The Studio is as much about the art of falling as that of filmmaking

We’re introduced to Matt as someone who believes he has really good taste. He wears tailored suits, drives vintage automobiles, lives in an airy and wood-paneled house in the Hills, and venerates Martin Scorsese. It quickly becomes obvious that these qualities are not only irrelevant to his position but detrimental. The series begins with Matt trying to class up a Kool-Aid movie by getting the Goodfellas director involved, permanently putting the auteur’s script on ice in the process. His job, though he’s loath to recognize it, is to make money, not art. The easiest way to do this, usually, is to appeal to people’s emotions, not their minds. The Studio knows this, even if the studio head doesn’t. Matt’s vocal defense of the importance of Hollywood in “The Pediatric Oncologist” ends with him making an ass of himself in the middle of a fundraiser to benefit children with cancer by, yes, falling down. 

The lesson of that episode, and in fact the whole season, is that none of it is really as consequential as they might like it to be. Matt, his pals, and the entire industry need to be humbled, and The Studio is happy to oblige. This comes to a head during the show’s two-part season finale, which is set during a flashy insider event. CinemaCon is not a fan-focused convention like Comic-Con, nor does it broadcast the artistic importance of film the way award shows or festivals do. CinemaCon is about studios presenting their slates to theater owners, hoping to secure the widest possible release for its most commercial projects. It’s also, as The Studio depicts it, the kind of event that sees industry professionals go on days-long benders in Las Vegas between making their pitches. Maybe Matt had a point that art is socially important in a way that medicine also is, but society certainly wouldn’t accept a doctor taking a hero dose of mushrooms before doing their job.

At CinemaCon, it’s the biggest dog in the show who takes the biggest falls. Though Continental CEO Griffin Mill (Bryan Cranston) is never exactly presented as a stoic, in Vegas he’s practically a rag doll. With Continental at risk of a sale to Amazon, Griffin ends up far too high, falling first into a gondola at the Venetian and then from the ceiling during the studio’s crucial presentation. It’s not The Studio‘s funniest fall, but it’s certainly the most painful. In this moment, the powerful studio CEO is literally brought down to earth in front of the crowd he needs to win over, unable to speak any words but “movies.” Between the drugs and the potential concussion from the fall, this becomes the whole pitch: “Movies…movies…movies!” 

And no matter how The Studio‘s characters or real-world ad teams might try to gussy it up, that is the pitch here. Besides, before there were talkies, there were silent films, and a lot of them were based on the kind of physical comedy that transcended language and reached the broadest possible audience. The Studio may have a lot of niche humor, but it knows the way to connect with everyone is through the timeless tradition of slapstick. After all, there’s nothing funnier than watching folks—especially powerful, rich ones—fall down.