Near the start of The Dropout, Hulu’s latest drama, inspired by a real-life scandal, young Elizabeth Holmes ran on the track as a teenager. The moment that happened in Holmes’ real life spoke with The Dropout creator Elizabeth Meriwether, who presented the anecdote as an early manifestation of the irresistible energy of the future Theranos cheater – even in the face of apparent defeat.
The sweaty scene is a compelling starting point for a story that will inevitably end in a cold disaster with a black turtleneck. This is not a story of origin or even one of those “aha!” Scenes that unlock the whole trajectory of the character. But as spectators watch young Elizabeth Holmes’ hopeless march around the track, her aspiration is palpable – a move forward that simply will not give up, even when desperately needed.
I found myself thinking a lot about this scene as I continued to rummage through Inventing Anna. On the surface, it seems that The Dropout should have a lot to do with Netflix and Shonda Rhymes regarding “Soho Cheater” Anna Delvi. Both focus on white women, whose confidence, energy and (most importantly) ability to lie have elevated them to the highest echelons of society – both allow viewers to enjoy when their respective card houses collapse. But a key difference distinguishes these deceptive shows: while The Dropout imagines the human story behind the viral news saga, Inventing Anna is lost in legend.
Beyond the obvious similarities between their respective bottle blondes, Inventing Anna and The Dropout touch on a shared themed landscape. For example: They are both dealing with some seriously rotten men.
Inventing Anna, Julia Garner’s Anna Delvi struggles to restrain her explosive temper in the face of an ongoing parade of venture capitalists and their brothers, who seem happier to compare her to their daughters than to their peers. Amanda Seyfried’s Elizabeth Holmes, meanwhile, spends much of “Dropping Out” in search of unsolicited advice from men (including her fat neighbor) on how a woman should talk, dress, and act to be taken seriously. The irony that both women were not qualified for the places they wanted to enter – Delvi wanted to build his own foundation with zero business experience, and Holmes saw no problem with starting his own company after leaving college also with zero business experience – only emphasizes the incompetence of the alleged goalkeepers themselves.
“The irony that both women were not qualified for the spaces they wanted to enter … only underscores the incompetence of the alleged goalkeepers themselves.
Another common riff: Both series claim that their extreme strangeness may have actually helped these women progress. Played with extreme wit by Garner, Delvi’s eccentricity – her untraceable accent, her terrifying living streak, her detached manner – sell her image as an heiress not only to mocked supporters but also to business contacts. Seyfried, meanwhile, cultivates a low voice and encourages awkward dance parties among her colleagues – a signal that she has also realized that in men’s spaces it is better to be perceived as a strange woman than an ordinary one.
Here, however, the two series diverge.
Anna’s fiction, as the title suggests, has to do with how Anna Delvi (born Sorokin) became Anna Delvi. Megan Thee Stallion plays on montages of social media posts, while various characters offer their views on Anna’s supreme legacy: a skinny genius or a heartless, stealing monster? The last half of the series pushed to the back of the scammer, but the effort felt more like a delay, a plot point at the end of the game, than a central thematic focus that helped shape what was before.
The Dropout is more interested in the inner life of Elizabeth Holmes. As Inventing Anna leaps in time as journalist Vivian Kent (Anna Chlumski) collects Anna’s story in retrospect, Meriwether’s view of Holmes keeps things simple, unfolding her story chronologically. Seyfried has been playing Holmes for decades, a slow build-up to the red-lipped anti-icon that we all eventually got to know. While Inventing Anna feels like a broader, ultimately shallow look at fraudsters and the voyeuristic materialist society that loves them, The Dropout feels like a more intimate exploration of character – an exploration of exactly how someone like Elizabeth Holmes ultimately ends like this.
Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout
Beth Dubber / Hulu
Maybe that’s why The Dropout seems less inclined to make fun of its central figure, often seen dancing like a maniac, or making fun of a quote from Yoda that doesn’t impress anyone but her. While Inventing Anna largely limits Garner’s performance to Delvi’s outward eccentricities and seems forced to redeem her, Seyfried has more room to dig into her character’s social discomfort and complexity – a performance that scratches something more human.
There is a part of Inventing Anna that, like Vivian Kent herself, is getting too close to Anna. The series treats her ambition as redemptive, and Vivian is almost as intrusive as her object – she walks around the halls to work until her water breaks and continues to call even after that. The Dropout, which portrays Elizabeth Holmes as a stupid but mostly close prodigy, gradually reveals her descent into narcissism. We are asked to see ourselves not in Holmes as she is now, and not in this little girl running on the track, but in the horrified eyes of those who have seen her turn from one to another.