Warning: This contains spoilers for YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING. If you're ok with that, move on. If not, I highly recommend watching the movie first.

0. Context-Setting

It is Sunday, November 1 2026. I missed out on a nice afternoon with a caffeine headache. Fortunately I am feeling better as I submit this to publication. 

I am reading:

• The Mirror & The Light by Hilary Mantel (print) — finally getting to this after finishing Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies over the past couple of months. 
• When The Clock Broke by John Ganz (audio) — to prep myself for election season. 

I am listening to:

• Opeth's prog-rock masterpiece, Pale Communion. 

1. The Review

Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's You Can See Everything is many things, but it is mostly a close-up view of an unrepentant bullshitter. Two bullshitters, actually. 

The dynamic between the two bullshitters, Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans, allows doubt to creep into Fielder's mind. Is Holmes being manipulated by her boyfriend? Did she have a relationship like this before with Sunny Balwani at Theranos, so she is a serial victim of male narcissists? This is the central tension of the film, at least as presented by Fielder, who gradually becomes a subject along with Evans and Holmes as the film rolls on. 

But I think Fielder is truly exposing how "committed to the bit" bullshitters have to be when their version of reality is questioned. And I think the structure of the documentary shows that Fielder understands this. As he starts to play his role of noir detective who believes in the femme fatale against his better instincts, he introduces Amanda Seyfried, who herself played Holmes in The Dropout, as a stand-in for the viewer. As the film starts to slip from his grasp, he has another character hold the reins. He shows us what it is like to be confronted with so much belief, however irrational. 

And that's the thing about Holmes and Evans. They are truly committed to the bit. They are playing characters, a dark Abbot and Costello routine of their own. Fielder is so shocked that Holmes could have been dishonest when she said that she didn't have any financial interest in the film, so he jumps to the conclusion that Evans is manipulating her. More disturbing is that Evans says, without apology, that he has Holmes's power of attorney. Suddenly we're supposed to believe this pathological liar when he's bragging about how much power he has over his girlfriend. But Fielder never asks Holmes about Billy's claim over her (not that we can see, anyway). As if it's impossible to imagine that Evans and Holmes colluded about the characters they'd play in the film beforehand and simply committed themselves to the bit. But it's not —Seyfried reenacts a scene of Holmes and Evans celebrating after Evans negotiated getting a cut of the film's profits! That scene was in there for a reason! 

Anyone who's ever interacted with people like Holmes and Evans know that reason and shame just don't work on them. That's their superpower. You cannot get them to admit they were wrong. They refuse to be pinned down. They will say anything—most often things entirely irrelevant to the discussion at hand—to dodge a direct examination of their reasoning process. Because there isn't a reasoning process at work. It is just the power of the ego. Of belief. Of delusion so total because the stakes are so high to them. They know that in our polite society, unless they are in a court of law, no one can really threaten them for answering earnest questions with bullshit. To them, it's just a filtering process. They will outlast questions until they can find their next mark. 

I know that many people see profundity in You Can See Everything. They talk about how Fielder and Oppenheim use the film to investigate the grand questions of epistemology. They talk about the layers of performance. They talk about its self-conscious blend of documentary observation and scriptedness, and how it has made a new art form in the process. But I think they are looking for depth that isn't warranted, or at least shouldn't be the takeaway of the movie. The form and its complications are a distraction. Because any interpretation of the film that does not conclude that Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans are dangerous people, people who are so dishonest that they should never hold a real job again, is wrong. 

You Can See Everything is a demonstration of how people can be conned by them. And the sophisticated read of the movie, the one that calls into question what truth really is, or acknowledges that we all play socially-constructed roles in real life, is precisely what Holmes and Evans are looking for. They are banking on it. Holmes is looking for rehabilitation. Evans is looking for fame. (We're all talking about him now, after all. He is the main character in The Discourse.)

And that's why I don't want to spill more ink on them. The lesson of You Can See Everything is exposure to what these kinds of people are like. They will lie to your face. They will be determined to never give an inch to you or to the truth. And they will not. The only way to deal with these kinds of people is to run away. You can try to confront them directly, but they will parry all of your thrusts. The only way to win is to not play. 

As an instructive example of Holmes's guilt, let's remember one major issue from Holmes's trial. Holmes personally admitted to forging documents to imply that major pharmaceutical companies validated Theranos's technology. For those of you who have watched the film, you will recognize Holmes's characteristic evasion of guilt cloaked in the guise of innocent miscommunication.

One integral piece of evidence prosecutors frequently returned to was that Holmes doctored documents sent to potential investors.

The Walgreens CFO, Wade Miquelon, said during his testimony that Holmes had implied the pharmaceutical firms Pfizer and Schering-Plough had validated the company's blood-testing technology.

He said Holmes shared with investors and potential partners a document carrying the Pfizer logo, purportedly showing the drug company's support. But the document had been forged, the prosecution claims.

"Pfizer did not write this," prosecutor Robert Leach said in opening arguments for the trial. "Pfizer did not put its logo on this. Pfizer did not give its permission to put its logo on this. Pfizer did not make the conclusions in this report."

In her testimony, Holmes admitted to personally manipulating those documents, saying she did so not to imply that the companies had vetted the technology but "because this work was done in partnership with those companies and I was trying to convey that". (emphasis mine)

"I wish I had done it differently," Holmes told jurors.

After I watched You Can See Everything, I was sorely tempted to read John Carreyrou's Bad Blood. But then I dropped the urge. What else was I going to learn? Everything that Holmes was guilty of? I don't need to know — all I know is she's a fraudster, a liar, and I don't need to dig deeper. 

If one must learn more about Holmes, I think Andrew Gelman's review of Bad Blood is a great start.