Episode Review: The Studio 1x9 - "CinemaCon"

Welcome back to the blog readers. The Studio (2025-) has quickly become one of my favorite shows on television because of its brutally honest satire and loving celebration of the film industry that we all love so much. Last week's uncomfortable Golden Globe episode only reinforced that fact, and the announcement that we are getting a second season of this show was so euphoric for me. With only two episodes left, would this penultimate one, titled "CinemaCon," written by Alex Gregory, and directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, be able to start us on this rise to the end? Stick around to find out.

NOTE: I will be using spoilers for my thoughts, so DO NOT read ahead if you have not seen the episode.

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It bums me the fuck out knowing that after this, there is only one episode left. This season of The Studio has had it all: celebrity cameos, a celebration and satire of Hollywood, Roman J. Israel Esq. (if you know you know), and it has been such a wild ride from start to finish getting to experience all the antics that they have been going through. And this may not just be the most wild episode of the season, it may just be the most wild episode of television I have seen all year. Everybody brings their A-game in this episode, especially Seth Rogen and Bryan Cranston, and the story (and how everything from this season tied together) was brilliant.

First off I need to talk about the performance of Seth Rogen as our favorite studio head Matt Remick. Rogen has been giving Emmy-worthy performances all season (as you could probably tell by my waxing poetic about him every other week). But this week I have seen something different from Rogen. There is a fire in this performance by him this week and you can tell he is the most passionate he has been all season. And the frantic nature that undertones this performance provides for a bit more than uncomfortability. And when he is getting frantic with the rest of the team it is insane. I hope next week's finale is as bonkers as this episode was.

And then I need to talk about Bryan Cranston as Continental CEO Griffin Mill. Cranston literally only showed up for one scene in the first episode and definitely made an impact in this scene. The Breaking Bad (2008-13) actor is in this entire episode, and who would have imagined him acting high out of his own mind could be engaging, funny, and terrifying all at the same time? Cranston as Mill is not to be trifled with, and making him high, drunk, and totally fucked up only adds to the tension and the humor. I hope we get some more of that in next week's finale because it would be a hell of a touch.

Now we talk about the story of this episode because it was definitely a nice touch to see everything tie itself together. We start at a nice restaurant where Matt is having lunch with his mother (played by Rhea Perlman) and she is dragging him about his personal life. He admits he does not see his subordinates as friends as she tells him he is about to win ComicCon (actually CinemaCon). He takes a minute to meet with Gemma, a drug dealer Dave Franco connected him with, and after repeating the dosage of the mushrooms he is buying (two-eighths), he later departs for Las Vegas with Sal, Quinn, and Patty while revealing the pre-presentation party he is planning. When the four touch down in Vegas, they discover their auditorium with pop-up posters of the films they are going to be talking about:

• The Kool-Aid Movie (referenced in the first and seventh episodes)

• The Promotion (the Peter Berg film being shot in the cold open of the first episode that stars Paul Dano)

• The Silver Lake (the Sarah Polley film from the second episode that stars Greta Lee)

• Alphabet City (the Ron Howard film from the third episode starring Anthony Mackie)

• Rolling Blackout (the Olivia Wilde film from the fourth episode that stars Zac Efron)

• Duhpocalypse! (the Johnny Knoxville-Josh Hutcherson film from the sixth episode)

• Blackwing (the Zoë Kravitz film that was alluded to in last week's episode)

• An titled, yet unreadable Lil Rel Howery and Ziwe film that was referenced in the seventh episode

At the auditorium, Maya, who went on ahead of the four, presents the outline of who will be presenting what, with the hope that Kravitz will fly in from Romania to present Blackwing, a film unknown to the public. Maya tries to get Griffin Mill to come down from the theater and rehearse, and Matt goes to get him. Griffin is upset because of a board meeting that took place earlier that day, in which a sale of Continental to Amazon has been discussed. Griffin also points out that they will not only have access to the entire 100-year library of Continental, but he, Matt, and the entire team will be out of jobs if the sale goes through. Matt assures Griffin that a killer presentation will make Continental unsellable to anyone. Oh, and Griffin is 82, not 65.

That night, the party is in full swing. Sal has brought cocaine and Matt has infused chocolates with his mushrooms and calls it an "old-school Hollywood buffet." The party is going off without a hitch, but everyone notices that Griffin is out of control, especially the sober Patty. They all agree that Matt needs to shut this party, that has spiraled into the early hours of the morning, down. Matt decides to lie about a security call to get everyone out and Griffin to bed, but he backs off when Kravitz arrives at the party. He claims he needs 10-15 minutes to impress her, but this backfires when she helps herself to three chocolates. Matt learns he messed up badly: the dosage of shrooms in each chocolate is not two-eighths of a gram (like he thought), it is two-eighths of an ounce, meaning she has 21 grams of shrooms in her body according to Franco (who is in attendance). The group decides to isolate Kravitz and prevent her from getting any higher like Matt and Griffin (who had at least eight) are.

After the Kravitz situation is dealt with, the group realize Griffin has left the hotel. Matt, Sal, Quinn, Maya, and Patty decide to split up to find him in the downstairs casino while keeping their situation under wraps, and Patty almost finds out about the potential sale of Continental from Sal before they shut him up. In the casino, Quinn finds Griffin but he is able to evade them again before they all find him outside the hotel minus Patty. When they all argue, he falls off the stairs into a gondola that takes him outside the Venetian where he is greeted by Patty, who is still resentful over his firing of her to start the show. She bribes a passerby to use his phone to call journalist Matt Belloni (who Matt was listening to on the way to Vegas) with the promise of the scoop of the year.

The Studio takes something sacred like CinemaCon and twists it on its head in a wild and rambunctious way. Thank you all for reading, and I will see you for the next post.