Summary
Chase Sui Wonders takes centre stage in The Studio Episode 5, proving the Apple TV+ comedy can focus on character just as much as clever gimmickry.
With every episode of The Studio, it finds a new way to impress. In the two-part premiere it was a very funny ensemble piece and then a tight, isolated riff on the microcosmic art of the oner; in Episode 3 it span the idea of studios giving notes to directors into a deeply personal farce; in Episode 4 it brilliantly emulated a classic film noir in a commentary about ego. Here in Episode 5, it does nothing showy at all, instead pushing the thus far underused character of Quinn to the forefront in a slapstick-y workplace rivalry with Sal that also has something meaningful to say.
What’s meaningful, I think, is that there are real people behind movies. And you probably shouldn’t need reminding of this, but Hollywood is such a nexus of giant personalities and privileges that it’s easy to forget. The Franchise made this point too, just more ridiculously. A big production is an extraordinary plate-spinning act that generally only the creative talent gets credit for, but it’s dependent on the hard work and dedication of everyday people with career aspirations who don’t get the safety net of fame and fortune. People like Sal and Quinn.
Ike Barinholz is the unsung hero of The Studio. He has made a great foil for Seth Rogen in the second and fourth episodes, and he does the same for Chase Sui Wonders here, positioned as a kind of ageing dinosaur who has the office, the salary, and the parking space that Quinn covets. But because she’s young and ambitious and creative she thinks that Sal has just been gifted everything, never really considering that even though he thinks A24 movies are for “pansexual mixologists living in Bed-Stuy” – which seems accurate – he might be good at his job, and value it for reasons she hasn’t considered.
This is the key to “The War”. You’re not supposed to side blindly with Quinn or Sal in their conflict, but to see them both as individuals with their own viewpoints who have different but equally valid positions. Either way, Wink, a new horror movie, will be made. But whether it will be a money-making crowd-pleaser or an experimental art piece is up for – rigorous, it turns out – debate.
Sal’s position is that since Wink is a knock-off of Smile, the director of that movie, Parker Finn, should direct it. It’s somewhat cynical Hollywood arithmetic, but it’s coming from someone who has been in the business long enough to understand the erosion of originality and have come to terms with the idea of making movies rather than films. Quinn doesn’t think like this. And because everyone around her seems to, the string of indignities she suffers in and around the studio starts to bother her personally, like the movie-making universe is deliberately conspiring against her. And Sal becomes the avatar of her misfortune because he’s the closest target.
Seth Rogen and Chase Sui Wonders in The Studio | Image via Apple TV+
There’s probably something sadly true about how often scripts get saddled with different directors who have different executives championing them, and through a variety of often convoluted circumstances – though admittedly probably not ones involving thrown burritos – stuff gets made in a way that was never intended, by people who perhaps never intended to make it. But such is the way of things. That’s what Sal has come to terms with, and the thing that Quinn can’t accept. Not at first, anyway.
All of the comedy in The Studio Episode 5 comes from the escalation of this conflict into increasingly absurd realms, culminating in the collapse of a set and Sal and Quinn both potentially being in the crosshairs of a firing. But not all the jokes are simply funny. They’re often quite telling, such as when Sal tries to convince Quinn of how much he needs his job by explaining that his teenage daughters aren’t smart enough to be successful on their own. He means it. He’s a guy having a midlife crisis because everyone from his family to his younger colleagues thinks he’s a loser, and the only thing he can cling to is being able to bankroll his kids’ lives with cynical studio money.
Quinn goes through an arc of becoming slightly monstrous in her crusade against Sal, blindly risking the careers of assistants left and right just to make sure she can steal his parking space and fatally delay his meetings, but she also softens when she comes to understand the position he’s really in. Her selfishness gives way to sympathy; Sal’s hostility gives way to understanding. It’s not exactly a mutually beneficial conclusion – Sal keeps his job but loses that coveted parking space – but it definitely feels like an understanding has been reached on both sides. And Continental Studios gets to stay afloat just a little longer.
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