WeCrashed. Photo / Supplied
Greg and Zanna watch a story starring a bad actor.
SCORES
Value of WeWork at its peak: $47 billion
Value of Jared Leto's accent at its peak: 0
SHE SAW
Halfway through episode three, in the middle of WeWork Summer Camp hysteria, Greg said, "I've had enough," and walked out. At times I questioned my decision to stick with it and now, five episodes deep, I'm still not entirely sure what I make of this series.
At the heart of Greg's disdain for WeCrashed is Jared Leto's performance as WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann, which he called bad. When I asked him to elaborate on that, he said, "Weeelll, he's not doing good acting."
"What makes you say that?" I asked.
"The badness of the acting … primarily," he replied.
That line of conversation was going nowhere but what it did bring to light is the very fine line between acting and overacting, disastrous caricatures and brilliant likenesses. Greg went on to say he thought Leto's performance was pure Oscar-bait. When I pointed out the Academy Awards are for films, he said, "Well, Oscars for TV bait." I've never had less respect for one of his opinions.
Whether Leto's performance is brilliant or disastrous isn't clear to me. I watched some videos of Neumann and he is certainly a larger-than-life character, basically a caricature of a corporate entrepreneur high on his own ideas. Interestingly, Greg thought that Anne Hathaway's performance as Rebekah Neumann was excellent, despite it being at least as hammy as Leto's. Having spent time in the New York City yoga world from which Neumann comes, I felt certain that she had been unfairly turned into a cliche until I watched a video of her describing, very earnestly, the mission statement of her WeWork off-shoot, an elementary school called WeGrow: "The mission of WeGrow … is to elevate the world's consciousness … specifically through unleashing every human's superpowers and expanding happiness."
The performances really are the most interesting thing about this series. If it weren't for Hathaway, I probably wouldn't have got past the first episode. The script suffers from the same overblown-ness that Leto's performance may or may not suffer from. I know what happens to Adam Neumann - that's revealed for those who don't already know, in the opening minutes of the series, and how and why it happened is evident by episode two. Most of it feels redundant from there on, except that there is something interesting happening with Rebekah Neumann, and Hathaway's portrayal of her, which I think is a refreshing focus shift from the more well-known story of the crazy CEO who got booted out of his own company. Despite the show's flaws, that alone might just keep me, but not Greg, hooked a little longer. Maybe.
HE SAW
Sometimes I think that if I was more willing to commit, I might get more pleasure from things, but I also feel like there are parts of life, such as marriage and fatherhood, where that seems worth the effort, and others — such as watching Jared Leto attempting accents — where it doesn't.
This is the hard thing with TVnowadays. Only a few years ago, there was only The Sopranos, then there was only The Wire, then Mad Men, then Game of Thrones. You knew what you had to watch and you knew that if you committed, you would be rewarded, so you did so willingly. Today, it's anyone's guess what you need to commit to. With the world of streaming splintering at an extreme pace, people are now coming at you from left and right, telling you that you must watch this amazing new show on some streaming service you've never heard of, so you do, and three episodes in, you find yourself reassessing your relationships with those people.
To be fair, I liked the first episode of WeCrashed. It was a nice setup and had big-name leads playing satisfyingly crazy real people and I even found the novelty of Leto's bad acting charming but, at some point in episode two, I got the sense the story was not interesting enough to sustain even one more episode, let alone the additional seven they'd made. I realised I was sinking into the same black hole of excessive exposition, overreach and general extraneousness that I also sink into every time I start a true crime podcast.
Some stories demand more space than others and every story has an ideal length, but it's never eight hours. The best filmed entertainment about real-life corporate megalomaniacs running amok was the hit 2010 movie The Social Network, which was about arguably the world's most important company. It featured all manner of great intrigue, malevolence and fascinating characters, told the story of a bunch of nerds made good, starred Justin Timberlake at his peak and was only two hours long. It's an act of great hubris to think a story about commercial office space is worth four times more of our lives than a story about Mark Zuckerberg and the Winklevoss twins.
I walked away from WeCrashed in episode three and felt good about that. Zanna made me come back and watch the next two episodes, and I did, and - because I'm committed to her - I felt good about that also, but neither of those things come even remotely close to how good I feel about the fact she's not making me come back for episode six.
WeCrashed is streaming now on Apple TV+
He was meant to say something completely different.