Hulu Pick: The Dropout

The Elizabeth Holmes/Theronos scandal is fascinating to me. The idea that someone could take a simple idea and con millions of dollars in funding, start a company without perfecting technology and then wiggle into a reputable pharmacy like Walgreen's to set it up? That's friggin amazing!

I've watched several news pieces and docs about Elizabeth Holmes herself, but to see Amanda Seyfried tackle this multi-faceted persona is a whole other deal. Is she a psychopath or a sociopath? On the high end of The Spectrum? A pathological liar? It's hard to tell.

Holmes' idea was a fantastic one, had it worked. An invention that would only need to take one finger prick of blood to perform all kinds of lab tests for diagnosis was meant to be a medical savior for folks undergoing treatment that had received multiple blood draws for years. It would have been wonderful, had it worked.

The thing is, the invention didn't work. It never did. But it gained notoriety, famous backers and media clout regardless. Elizabeth Holmes became one of the best con artists of our current time and is serving prison time now because of it.

This limited series made me once again wonder how differently my life would have gone had I followed the path to investigative reporter like Uncle Kurt told me to. It makes me happy to know that whistleblowers can still reveal fraud and crime. And it even reassures me that even though this idea/invention failed, there's always room for innovation in the future.

Maybe next time, the inventor will truly have an invention.

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