A**holes are all the rage on TV these days: From The Dropout to The Thing About Pam to Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber

Salon.com

"If you doubt a**hole season is upon us, simply turn on your TV," says Melanie McFarland. "There, puckering jerks wash across our screens like the overnight eruption of tulips on otherwise ho-hum hills. "Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber proves this from its first frame when Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Travis Kalanick, the car share giant's founder, asks a prospective employee, 'Are you an a**hole?' Kalanick posed that question to every job candidate he interviewed as a means of determining a person's suitability for his company's culture. In his view the right answer was, 'Yes.' At the time of Uber's rise, Silicon Valley's tech bro culture agreed with him, as did the rest of the business world. The entire lesson of the series depicts how well that attitude served Uber until it didn't. It has that in common with Hulu's The Dropout, although Amanda Seyfried initially introduces Holmes as a visionary, not a cretin. Ambition is the seed of her hubris, and it outstrips her ability to execute her vision. These are two of several dramas based on true stories of corporate implosions wrought by a**holery – a brand of ripped-from-the-headlines drama that plugs into America's obsession with wealthy, amoral people...Nevertheless, The Dropout doesn't announce itself as a true crime story – not like The Thing About Pam, NBC's contribution to the sphincter garden, which is inspired by five-time Dateline NBC subject Pam Hupp."