One of the most hilarious aspect of The Studio remains the conflicting personality of Matt who is newly appointed as the studio head. Matt has dreamt of being the cutting edge in cinema by wanting to implement new-age cinema like never before. In the first episode, you see him gravitating towards a Martin Scorsese script which incidently has a central conflict revolving around Kool Aid, the brand that the studio wants to make a money on. In a hilarious yet bittersweet sequence, you see freshly brewed chaos ensuing featuring a conflicted Matt before finally making a U-Turn suddenly and breaking Scorsese’s heart and dream of making a ‘cult oscar-nominated’ film. In a more poignant scene at the start, you see Matt admitting on how he was better off being angry and resentful a couple of weeks back before getting the high-pressure job!

The satirical nature of the screenplay is directly equated with the satirical nature of how a studio and a studio head functions. In a hilarious one-take sequence (a meta-reference of the scene in itself), you see Matt visiting the set of the Oscar-winning director Sarah Polley who in turn is busy in a one-take sequence that needs to be completed before light fades out. The intrusive nature of a “harmless” Matt drawing inspiration from films like 1917 and literally giving pointers to the annoyed cast and crew, did make for a hilarious watch while further highlighting the instrusive nature of the studio. But to balance things out, you also see a reluctant Matt tasked with talking to the Oscar-winning director Ron Howard on having to do away with his homage-filled climax for his cousin, and instead sticking to the theme. But the satire within a satire is on how algorithm-driven film, the studio actually want to roll out!

The episodic nature of the screenplay contribute to the misadventures of Matt along with his colleagues Sal Seperstein (who Sal?; Ike Barinholtz), Maya (Kathryn Hahn), Quinn (Chase Sui Wonders), Tyler (Dewayne Perkins) and Petra (Keyla Montertoso). This includes a brewing animosity and competition between Sal and Quinn, as they fight it out on onboarding a director of “their individual choice” while letting go of the main fact, that the film was a remake of an already successful film😂. This also includes a petrified Matt working with Sal to find the missing reel of a film that was filmed on a “film” to satisfy the creative urges of himself (even as the sh*tass audience aren’t even equipped to notice the “glaring” difference). And needless to say, that required a lot of ego-massaging for the lead-actors and the director, both of whom were prominent names of the industry. In between, you also get a glimpse of the personal life of Matt who literally equates himself to have the job of ‘equals’ when compared to folks from the medical profession. His argument being, people enjoy escapism and blood, the latter which is a common thread to the medical profession. The sequence just grows in intensity and absolutely ends on a hilarious note. And one of my favourite sequences also involved the ability of the studio executives to overthink about the implications of casting that only leads to hilariously convoluted casting challenges for their film (wherein even a commentary on the AI intrusion in the creativity process is addressed).

The brutally honest nature of the “thankless” industry could be gauged in the episode featuring “The Golden Globes” even as the winners go on to “thank” studio heads to value their contractual agreements, even as a pensive Matt awaits his ‘uncertain’ turn to be thanked. The pretentious nature of the industry made for a strong recall value from Zoya Akhtar’s debut outing Luck By Chance (2009), that remains the most brutally honest portrayal of Bollywood. The meta-references in The Studio don’t quite end there – the finale act has a searing satire of the bigger studios taking over the lesser ones, in a fine commentary on hierarchy that would eventually end up with lesser players and mediocre content (we all know what happened after the merger of J*oHotst*r and the kind of content that is currently being served). This, while the drama veils itself as a comedy on its surface ensuing chaos of epic proportions featuring an accidental drunken night and the presentation that unfolds at the Cinemacon event. Ideally, I would have liked the sequence to be further fleshed out with layers of parody filling the gaps at the end (which were seemingly straight-forward with the resolution), but it still sums up the screenplay that is a brutally honest take on the studio culture while highlighting everything that is wrong with Hollywood and its far-east Hindi speaking counterpart!