Reaction: The Studio, "CinemaCon" | Season 1, Episode 9

As I’ve written about throughout its run, The Studio has largely eschewed serialization, resting instead on vignettes of specific scenarios Matt Remick has confronted in his opening months as the head of Continental Studios. I say “months,” but I actually don’t know how long it’s been: when “CinemaCon” begins, The Kool-Aid Movie is six weeks away from opening, which implies we’ve jumped ahead considerably from the casting conversation just two episodes earlier in “Casting.”1

As the team takes the private jet to Las Vegas, though, it’s revealed that this is the culmination of the entire season: all the movies we’ve seen in different stages of production are on the docket, with Sarah Polley’s The Silver Lake, Ron Howard’s Alphabet City, The Kool-Aid Movie, and a tease of Zoë Kravitz’s upcoming Blackwing. It’s a nice way to bring the entire season together, albeit on a very basic level.

“CinemaCon” wants to go deeper, though, introducing an existential threat—a potential sale of Continental to Amazon—to raise the stakes of the presentation alongside a quite sudden return to Patty’s firing. Catherine O’Hara has weaved in and out of the show effectively, but there hasn’t been a clear arc, and there’s some expositional burden of returning to her animus toward Griffin Mill (a returning Bryan Cranston) in time for it to become a point of contention.

It’s all in service of making the struggle of the episode that much more chaotic. Not only is the studio in peril, with everything riding on a single presentation, but Griffin is getting wasted, and everyone is accidentally macrodosing on shroom chocolates because Dave Franco’s supplier was vague on the math. While I might still prefer the subtlety of Sarah Polley’s appearance earlier in the season, Kravitz makes a strong case for Best Director in a Guest Starring Role, losing her mind almost immediately upon gorging on the “Old School Hollywood Buffet” without knowing that this was apparently a phrase.

And look, it’s a good testament to the charm of this group of characters and their mania in the midst of chaos, which is basically the entire show at this point. They consciously bring up the appeal of ‘80s comedies, and this one is modeled off of them, Griffin becoming the 82-year-old MacGuffin that they spend the episode chasing. And it just so happens to chase him into Patty’s orbit, the one person who is more than willing to choose revenge on the man who fired her over Continental’s future. It’s this turn that I struggle with, if only because it’s a character motivation that would have played better if we had spent more time with Patty throughout the season, and if Griffin’s presence had been stronger as well.

Basically, it’s like The Studio suddenly woke up and realized that it wanted to be a regular workplace comedy, with end-of-season stakes. That’s fine, and it might be a more sustainable show for it, but it has to spool up at lightning speed in ways that are a bit too conspicuous. This is a two-part finale, so we’ll wait and see how next week’s episode resolves things, but “CinemaCon” on its own is an effective argument for the show’s general ability to ramp up its plot, if not also an argument that more of this could have been seeded throughout the season.

Stray observations

• Apple announced its Emmy submissions for the show this week, and while it includes everyone you’d expect (including guaranteed nominee Cranston), it also includes The Town’s Matt Belloni, and that’s such a choice.
• I love the runner of Quinn tasting everything, including Matt’s sweat and the nacho cheese on the wall.
• Dave Franco doesn’t have a lot to do, really, but it’s nice that the other half of Alphabet City gets to have his day in the sun.