House of Maxwell · Lab Gossip · Invisible Pilot
Are you on the Tokyo Vice train?
the true crime that's worth your time
A Best Evidence reader directed me to this delicious dish on Monday. Thanks to Margaret for the tip, a comment on that day’s recap of the Sunny Balwani trial. This decade-old Reddit thread noted in this tweet doesn’t specifically say it’s about Theranos, but it’s hard to think of where else it might be.
It’s also hard to imagine that the folks who pulled together Hulu’s The Dropout adaptation didn’t send a link to cast members from the lab scenes, it feels so similar in vibe to how it was played. A snip:
We all lie to each others' faces about the "science" so that we look better in the short term (it's not science if you're ignoring the data you don't want to see), when in reality we're building a non-functional product. The CEOs reward those who tell them exactly what they want to hear, and punish (fire) those who bring them problems and suggestions for improvement. Even supervisors who try to repair the system by holding their employees accountable for their data and give honest information to the CEOs - they do not last long here. Everything is image-driven because we're all aware we could be fired for not being optimistic enough. I can think of two people in this entire company who care about the truth behind their work.
I firmly believe this system is going to drive the company into the ground, because the CEOs are training everyone to lie to them. When they try to implement this product, it's going to fall apart because there's just no accountability. I can't stand it. I've stayed in this job about 6 months now because it pays very well, but I'm running out of steam. I hate chemistry (my degree is in bioengineering), and I hate this company. I left at noon today because I couldn't keep myself from crying. Seriously. I hate lying to people and I hate discrediting myself by pretending I'm okay with it. I'm afraid of speaking out. This entire organization is hollow and fear-based.
The full post is similar, and the responses are pretty solid, for Reddit, at least. The threat made me wonder how Theranos fared on Glassdoor, so I took a peek. Here’s my favorite review:
So, where are we on Balwani’s trial, as the first week winds down? The first thing to note is that there’s much less attention being given to this trial — less media at the courthouse, and way less coverage. Most pubs are basically reblogging NBC Bay Area’s coverage from the scene, where prosecutors presented text massages suggesting that Balwani knew everything that was going on at Theranos, including the fraudulent tests.
According to NBC, though, a day later, Balwani’s defense team got witness for the prosecution Constance Cullen (the former Schering-Plough scientist who called Elizabeth Holmes “cagey” during the earlier trial) to admit that she’d never met Balwani during her dealings with Theranos. “That's not great, that's really not great” for prosecutors, legal analyst Aron Solomon said. Unbowed, the prosecution will continue to call witnesses next week. — EB
If you were steering clear of Tokyo Vice because of Ansel Elgort, you might not have to deal with him as much as the trailer suggests. On this week’s Extra Hot Great podcast, guest and Vulture TV critic Roxana Hadadi briefly discusses the HBO adaptation of Jake Adelstein’s true crime tome.
Head to the 25:05 mark for her thoughts if you haven’t already listened; that’s where Sarah and she chew the show over for a bit. tl;dl: Elgort, who faces credible allegations of sexual assault,“is only one of four leads,” which you would never guess from how the network presents the show.
Hadadi also reviewed the series, which dropped three episodes last night, for her day job:
The series starts to hum at the end of the second episode, when Jake and Katagiri meet. That team-up brings together these individuals, their ambitions, and their fears and evokes a series like The Wire or Gangs of London, which make clear that a city is a living, breathing ecosystem with its own lines of power and its own kinds of currency. Any imbalance or disruption ripples outward, perhaps endlessly, and Tokyo Vice effectively maneuvers these characters to demonstrate the self-imposed and societally dictated cages in which they operate.
Elsewhere, The Hollywood Reporter’s Daniel Fienberg has a tepid take:
J.T. Rogers’ (Oslo) somewhat loose adaptation of Jake Adelstein’s memoir at least has a serious-minded approach to its outsider narrative and enough texture and specificity to mostly keep the narrative from going to the places you expect and maybe fear that it will go. Still, Tokyo Vice has a bland, mushy center, a product of performance and presentation more than writing, and a pervasive and unavoidable sense that at no point is the camera following the storylines that deserve the most attention.
At the NYT, Mike Hale calls it a “reasonably tasty hand roll of yakuza drama,” which is a bit brow-cocking.
It also indulges in a full measure of Western fetishizing of Japanese cool and the notion of Tokyo as the world’s most stylish den of sin, in a way that occasionally recalls the movie “Lost in Translation,” which came out around the time the series is set. Hostess and host clubs, love hotels, picturesque alleys around the corner from shimmering seas of neon — you know the drill.
And like “Lost in Translation,” with its voluptuous, melancholy romanticism, “Tokyo Vice” finesses its exoticism by asserting a distinctive style — in this case the moody, atmospheric naturalism of Michael Mann, who directed the pilot (one of three episodes premiering on Thursday) and helped set the look and rhythms of the series.
As Sarah notes on EHG, we’re not reviewing it here, though we might turn it on here or there to see how things are going. What about you? Did you/are you watching Tokyo Vice? — EB
Speaking of the Extra Hot Great extended universe…As a writer for the since-retired television website Previously.TV, I’ll still mentally pitch pieces (Severance faces Moon Night in the Battle of “WTF! How did I get Here?” Guys) or headlines that will never be written. Maybe that’s for the best, because the hed “Is House of Maxwell Good to the Last Drop?” is bad, even for me.
The three-part documentary on publishing magnate Robert Maxwell (the allegedly paranoid fraudster whose daughter, Ghislaine, was just denied a new trial) just dropped on BBC’s iPlayer for folks who live in the region. (The rest of us will have to catch a flight, for now.) The Guardian calls it “like HBO drama Succession at times – but far, far grislier,” and The Independent says the series “a fine portrait of a dysfunctional family and business empire – both too difficult even for the admittedly crafty Maxwell to make a success of.” If you’re looking for something to watch this weekend and Tokyo Vice isn’t your cup of coffee, Maxwell House, I mean, House of Maxwell might be worth consideration. — EB
One last option for your weekend: The Invisible Pilot, which dropped on HBO on Monday. This is a doc from Phil Lott and Ari Mark about a shocking 1977 suicide, so, if that subject is uncomfortable for you, this is the last item in today’s BE, so please delete the issue and see you Monday!
Per HBO, the three-parter is
a tale of a charismatic, daredevil husband and father who unexpectedly jumped off a bridge in 1977, despite a seemingly happy home life and a lucrative career as a pilot. His small-town Arkansas community searches for his body in vain while family and friends seek answers. Years later, a mysterious story emerges involving hypnosis, secret identities and a double life of dangerous missions and law-breaking. And that’s just the beginning.
Lott and Mark have done a couple interviews about the show, here’s MovieWeb’s and here’s Screen Rant’s. That might be enough to let you know if the payoff of the backstory makes up for its tragic underpinnings — I don’t feel up for self-harm content this week, but I’d love to hear what you think, if you watch it. — EB
Next week on Best Evidence: Berlinger and Gacy, oh boy.
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