When I first read about The Studio, I was excited. I’m a big fan of The Player, Robert Altman’s 1992 satire of Hollywood, and a big inspiration on The Studio. I also love The Offer, which you can watch with a Paramount+ subscription. I even loved the “insider” aspects and cameos of Entourage. So, for me, The Studio had a lot of promise. Now that we’re a few episodes in, I think there are some things it does really well, which I’ll talk about, but I don’t know that I can get over the dichotomy of Seth Rogen’s character, Matt Remick's, behavior.
The Studio Does Some Things Really Well
I appreciate what Seth Rogan and the other creators of The Studio, which you can watch with an Apple TV+ subscription, are trying to accomplish with the show, and in a lot of ways, it really works. The satire of the industry is on point, and some of the characters are perfect. Catherine O’Hara as Patty, the former studio head who was replaced by Matt, is hilarious. Katheryn Hahn’s Maya, a seasoned marketing exec who is still trying to be a hip 20-something, is my favorite character on the show.
The cameos have been a ton of fun, too. Martin Scorsese, Anthony Mackie, and Ron Howard are riotous, and the briefer cameos, like Charlize Theron, Steve Buscemi, Paul Dano, and others are great, too. It’s always fun to see big-name celebrities playing ridiculous versions of themselves.
The one-shot style, while maybe getting a little overdone these days, works really well in The Studio, too, both as satire and to drive the stress and tension that Matt feels in each episode. The show looks great, and there are a lot of laugh-out-loud moments. For that, it deserves all the praise it’s gotten from the critics.
I Just Can’t Buy Seth Rogan’s Character
Matt Remick has, according to the show, been in the film business for more than 20 years, and he’s risen all the way up the ranks to the top. Sometimes, we see exactly why he has. He signed a huge franchise deal at some point in the past, and in his first conversation with Patty in the first episode, he seems to know exactly what he needs to do.
At other times, really for most of the show, he’s a blundering buffoon. He’s not an idiot, exactly. It’s more like he’s got no clue what he’s doing in the business, and that contrast is really throwing me off. How is it that a guy who has been in the business for decades has absolutely no clue how to act on a film set? Matt’s made a ton of movies in his career, yet he’s starstruck by almost everyone he meets? Is he a studio head with years of experience, or is he an intern working on his first movie? It makes no sense at all. It’s possible for a “suit” to be an idiot, but he would never be this clueless.
People are loving The Studio because it’s funny and creative, and I'm not giving up on it. At least, not yet. Hopefully, Matt grows into his role, and the buffoonery gets toned down, or at least his naivete does. The satire is there, and it’s wonderful, but great satire needs believable characters to be sustainable.
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