The Circle of Life: episode five

The Theranos scandal has become a running joke- while there’s a general consensus that it was a serious series of crimes, the absurdity of it all sometimes overshadows the genuine harm done by Elizabeth Holmes’ continuous lying. This week’s episode of The Dropout (titled, The Circle of Life) was haunting and very well done, all of the storylines working in conjunction with each other to start to show the more egregious wrongs that took place within the Theranos headquarters. 

Real people-workers and then later patients- were exploited and treated like collateral damage, all in the name of facilitating this mirage of success that Holmes was peddling to investors. Throughout the fifth episode the main character is neither Sunny Balwani or Holmes- rather former Theranos chemist Ian Gibbons. 

I couldn’t stop thinking about Ian Gibbons’ story for weeks after I first heard about it in the eponymous podcast the show is based off of. All he had ever wanted to do was to help people, and yet here was, mistreated by a company who he himself had believed in. Stephen Fry (Gibbons) and Kate Burton (Rochelle Gibbons) did an excellent job of portraying this devastating story on the television screen, adding emotional nuance to an already complex portrayal.

While this episode was a little more all over the place than the last few episodes (which were more focused on specific chunks of time) the handling of Gibbons’ story and the incredible monologues delivered by Amanda Seyfriend (Holmes) and William H. Macy (Richard Fuisz) makes up for any shortcomings. 

A particular scene that stood out to me was the final deposition of Fuisz towards the end of the episode, where Macy delivers an angry rant about the investors who are encouraging Theranos’s crimes. It offered an interesting perspective in the episode, especially as it just followed the scene where news of Gibbon’s death broke.  

The show is ramping up now- we are about halfway through the nine episodes that will be released. This week we ended with a familiar face from the pilot, one promising that action is coming soon. So far the show has been a really fun watch and I’m curious to see Dylan Minnette’s performance as Tyler Shultz in the upcoming episodes, as well as the direction Seyfried is going to take her portrayal of Holmes.