I’m siding with Billy Evans on this one—but, like, only this.
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Let me kick this off by saying how weird and uncomfortable it is to be taking Billy Evans’ side on anything. I’ve seen You Can See Everything, and he comes across loud and clear as a chauvinistic asshole. Still, I feel obliged to point out that there is one thing that Billy, Elizabeth Holmes’ longtime partner, is right about: the eggs
Early on in You Can See Everything, while you’re still in the “Gee, I don’t know about this guy” phase of getting to know Billy Evans (which comes shortly before the “Screw this guy” heel turn), there’s a moment where he and Holmes are preparing breakfast, specifically scrambled eggs. At first, Holmes mixes the eggs in a bowl with a fork in a slow, poking motion, with all of the stunned limpness that might accompany a person’s looming multiyear prison sentence. Then, suddenly, Evans takes the bowl from her and vigorously starts whisking the eggs with the fork.
Video from Slate
Nathan Fielder, who appears in the film and co-directed it with Lance Oppenheim, asks Evans why he did that, and Evans unconvincingly tries to deflect, saying that he wanted to give Fielder and Holmes time to talk. Then Holmes chimes in and explains that he thinks she was doing it wrong.
To be clear, I do not approve of Evans grabbing the bowl out of his partner’s hands like that. But she is totally doing it wrong.
I’m not a professional chef or anything, but I am a pretty damn good breakfast-maker and have been since I was slinging bacon, egg, and cheeses at a local deli when I was 15. For decades I’ve known that, for scrambled eggs or a decent omelette, you need to mix the eggs together with speed and vigor for the eggs to aerate, resulting in a fluffier, more consistent texture. Still, my discomfort with siding with Evans on this point motivated me to double-check by making both versions of the eggs—Elizabeth’s way and Billy’s way—just to make sure I’m giving Holmes a fair shot.
So I set out to make two quick batches of scrambled eggs. I wanted the only difference to be how energetically the eggs were mixed, so I added no salt or pepper, for fear that one batch might get more than the other. Normally, I would mix scrambled eggs with milk or water, as milk makes them creamier and water makes them fluffier. But I’m not sure what they used in the movie, nor did I want their presence to skew the results, so I just mixed up two eggs for each batch, without any other ingredients or seasoning. Both were also cooked on medium-high heat in a nonstick pan with some Pam sprayed in the bottom.
I did Elizabeth’s eggs first. I cracked two eggs in a bowl and mixed them lethargically with a fork for 30 seconds. Already I could tell they weren’t mixed right, with inconsistent swirls of yellow and clear egg parts.
I tossed them in the pan and scrambled them up. It only took a minute or so, and I could see while I was cooking them that they weren’t a uniform color but more of a mix of white and yellow. They also fell apart fairly easily as I scrambled.
I put the cooked eggs onto a plate and kept them warm with a lid, then cracked two eggs into the same bowl and mixed them for 30 seconds the Billy Evans way, with intent and intensity. They got to the point where they were a pretty consistent mix of pale yellow and a healthy amount of bubbles on top, which is what you get when you aerate properly.
I scrambled them up the same way I did the previous batch and for the same amount of time. In the pan they stayed together a bit better than the other batch, and they looked noticeably fluffier.
I then put the Billy eggs on their own little plate and took some side-by-side comparison shots.
On the left plate with the flowery border are Elizabeth’s eggs, and on the right, the plain plate has Billy’s. I’m not saying there’s a world of difference here in their appearance, but you’ll notice that Billy’s eggs are all one pretty consistent color yellow, while the Elizabeth eggs feature a mix of white and yellow, with some of the whites being almost pure white while some of the darker yellow regions are almost orange.
The big difference came down to taste. With Elizabeth’s eggs, there was a denser texture in some bites with a disappointing lack of flavor. These bits had more of the white parts in them. Other bites had a richer, eggier flavor with a looser texture—these were the more yellow parts.
Billy’s eggs, in contrast, had a consistent flavor and texture all the way through. While not as fluffy as they would be had I added a bit of water, they were fluffier and far more enjoyable than Elizabeth’s dense eggs.
Again, it makes me uncomfortable to take Evans’ side here, especially when he took over the egg-making in such a jerky, controlling kind of way. He’s a creepy, manipulative right-winger who is clearly using his wife’s image to promote himself. But if Billy Evans has got one thing going for him, the man can scramble an egg.