The Studio emerged as one of the best comedies on television, with some standout moments that had us laughing out loud. The Apple TV+ show is a wild ride through the movie business with Seth Rogen starring as Matt Remick, a new studio head who discovers the struggles of balancing a passion for filmmaking and the realities of the job.
This year was a terrific one for comedies, with the likes of The Chair Company and A Man on the Inside bringing big laughs, but The Studio proved to be in a league of its own. From the clever jokes to the outrageous plot twists to the great cameos, these laugh-out-loud moments made The Studio the comedy of the year.
Matt's bad note to Ron Howard
The episode "The Note" focuses on a new Ron Howard movie that Matt will be overseeing. While the movie is largely a hit with the studio, there is a unanimous agreement that the ending is a long, tedious sequence that needs to be cut. However, Matt is afraid to give Howard the tough note, given his experience with the filmmaker.
The hilarious revelation from Matt is that, when Howard was making his Best Picture winner, A Beautiful Mind, Matt gave the note that the famous twist should actually be revealed at the beginning. It is a clever take on the famous Hollywood stories of bad notes from clueless executives, and Howard's nice guy reputation is lampooned with his violent reaction to the note.
Matt's old-school Hollywood buffet backfires
One of the most endearing things about Matt Remick in The Studio is how much he wants to emulate a "golden era" of Hollywood studios but continuously and hilariously fails at this. The first season builds to his big presentation at Cinema Con, but his misguided party the night before threatens to ruin it all.
Matt decides to offer a "Hollywood buffet" to his guests, including shroom-infused chocolates. Unfortunately, he misjudges the doses and fails to tell Zoe Kravitz about it. The panic that Matt and Zoe experience is made even funnier by the wild enthusiasm of Dave Franco, who is already stoned out of his mind.
Casting the Kool-Aid movie
The Studio's biggest laughs come from its clever way of picking apart details about the movie-making process that is weirder than people imagine. One of the best examples of this is Matt and his executives settling on their cast for the Kool-Aid movie, only to begin second-guessing whether each casting choice is actually wildly offensive.
The moment is set up perfectly with the Hollywood creatives happily admiring their locked-in cast, only for one small question to be raised. It quickly descends into comedic panic as they try to build the perfect cast to represent all demographics and offend no one, which is wildly offensive in itself.
Matt crushes Martin Scorsese's dreams
The first episode of The Studio started big with cameos as they managed to rope in Martin Scorsese, widely considered the greatest living director. Unfortunately, Mr. Scorsese represents a harsh lesson for Matt in how the commerce of Hollywood conflicts with the art. The climax of the episode finds Matt forced to tell Scorsese that he is shelving the director's epic Jonestown script in favor of a Kool-Aid movie.
Scorsese has proven himself a strong actor in the past, and he nails the rage with which he targets Matt. It only gets funnier when Matt sheepishly tells him that they are not letting him take his script to another studio, causing the legendary director to cry. It is a great way to cap off the episode and show how much fun the show is going to have with the madness of Hollywood.
Matt's poor parking job
Already off to a great start, The Studio episode 2 cemented it as something really special with "The Oner". The episode finds Matt eagerly visiting a movie set to experience director Sarah Polley's ambitious one-take sequence. However, he proves to be nothing but a liability in capturing the pivotal moment.
In a great meta choice, the episode itself is shot like a "oner", raising the anxiety each time Matt causes a delay. It all leads to the final attempt when it looks like the shot is about to be completed, only for Matt's obnoxiously parked car to block the protagonist's final getaway. It is a hilariously tragic moment of realizing that Matt is a menace to filmmaking despite his best efforts.