The Studio Recap: No One Thanks the Bean Counter

Apart from the return of Kool-Aid: The Movie in the previous episode, this first season of The Studio has largely avoided serialized storytelling. Or has it?

“The Golden Globes” often plays like a sequel to the show’s sixth episode, “The Pediatric Oncologist,” in that it continues what appears to be the story of Matt’s ongoing identity crisis and mounting sense of insignificance.

There are still two episodes left in the season, but so far, the series has created a sense that Matt’s tenure, which is filled with misadventures, is going pretty well. Sure, he made Martin Scorsese cry, ruined Sarah Polley’s oner, and will probably have to think twice about working with Olivia Wilde again.

But Continental Pictures’ Remick era, at the very least, seems not to be an outright disaster. And, as “The Golden Globes” opens, Matt’s helped shepherd at least one film of note into awards season: the Zoë Kravitz–directed Open.

So why does he feel so tiny? There’s probably a complex, big-picture answer to this question that could be teased out via therapy, but the most immediate answer is he’s not sure Kravitz will thank him if she wins.

There’s a lot riding on this for Seth. His mom (voiced by Rhea Perlman) will be watching, and she’s already disappointed to learn that studio execs can’t be nominated. But Matt has promised her that Kravitz will thank him.

And if she doesn’t, his mom will be disappointed. And, to be clear, she’s already pretty disappointed in her boy who, she reminds him, has no wife and no kids. But a thank-you on national television? That might make him look like a success in his mother’s eyes.

It goes without saying, however, that Patty will be thanked if Kravitz wins. In fact, Kravitz can thank her directly since she’ll be on the stage with her. “As a producer,” she tells Matt, “I can actually win.

I can go up onstage, take home a statue, and become Hollywood immortal.” These possibilities were closed to her as a studio head. And now they’re closed to Matt.

That clearly bothers him, but at least he has a better seat than Sal, who fears he’s been placed in the back with the “TV people.”

But at least Sal gets to reunite with Adam Scott, who embraces him and fondly recalls sleeping on Sal’s couch when he first arrived in Hollywood.

This decades-old favor will pay off in a big way for Sal and make an already-humiliating evening even more of a bummer of Matt, though neither of them realizes this yet.

In the meantime, Matt has other worries. Mitch (David Krumholtz), the agent whose many jokes about their shared Jewish heritage make Sal uncomfortable, wants to know why Matt and Continental haven’t closed the deal on Kravitz’s next movie, Blackwing, a vampire thriller that sounds far removed from the acclaimed Open.

(We don’t learn much about that movie, but it’s competing in the Comedy/Musical category.) Matt feels like his standing offer is good enough. Mitch does not. This exchange, too, will have consequences.

The evening begins with a group of winners profusely and wittily thanking Netflix head Ted Sarandos, which seems to bode well for Matt’s own chances of being thanked.

But the evening has a dark undercurrent to it. Previously, Patty explained to Matt that they need to allow influencers on the red carpet because if the short-attention-span generation with whom they connect doesn’t start going to movies, they’re in big trouble. Ramy Youssef, the night’s host, underscores this with a joke about how he feels he has to go to movies or else “the whole thing’s gonna fall apart.”

That’s a big worry for Matt in the long run, but tonight he’s mostly worried about Kravitz thanking him. Talking privately with Patty (after fielding a call from his mom telling him to pass on some hairstyle advice to Jennifer Lawrence), he expects her to reassure him that it’s no big deal whether Kravitz thanks him or not.

She can’t do this. Getting thanked? “That’s everything. […] Without a thank-you, you basically do not exist.” So Matt lays it all out for her: He needs to be thanked. He’s going to ask Kravitz to thank him. This, in Patty’s view, is “pathetic.”

Matt seems to accept this judgment, but he’s not letting go.

Sal’s having a bad night, too. He’s been seated with “a bunch of Dutch incels” behind a horror series that includes a guy named “Joop.”

“However bad your night’s going, mine’s fucking worse,” Sal reassures him. That, however, is about to change. After Anthony Starr and Erin Moriarty, stars of The Boys, announce Scott as a winner, the flummoxed star rattles off a bunch of thanks (including one for Sarandos) and then closes with a tearful thanks for Sal.

Sal plays into the moment. Youssef makes a joke of it. And it seems like Sal’s moment in the spotlight, thrilling as it is, is over. “I feel like I’m on cocaine,” he tells Matt and Kravitz. “So I’m going to do a little bit of cocaine and see what happens!”

What immediately happens is an awkward conversation between Matt and Kravitz about whom she’s going to thank. She modestly responds that she hasn’t given it much thought before Patty attempts to defuse the moment by whisking Kravitz off for a selfie with Sylvester Stallone.

Matt chats with Scott, and it seems like the evening is about to press on as it usually does until Quinta Brunson keeps the joke going by thanking Sal, whom she’s never met, in her acceptance speech.

This does not sit well with Matt, who now feels like he has to be thanked if he didn’t feel that way before. So he seeks out Gabby (Lisa Gilroy), Kravitz’s publicist, who does her best to be diplomatic about Matt’s chances of being thanked before telling him that Kravitz has no plans of thanking him.

Shortly after Jean Smart keeps the gag going by thanking Sal from the stage, Matt slinks backstage in a desperate attempt to get his name added to Kravitz’s speech.

Not only is he caught, he’s caught by Kravitz. But instead of shrinking into a tiny ball and rolling away, he tries to explain why it matters to him that he be thanked.

In turn, Kravitz drops the false modesty act and reveals how carefully she’s choreographed every beat of her acceptance speech and that none of those beats includes him. This sends Matt into the depths of despair even before he bumps into Mitch, who tells him how mad Kravitz is, adding, “She will never work with Jew again!”

In response, Matt caves, offering her all the money she asked for to make Blackwing at Continental. This solves one crisis, but not the mounting crisis (or “crisis”) of Sal getting thanked from the stage, with Aaron Sorkin contributing to the trend.

Then, standing next to Sarandos at a urinal, Matt learns a secret: Netflix award winners are contractually obligated to thank him. This reassures Matt, but only briefly. Continuing, Sarandos adds, “Otherwise, why in the world would they possibly thank us?

We’re bean counters. They’re artists.” And there it is. Matt thinks of himself as an artist, not a bean counter. And he cannot think of himself any other way. A thank-you is the smallest possible affirmation that he’s not fundamentally wrong about who he is, and he cannot even get that.

It’s one thing for a bunch of doctors to think what he does is fundamentally silly. It’s another thing entirely for those in his own industry to see him as anything but the creative force he believes himself to be.

Then, somehow, it gets worse. After Zack Snyder announces Open as the winner (after another Sal joke), Kravitz, Patty, and the rest of Team Open take the stage. Kravitz delivers a lovely (and well-rehearsed) speech. Patty has to excuse herself to puke after Kravitz thanks her.

Sal gets a shout-out and then, with a lot of fanfare, she builds up to what seems will be an extremely nice moment of thanks for Matt. And it is! Except the music playing her off the stage drowns out his name!

Afterward, all Matt can do is call his mom and listen to her disappointment. As Sal and Scott head off to party with Jimmy Kimmel, Mitch and Kravitz let him know that they’ll be making Blackwing together and Kravitz explains what happened and gives him a sincere thanks in person.

It’s a nice moment. Or it would be, if Sarandos’s words weren’t still in Matt’s head. “At the end of the day,” he tells Kravitz, “you’re the artist and I’m just a bean counter.” She could disagree, but she doesn’t.

After trading a few words with Patty, Matt heads home. Sensing his mood, Matt’s limo driver asks if his movie lost. “No,” Matt tells him. “It won.”

• If you’re at all sympathetic to Matt — and this series has mostly made it pretty easy to be on his side, whatever his foibles — this is both The Studio’s saddest episode and its most frustrating.

Sad because Matt gets what he claims to want, and what he probably should want, when Open wins. It is, by all appearances, a project with integrity that would not have been made if Matt had not personally championed it.

But it’s not enough, and nothing ever will be until he gets personal recognition (and that’s a “maybe” even then). The question isn’t whether or not Matt is an artist. The question is whether or not he can live without being told he’s an artist, and a great one at that.

• It feels like we should know more about why Sylvester Stallone has Patty’s horse, Buttercup.

• “I remember when the red carpet for the Golden Globe actually stood for something,” may be the episode’s funniest line. It also feels like a litmus test for how you look at Matt. Is he sincere? It kind of sounds like he’s sincere.