The original post: /r/television by /u/visiny on 2025-01-05 18:45:00.
The story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, as told through this miniseries, is quite an interesting one. As someone who only vaguely heard of the story back in 2016, I wanted to see how the show would relay the story.
The first thing I noticed is that the show is literally by the woman who made the New Girl tv show, and she does not try to hide that at all, it’s hilarious how romcomy at times the show portrays the Elizabeth Holmes’ relationship with Sunny Balwani.
And after all was said and done, I was really annoyed by the ridiculous final scene where the lawyer who assisted in blackmailing and intimidating people, was reprimanding Elizabeth going “you hurt people!” like wtf was that scene, it felt entirely like a sappy scene for an audience and out of character. The ridiculously on the nose and terrible writing shone through here, with her saying “you were hurt once right, and that’s why you think it’s ok to hurt people” derp. I also didn’t like the implication that Elizabeth being potentially raped in college is what made her a bad person who stole millions from investors and gave false lab results to desperate poor people, that’s a terrible message in and of itself.
Basically, the show gives no catharsis to how they’re caught and what happens to them, to justify the 8 episodes we watched where they’re duping people. Heck since the show was in 2022, they didn’t even know how sunny and elizabeth would be sentenced, whose verdict was only recently announced in 2023 and 2024.
It’s a mostly wellmade show, but the high rating gave the impression of a much more nuanced, high caliber show rather than what we got.