Another review "dump”...
From Executive Suite, to Margin Call and the Big Short, I’ve always enjoyed boardroom and financial dramas and shenanigans, both fictional and real. There has been an abundance of such shows and series recently, some of which I review below…
First up is the Dropout, which follows the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced former CEO of Theranos, who earlier this year was convicted of fraud.
While Holmes, of course, did not initially set out to deceive, her fatal flaw was placing her ambition to be a billionaire and disruptor—like her idols Steve Jobs and Bill Gates—above her ability to deliver an actual working product, which she claimed would be a game-changing medical screening device based on a single drop of blood that she had been advised early on could never work. Instead, enabled by the belief in her own press and an inner circle and board of directors and venture capitalists who were charmed by this (apparently) charismatic telegenic blond, her priority to maintain her superstar aura and keep the company solvent took precedence over the technology.
Over the course of the series, the audience receives a fascinating peek into the world of Silicon Valley startups as we watch her continue to dig herself deeper in a hole as she moves forward prematurely without a functional product, forcing her to engage in a deception regarding the claims of her product, turning the work environment at Theranos paranoid and toxic.
Though it’s likely she would eventually have been found out, her downfall is accelerated by low level young staff who become whistleblowers when they not only realize that the touted technology is not working but that standard rival medical equipment is being used to actually do the work. Complicating matters is that one of the whistle blowers was Tyler Schultz, the grandson of a member of Holmes’ board, former secretary of state George Schultz. Tyler’s claims caused a rift between family members and, if not for the tenaciousness of the whistle blowers and the financial ability of Tyler’s family to fend off the aggressive tactics of Holmes’ lawyers, none of this might have come to light until much later.
Holmes’ awkwardness and psychopathy are well portrayed by Amanda Seyfried, who leads a talented supporting cast including Naveen Andrews as her much older svengali and COO, with whom she secretly had an intimate relationship, as well as Alan Ruck (as the Walgreens executive who championed the company’s partnership with Theranos), Sam Waterston as George Schultz, Stephen Fry, Anne Archer, Laura Metcalf, William H. Macy, Bill Irwin, and others.
This series covers the rise and fall of Adam and Rebekah Neumann and their WeWork startup that at one point was inexplicably valued at $47 billion. This is another story that I was familiar with through articles and documentaries. Starring Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway, it says a lot about the Neumanns that I found Leto way less annoying than the real-life Neumann.
Neumann is a driven entrepreneur in search of money and an idea. While his brainchild, WeWork, is essentially a communal co-work space rental company, Neumann, a showman with the ability to dazzle and create a cult of personality through new agey double-talk, he somehow convinced investors who should have known better that his rental company was actually a tech company with potential for unlimited growth. Before reality (and long-term leases) sets in—along with a crash in the commercial rental market—Neumann and Rebekah burn through money like crazy to support their lifestyle (private jet and homes) as well as fulfill their goal to “elevate the world’s consciousness” and keep the company growing to unrealistic heights and proportions.
While everything ultimately crashed around them—and we see the devastating impact of the young employees at the company who not only lost their jobs but a lot of money that they leveraged believing that the were going to become millionaires (or billionaires) when the company went public—the Neumann’s themselves of course frustratingly seem to still come out ahead financially with golden parachutes.
Set in the early 1970s with the women’s lib movement and sexual revolution underway, Minx is an HBO dramedy series that follows the start up of a Playgirl-like magazine by a shrewd porn magazine publisher named Doug Renetti (Jake Johnson) and a serious-minded and an earnest but uptight feminist and aspiring magazine writer named Joyce Prigger (Ophelia Lovibond). The series is the flip side of Boogie Nights: whereas the movie followed a cast of misfits who find some semblance of family in the adult industry but ultimately find themselves (mostly) trapped in the lives they’ve made for themselves, in Minx the characters find the magazine and Joyce’s arrival an opportunity for self-discovery and empowerment. (The show is similarly set in the San Fernando Valley during the same era).
Like Boogie Nights, the series and its production design perfectly capture the era of the 1970s and the San Fernando Valley setting. It’s got a great ensemble cast, which includes the diverse quirky staff at the magazine operation and the canny addition of Joyce’s sister Shelly, who is a married suburban mom but way more grounded, open-minded and easy-going to the more open sexuality of the era than her over-achieving sister Joyce.
I also give credit to the show for putting its money where its mouth is by being an equal-opportunity exploiter lol. There has been way more male full-frontal penises on display on this show than female nudity. Like all good series, the show gets better, richer and broadens its scope each episode. As someone with some experience in publishing, I found the portrayal of the realities of big magazine publishing from the perspective of business, distribution and censorship (as well as the Mob connections to magazine distribution) fascinating.
Just don’t watch it with the kids around!
Yes, I’m a late comer to this series, now in its third season. I tried it once a few years back and couldn’t quite get into it. But this time around I got more caught up in this Shakespearean-level family drama surrounding media giant Logan Roy (the bigger than life Brian Cox) and his children and senior level employees, who all try to position themselves and ingratiate themselves to the senior Roy as the successor to his company. Indeed, the black comedy is a very conscious riff on “King Lear” (as well as partly inspired by Rupert Murdock). I have to admit, however, that I can take the show only in small doses since the characters are pretty horrible people lol.
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