Elizabeth has hired Edmond and Rakesh, along with acclaimed chemist Ian Gibbons, to work on developing a machine for her idea, the RDX Metabolic Profiler.

After working for an indeterminate amount of time, the company unveils their first prototype. Elizabeth gives an inspirational speech to her employees before testing it.

The students are taking the first step to making health care accessible to everyone by proposing a change to the healthcare system. They believe that by doing so, they can change the world. ..

The first test of the prototype fails to give a reading, raising suspicion among the onlookers.

Elizabeth assures them that it’s okay before the power cuts out–a result of not paying their electric bill on time. ..

Elizabeth raised $6 million, but they are already almost out of money. The next step in their plan is to bring in pharmaceuticals, but companies will need a working prototype, and they can’t get an operational prototype without more money for research. ..

Elizabeth had been trying to get investors to back her startup for two years, but most of them were uninterested because she never graduated from college. However, Don Lucas rescheduled her appointment and gave her a chance. ..

One night, she and Ian experimented in the lab. She admitted she didn’t know what she was doing; she wasn’t a chemist. But Ian said she had the vision. She has a rare gift. ..

He tells her he joined Theranos because he was poked with needles all the time when he had cancer. Theranos is trying to revolutionize treatment for people in similar situations.

The next day, Don Lucas, an investor interested in the RDX Metabolic Profiler, arrives at Theranos unexpectedly. He is unimpressed by their lack of an operational machine and leaves. ..

Elizabeth’s speech is a rallying cry for the American people to stand up to the two companies that run the healthcare industry. She tells Lucas that if he is on their side, they can give Americans more freedom and control over their healthcare.

She tells him that she’s been in touch with Ellison and that he would be a great investor for her company. He agrees to meet with Ellison, and she gets him to invest in her company.

Elizabeth meets with Larry on his boat to discuss a possible meeting with a pharmaceutical company. If she can get a demo ready, he agrees to help her out. ..

He tells her that she needs to be more aggressive and take no nonsense if she wants to be a CEO. ..

While on the boat, she gets a call from her dad who has collapsed. She leaves to go see him and finds that Sunny met him and took care of the entire situation. ..

Her dad asks her why she left the boat. He tells her that he invested all of her tuition money into this endeavour, and she needs to make use of every minute.

Elizabeth returns to Theranos to find the employees celebrating Edmond’s birthday. Remembering Larry’s advice, she reprimands them for taking a break from work. She’ll be cracking down on them from now on, requiring them to work nearly 24/7 until they achieve a working prototype. ..

After many hours of hard work, they finally get a reading from a drop of Rakesh’s blood. They all celebrate–now they have a demo to show Novartis in Switzerland.

The machine keeps getting error messages while the two friends video chat with one another. ..

“Yes,” Rakesh responds. “We still have the saved reading from the time the machine worked.”

Elizabeth presents the demo to the company heads with a drop of her own blood. A successful reading comes through, but only Elizabeth and Rakesh know that they substituted the only successful saved reading to fool Novartis.

Elizabeth returns to Silicon Valley, having closed a deal with Novartis at $165 million. Theranos employees celebrate, and Elizabeth gets messily drunk in front of everyone.

Edmond is suspicious of Rakesh’s assurances that their experiment will remain secret, so he experiments with the prototype himself. When he realizes it doesn’t work, he confronts Rakesh about it. Rakesh assures him that no one will find out what they did. ..

Elizabeth’s secretary, Sunny, is called by her boss, thinking she would need a ride home. But the CEO gets angry and fires her on the spot.

She admits to Sunny that they faked the demo. He says she must tell no one else. She tells him that she “doesn’t feel things the way other people feel things,” but that she loves him.

The episode ends with a drunk Elizabeth screaming from Sunny’s car that she is going to change the world. Elizabeth has been trying to change the world for years, but has never been successful. She is now drunk and frustrated, and she knows that she can’t do it on her own. She needs help.

The Episode Review

Theranos’s unethical practices make it difficult for Elizabeth to secure investment for her product in its final stages. The raw desperation in her fraudulent act is both horrifying and understandable. ..

Elizabeth is an ambitious thinker who processes things in a straightforward manner, trying to follow tried-and-true steps to success. ..

Elizabeth is a woman in a man’s world, and this creates many obstacles for her in her quest for success. Interestingly, The Dropout shows the overt misogyny in the business world as one of the main reasons Elizabeth justifies her actions. This induces a mixture of sympathetic and judgmental responses. ..

The episode is more serious in tone than the premiere, but it’s ultimately just as fascinating to watch unfold. ..

I’m anxious to see how Elizabeth is going to handle future obstacles. What further risks do you think she’s willing to take to keep Theranos going?