The Studio Season-Finale Recap: The Main Event

Apple TV+ recently renewing The Studio for a second season makes it easier to be forgiving of this season finale, which plays like an oddly inconclusive way to end a first season rather than a puzzlingly weird way to end a series. Scripted by the show’s full creative team of Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory, and Frida Perez, “The Presentation” brings the first phase of Matt’s tenure as Continental’s studio head full circle and picks up where penultimate episode “Cinemacon” left off. But the season’s shortest episode often plays like it could easily have been incorporated into its predecessor, and the final scene leaves a lot of unanswered questions that end the season with a collective shrug.

That’s not to say it isn’t funny. Even The Studio’s weakest episodes have a crackerjack energy and memorable gags, and “The Presentation” is no exception, starting with the rather unsettling image of the still-high-as-hell Continental CEO Griffin Mill performing a sex act on a statue of Aphrodite as Patty looks on encouragingly. She’s unaware of how much is riding on Griffin not making an ass of himself in public. In fact, she’s even summoned Matt Belloni to witness the moment, unaware that this could be all the excuse Continental’s owners need to go forward with the sale of the studio to Amazon. News of this makes Patty join the panic and aid the Continental gang’s cover-up.

The problem: Griffin is, in Sal’s words, now only “kind of breathing.” Quinn, seemingly inspired by her journey through the “classic” films of Matt’s youth, decides they can “Weekend at Bernie’s” the situation by treating Griffin like a corpse they need to pretend is alive. “It’s a terrible movie,” she clarifies, “but the conceit is genius.” Matt agrees, adding, “It’s time for some movie magic.”
Their attempt at recreating said movie magic hits some speed bumps. The first arrives in the form of Dave Franco, who’s still quite high and has gotten an added boost by winning big at poker against some opponents who have not taken the loss well. (Franco doesn’t perceive this to be a problem but he’ll soon see otherwise.) The second speed bump is the last person they want to see: Belloni. He’s heard the sale rumors but somehow isn’t perceptive enough to see through the semi-ambulatory Griffin’s disguise.

Back at the hotel, Griffin’s a little more responsive but still not capable of dressing himself, a task that falls instead to Sal, who runs into some trouble due to his boss’s generously sized genitals. (That Griffin has, as Matt puts it, a “big dick” comes as a surprise to no one.) Griffin’s not the only one feeling the consequences of the previous night’s consumption. Zoë Kravitz is also still in the process of coming down. Literally: Matt and Patty find her perched on a nightstand laughing at the absurdity of descending. (For some reason, all this chaos leads Matt and Maya to begin making out, briefly but heatedly.)

Returning to Griffin, everyone agrees to attempt a different sort of movie magic to get him in good enough shape to take the stage. Inspired by the movie Flight, they decide to counteract the effect of all those shrooms with some cocaine. This, at first, seems to have the desired effect, if only for a few seconds. Griffin rallies as Patty returns with Kravitz. But then Kravitz grows confused about how she can be both Zoë and her movie character, agent Blackwing. As she screams, “Where’s Zoë?!,” Griffin collapses. This might not be coming together after all. The late-arriving Tyler’s “Oh no” gives the scene a well-placed punctuation mark.

Then it’s time for the presentation itself. Backstage, the state of the Continental team is enough to scare Nicholas Stoller into attempting to bail before taking the stage. He quickly changes his mind, however, when Sal threatens to replace him with Shawn Levy on the Kool-Aid sequel. Stoller might be locked in, but Franco’s another story. He arrives covered in blood having been beaten up by his poker opponents after they began to suspect he’d been cheating using magic tricks from the Now You See Me movies. (Matt: “Were you. Franco: “Oh yeah!”) Still, Franco insists on taking the stage to introduce Alphabet City, which he then proceeds to do in character. Once finished, he collapses.

Now it’s Kravitz’s turn, and she’s in a good mood because she’s figured out that nothing matters because we’re all “skin sausages.” As Quinn points out, she’s fine, just experiencing a little “ego death.” This alarms her team and inspires Matt to send Patty out first to offer a preview of The Silver Lake and vamp for time. Patty might be a great producer but she’s a lousy raconteur, whose attempt to tell the story of going to her first movie keeps falling apart because of her hazy memory. (“I’m not sure it was a children’s movie. There was an awful lot of drinking.”) While Matt debates with Kravitz’s team about whether she’s fit to take the stage, Kravitz slips past them and, to everyone’s surprise, does just fine before handing the mic over to Stoller. (She even waits until she gets backstage before wetting her pants.)

As Stoller talks about Kool-Aid it becomes apparent that Griffin cannot be trusted in front of a crowd. So, after some words of encouragement from Patty, Matt goes it alone to deliver what he hopes will be a state-of-Continental address so optimistic that no one could dream of selling the company. Matt takes the opportunity to thank all his co-workers and ask them to join him on stage where he calls them the “absolute most important things in his entire life” and gives them hugs. Then Griffin descends on ropes, hits the stage hard, and seems a little stunned. He manages, however, to get out the first word of his prepared speech: “Movies.” This prompts Matt to get the crowd chanting “movies,” and the episode ends as the camera pulls heavenward before returning to the stage for a tight close-up on Matt’s face, a final technical flourish in a season filled with them.

And that’s that. Again, “The Presentation” would make for a deeply unsatisfying series finale. Instead, it’s an only mildly unsatisfying season finale. That’s partly because it’s hard not to imagine it working better as part of “CinemaCon”; it owes so much to its predecessor it can’t help feeling a little slight and coda-like on its own. But it’s also because Matt’s flood of emotion feels like too neat a way to tie up his relationships with the others before the season ends. It also feels a bit too neat as an ending to Matt’s own realization of how isolated and alone he’s become by pursuing his job with such passion, though the expression he’s wearing in the final shot introduces some notes of ambiguity. Whether or not we’re supposed to take this sentimental moment seriously is among the episode’s lingering questions. Still, on the whole this has been a funny, successful season and it’s easy to look forward to the Continental story continuing — assuming there still is a Continental in season two.

And … Cut!

• One strand that any future seasons will have to pick up: the Matt-Maya relationship. What previously seemed like a secret between the two was at least known by Sal.

• Quinn drawing inspiration from Matt’s trashy movie recommendations has been a fun recurring gag.

• If you take into consideration that each film is, to one degree or another, a satire of a type of Hollywood film, Continental’s upcoming slate looks pretty good! Sarah Polley directing Greta Lee in a ’60s romantic drama? Anthony Mackie and Dave Franco in a gritty New York crime movie? Zoë Kravitz in a supernatural action movie? Those sound good. And, hey, a Kool-Aid movie may not sound appealing, but Stoller has a pretty good track record. Movies! Movies!