Elizabeth and Theranos become one in a messy episode of The Dropout

More impactful is her reaction to the death of Ian Gibbons (Stephen Fry), who spends the hour spiraling into an booze-drenched despair after being wrapped up in Elizabeth and Fuisz’s lawsuit. As we learned in a toss-off line a while back, Elizabeth put her name on Theranos patents despite contributing nothing scientifically to the technology. If Ian were to testify as such, all of Theranos’ patents would be voided out. But Ian, who’s been blackballed from the lab he used to run, knows he’ll be punished even more should be violate the NDA he signed. (He needs the job, we learn in a lighting-quick ADR’d-in line, for the health insurance.) The stress drives him to swallow a bottle of Tylenol with a gulp of the hard stuff.

Fry, who’s been nothing if not chatty as the amiable Ian, finds some power in the searching, despondent silence he embodies in his final scenes. Elizabeth’s reaction, too, carries weight, because we watch her make a choice. She could mourn Ian, one of her first hires, or she could allow herself to feel the relief of what his death means for Fuisz’s lawsuit. She chooses the latter. Business over personal. It’s effective because Seyfried spends a few moments in that liminal space between the two. “Did you know Ian survived cancer?” she asks Sunny. Then, looking at the dragon finger puppet she wears, she mutters, “He has no wings so he has to walk.” The cryptic nature of the latter utterance is lovely because, unlike nearly everything else in this episode, it exudes a mystery and unknowability. It means something only to her. I wish we got more of that.

I also wish we got to see more of Ian’s struggles with Theranos’ evolution from startup to corporate juggernaut. His few scenes with legal crony Linda Tanner (Michaela Watkins) are effective because his heart-on-sleeve frustration clashes so clinical lawyer-speak. “I don’t know who you are!” he yells as she advises him not to testify. That sense of disorientation, of being completely unmoored from what he helped build, is heartbreaking.

But what really keeps The Dropout interesting are the performances. I’ve spent so much time complaining about the show’s portrayal of Elizabeth that I haven’t spent much time saying how much fun it is to see Seyfried manifest Elizabeth’s alien quirk. She embodies a very specific kind of not-cute weird that we don’t see onscreen too often. Shout out, too, to Macy, who’s somehow finding strains of pathos in an oily, rich patent parasite who hates everyone richer than him. The real revelation of this episode, though, is Kurtwood Smith’s turn as celeb lawyer David Boies. Here, the hard-edged Smith goes delicate, capturing the soft, condescending smiles and gentle nods of the hyper-confident Boies. Next episode, perhaps, we’ll get to see the bulldog bear his teeth.

Next week? Theranos’ Walgreens experiment begins. Since the Edisons still don’t work, they’ll use their competitor’s machines until they do. Surely this will end well.

Stray Observations

• This episode also introduces us to Tyler Schultz, a key figure in the Theranos saga. He’s played by Dylan Minnette, who I’ll always remember as Jack’s son on Lost.
• Smith and Macy’s scenes together were absolute fire. It’s also interesting how Boies’ own finances are tied up with those of his clients. He takes Theranos shares in lieu of payment from Elizabeth, and Fuisz brings up how Boies’ autobiography was published by Miramax Books, owned by his client Harvey Weinstein. “That’s a little messy,” says Fuisz. There’s a whole series in that, too, I bet.
• The quickest way to get people to respect you, Christian, is to tell them you graduated from Duke.
• Not many laughs in this episode—come back, Michael Showalter!—but the awkward laughter after Sunny tells people to “get the fuck out” if they don’t agree with Elizabeth’s vision was very funny.
• Sunny is Dracula at the Halloween party. Very subtle. Pfffft.