode.

Not only do I love it because of the way Elizabeth studies the employee’s breakdown (and later uses it as a template for her own fake breakdown in front of the board), but because of the moment where she asks the employee what she dreamed of doing as a child. 

When the employee responds that she didn’t have dreams as a child, Elizabeth tells her that it must be nice not knowing what you want to do with your life. And in this simple exchange, you sort of figure out all you need to know about why Elizabeth is the way that she is.

Episode 3 is full of important scenes and moments between the characters. The Elizabeth-Sunny dynamic is laid bare, his controlling behavior finally exposed for exactly what it is. Elizabeth stands in front of a mirror and practices lowering the tone of her voice to sound more authoritative, so now everything about her is a lie. And Rakesh, the employee who knows the most secrets about all the Theranos lies, finally has enough of it all and quits. 

And Speaking of Elizabeth’s voice, can we talk about that for a moment? I didn’t believe that Elizabeth Holmes really sounded that way, so I looked it up. Sure enough, she was just going around talking in this almost comically fake voice for years.

This is another moment in the show where, with the wrong casting choice, this could have been a cringe-fest. After all, she’s standing there contorting her face and repeating phrases in a voice that she’s made up. For several seconds. But with Seyfried, the scene is executed brilliantly. In fact, it’s downright chilling.

In keeping with this series’ drastic highs and lows, Elizabeth’s newest technician develops a new prototype, which gives her hope. But the board still wants her gone. She searches desperately for options to keep herself in a controlling role, but people are abandoning her left and right. 

When she’s finally confronted with the board’s decision at a meeting, she pulls out her new trick, courtesy of the Genius Bar employee. She cries, admits her failures, then informs them that she’s secured an investor who can save them. Her investor, she says, will only give the money if she stays on as CEO and he can come on as COO. Because they’re desperate for money, the board agrees. 

The new investor and COO? Sunny Balwani, of course.

In the final few minutes of Episode 3, Elizabeth and Sunny reconcile, Elizabeth rebrands her mission from medical to retail-based, and Elizabeth changes up her entire look. That last moment of her in her black power suit and turtleneck, her hair pulled back, and her bright red lipstick tells us that the next phase in this series is going to deliver yet another version of Elizabeth Holmes to us.

There’s not much to dislike about these first three episodes. Each one individually is important and interesting and a revolving door of opinions and emotions. However, it isn’t the easiest binge-watch. With so many details and twists, if you look away for a minute, you could easily miss a vital plot point.

Though the content isn’t exactly heavy just yet, it’s also not a breeze. And it’s not a boring series by any means, but watching several hours of it in a row could get pretty mundane.

It’s also going to be interesting to see how much further they push the whole “oppressed women in tech” narrative throughout the remainder of the series. Though this is a topic that should be addressed and is very real, sometimes it feels more like a crutch on which the writers let Elizabeth’s behavior lean in order to excuse her actions.

Perhaps this is a purposeful narrative that will pay off in the end, but let’s hope this series doesn’t let actual crimes fly free on the wings of white feminism. 

While we wait to see how that overall tone is handled, we can enjoy the better moments we’ve had thus far. In addition to Amanda Seyfried, other minor cast members like Laurie Metcalf and William H. Macy deliver subtle, important performances that break up the monotony of the story with glimpses of humor and, sometimes, the overwhelming desire to punch a character in the face.

My main takeaway from this is that the show is off to a solid start. Elizabeth is a complicated, baffling character who is likely going to transform more and more as the series moves forward.

Essentially, she’s about to get worse. And it’s going to be so fun to watch.

What did you think of these episodes of The Dropout? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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The Dropout airs Thursdays in three-episode increments on Hulu.

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