An American Drama Mini Series that follows the rise and fall of the titular WeWork, a startup that leased and furbished offices to other companies, but crashed due to financial mishandling and failure to go public.
The show stars Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway as the company's co-founders, Adam and Rebekah Neumann, as well as Kelly AuCoin, Steven Boyer, Cricket Brown, Andrew Burnap, Anthony Edwards, O-T Fagbenle, and America Ferrera.
It aired on Apple TV+ in 2022.
Tropes for the series:
- 20 Minutes into the Past: The series was released three years after the financial scandal and the start of the fall of WeWork began.
- Alliterative Name:
- Miguel McKelvey.
- Alliterative Title:
- Masha Masha Masha.
- Hustle Harder.
- Gilligan Cut: Quite often, the top one being Cameron telling the workers "our best days are ahead" and then cut to him declaring "we're fucked" as he realizes how bad the company really is.
- I Reject Your Reality: A key part of the show is how Adam is in denial on how bad things are for the company. It's established in the pilot when he talks to a board on how he knows it looks bad because of an article but he will fight to get the IPO going. The board literally laughs "you think you came here to fight for an IPO?" and spells it out he's being fired.
- Incompetence, Inc.: Adam's entire management style is this. He wants to make this company something that can "change the world," ignoring it's just meant to help offices find space. He spends insanely for huge buildings, throws parties literally every night and ignores people telling him how bad he's putting them in debt. It's summed up by Cameron noting the company is so deep in debt, they can't even afford to fire people because they'd have to pay severance they don't have.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Adam and Rebekah firmly believe their own hype and are convinced that their way of doing things will lead to unmitigated success, reality falls far short of this expectation and, despite initial success, the company fails dramatically over the course of the series.
- One-Word Title: Fortitude.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After failing to stop a very damaging article about Adam going to press, PR manager Damien bails on them before they find out, intending to go "back to the style section".
- Small Name, Big Ego: Their initial success leads Adam and Rebekah to drastically overestimate their own abilities as entrepreneurs.
- Technician/Performer Team-Up: Of the WeWork founders, Miguel is the technician, being an awkward architect who put in most of the original seed money and designed the initial workspaces, but is hopelessly lost actually having to promote or lead the company. Adam is the performer, capable of charming nearly anyone ranging from potential investors, to employees, to the media, but his lack of business sense overextends the company and ultimately leads to its dramatic downfall.
