Summary
The Franchise is as broad and obvious as ever in Episode 5, but it’s also tremendously and consistently funny.
I thought things couldn’t get much worse for Eric after he drove a golf cart onto the set of Centurios 2 in the previous episode, but I’m happy to report that I was wrong. The Franchise continues to break him in Episode 5, “Scene 16: Eric’s Hospital Scene”, insisting that he repurposes his most cherished emotional scene – which the studio already intends to cut – as an advert for Chinese farming equipment.
It didn’t dawn on me previously that Eric is really the focal character because his deterioration from visionary auteur to self-loathing corporate adman is the best way we have of tracking how the production of Tecto is taking its toll. There’s a shot in this episode of Eric having resolutely given up, and it’s hilarious – though also quite sad, in a strange way.
Perhaps it’s sad because this largely is the reality of tentpole comic-book moviemaking. It’s exaggerated for comic effect, obviously, but it’s close enough to reality to have satirical teeth. It wasn’t immediately clear in the premiere that The Franchise could continue to pluck the expected low-hanging fruit and remain engaging, but it turns out it can. The trick is for each production hiccup to be deeply personal to one character or another, like how the cameo put Adam through the wringer. The thing with Eric is that every problem affects him deeply.
I think that “Scene 16: Eric’s Hospital Scene” might be my favorite of the season thus far. It has a very good comedic hit rate, as usual, but The Franchise reaches levels of petty ridiculousness in Episode 5 that I feel rather suit it. Eric annoyed Pat – and by extension the mysterious “Shane” – with his tantrum in the previous episode, so kowtowing to the Chinese Communist Party is a revenge ploy. Yes, it’ll make Tecto even more ridiculous than it already is, but it’s clear Maximum Studios doesn’t care about it either way. By this point, it’s just a platform for tormenting Eric.
The Chinese tractor in The Franchise | Image via HBO
Thus, product placement. And we’re not talking moderately innocuous product placement of the kind you see all the time in comic-book movies these days, we’re talking about Chinese farming equipment (the best in the world, apparently.) In exchange for releasing the movie in the rising Chinese market, the government wants a tractor in it. Eric has to work a tractor into a movie set almost entirely in space.
What’s worse is that he has to insert it into the scene he’s most proud of, which he believes is most integral to the movie, despite the fact it’s going to be excised in post like it was never there in the first place. This is Daniel’s idea. He thinks that if Eric has a tractor in the background of a wrenching hospital scene in which Tecto visits his dying wife, Eric will get to have his cake and eat it, since the studio won’t be able to cut it.
It goes – all together now – disastrously. But in the eyes of Pat, Eric’s willingness to do whatever nonsense is asked of him is another opportunity for Centurios 2, so their planned product placement – another tractor – is wheeled onto the Tecto set too. It’s all building to the highlight of The Franchise Episode 5, a deranged rant in which Eric declares war on the entirety of China, taking aim at everything from sweet and sour and finger traps to Mulan, Confucius, and pandas.
The outburst is leaked, and Eric becomes a geopolitical issue. A PR-managed statement – which we get in the closing credits – won’t cut it alone, so Pat devises another genius solution. Tecto now includes a scene promoting a tainted baby milk brand that had been recalled for containing mercury. Rufus gets a line in the movie and several bottles to drink. Nuclear war is averted, but Rufus’s physical health might shoulder the burden.
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