Successful startups that then crashed, like Adam Neumann and his venture WeWork, whose fate is implied by the name of Apple TV’s new series plus “WeCrashed,” are the new enemies of television. In a short time two more series came up with billionaires being expelled from their companies or even sued for their actions in court.
Read more in Calcalist:
“The Dropout” focuses on Elizabeth Holmes and the company Tarnus, while “Super Pumped” is about Travis Klanick, the founder of Uber. The three series are structured quite similarly. They skip between the present and the past and back (in Neumann’s case, it opens with a board meeting that decides to oust him in 2019), with captions from “12 years ago” (when he was still trying to patent baby pants with shock-absorbing cushions in the knees), and sketch the rise and fall . They all have a kind of joy to Eid.
Since the present dictates the point of view, the peculiarities of these entrepreneurs, which if they had not crashed would surely have been described as unique features, indicative of thinking outside the box, are now presented with a mocking eye. Neumann walks around barefoot and his wife needs to remind him to wear a shirt before he leaves the house. Rebecca, the same woman, is an actress Vanby, whose main glory is that she is a cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow, a bloodthirsty Gwyneth is not so aware of. When she meets Adam, Rebecca is a yoga teacher, but thanks to him she returns to the world of acting, and embodies her body in a “law and order” style.
“WeCrashed” is particularly interesting because of the high profile of its stars: Jared Leto (“The Gucci House,” and “This Is My Life”) is Adam Neumann, and Van Hathaway (“The Devil Wears Prada”) is Rebecca. Their relationship is at the center of the series, because it seems to be, and the two’s pretensions to be a kind of guru for employees in the company’s cooperative offices – brought Neumann’s downfall (a fall with a golden parachute).
They both walk on the border between campaigns and realistic play, but stumble here and there, without committing to a particular style. For example, it is not clear where Neumann’s strangeness ends and Leto’s mannerism begins. The result, however, is that they are annoying, but not in the desired way – not a sweet exaggeration that makes viewers lick their fingers, just something a little itchy.
The series touches on the local audience especially because of the Israeli point, so we will probably be more critical of details that a foreign audience may not be aware of. The Israeli accent of Jared Leto, who plays Neumann, is almost accurate, somewhere between the Zohan from “Do not mess with the Zohan”, and Eran Mored by Sasha Baron Cohen. Adam’s sister, Adi Neumann, is played by an actress with curly black hair, although Neumann is in reality a devilishly straight-haired woman. This is probably an anomaly that the creators of the series Lee Eisenberg and Drew Carvalo were unable to reconcile: Israeli? Straight hair?
Adam Neumann is described as not understanding the rules of decorum at all, and has what is called “Israeli insolence.” Thus, for example, he invites a neighbor who he meets in an elevator to his home. “I’m from Israel, neighbors are best friends,” he explains, and actually just wants to go back on the takeaway the neighbor held in his hands. In general, Neumann is described as a serious exploiter, in the sequence of building the company, his partner the architect works – and he seems old and wasting time. On his first date with Rebecca he is both since he also arrives without a wallet.
The series of course has a good story, beautiful TV effects like the opening with the unicorn skipping it inside offices, and a description of building offices from nothing to a bustling and mesmerizing place, but its main problem, perhaps like WeWork itself, is that behind the conceptual skeleton there is really no innovative content.