Summary
The Studio does more damage to Matt’s ego in Episode 8, by far the most insider-y instalment the show has conjured thus far.
The Studio is a show about Hollywood that clearly enjoys an impressive amount of access to its stars and executives, but it has rarely felt quite as insider-y as it does in Episode 8, aptly titled “The Golden Globes”. It’s absolutely rife with cameos and callbacks and jargon that you’d think might be a little too specific for a general audience, which is perhaps why it relies on only one core idea – that everyone who pretends not to care about awards actually cares about them very deeply.
Everyone knows this to be true, which is why it works. But it’s explored in a number of funny ways here, from stars pretending to the press that they don’t believe they’re going to win while having privately campaigned for a near-guaranteed victory, to the idea of a genuinely earnest thank-you leading to a silly viral moment that is somehow absolute torture for Matt Remick, who spends the entire episode trying to ensure that Zoe Kravitz thanks him in her speech.
A lot of The Studio has been about terrorising Matt’s ego. “The Note” was very much along those lines, as was “The Pediatric Oncologist”, which reminded us how important Matt thinks his job is. The belief that he’s not a boring bean counter comes up again in Episode 8, which reminds him constantly that he is. The conflict between Matt’s aesthete sensibilities and the responsibility of Continental Studios to make money above and beyond any other consideration has kept him in limbo since the premiere, but it’s here in “The Golden Globes” where he finally descends into his own personal Hell.
And it’s the right event for it. Even in Hollywood circles, the Golden Globes is widely understood to be a self-congratulatory circle jerk where A-listers get together to drink a lot and pretend not to care about awards they already know they’ve won, often through bribes. The fact that Matt cares about any of this at all, knowing what he knows, is in itself the joke. But he does care, because he believes himself to be an artist on par with all those receiving statuettes, and for him, a personal mention is more important than the movie he championed winning its category.
Catherine O’Hara, Ike Barinholtz and Zoë Kravitz in The Studio | Image via Apple TV+
Everything about the evening seems designed to annoy Matt. For instance, Patty – whose job Matt took, you’ll recall – produced the film and will, as such, be awarded a Globe if it wins. Then, purely by chance, Adam Scott thanks Sal Saperstein during his acceptance speech since Sal let him crash on his couch when he first arrived in Hollywood, and Ramy Youssef, who’s hosting, latches onto the randomness of the bit. Before long, everyone is thanking Sal during their speeches, much to Matt’s visible annoyance.
As ever, Sal works as a great foil for Matt because he’s just happy to be there and clearly doesn’t care about the prestige. As we learned in “The War”, he has long since come to terms with the nature of his role, so now he’s just along for the ride. He plays up to the spotlight, sure, but only because he’s having a good time. But for Matt, it’s life and death. In a telling bathroom conversation with Ted Sarandos, he reveals that he thinks he’s just as much of an artist as the filmmakers. And he means it! The idea of contractually mandating a thank-you, which Sarandos apparently does because the talent would have no reason to thank him otherwise, never occurred to Matt because he earnestly believes that he deserves appreciation on his own merits.
Side note: It shows a surprising amount of goodwill that Netflix’s head honcho is willing to cameo on a show for a rival platform that is better than almost everything his own platform has put out recently.
The joke of The Studio Episode 8 isn’t that Matt ends up alone and upset despite his movie having won an award, but that he’s hyper-fixating on something that literally nobody else present – probably nobody else in the world, except arguably his mother – even noticed. Zoe Kravitz does thank him, but the mic cuts out so nobody hears his name. But it wasn’t the thanks he was coveting. It was the room full of people he admires, the community he believes himself to be a part of, hearing the thanks. The message is clear enough. In a facile world of flesh-pressing and boot-licking and exaggerated pretense, where everyone pretends not to care about the things they most care about and pretends to care deeply about the things that don’t concern them at all, the best person to be is Sal Saperstein.
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