The Franchise

Scene 110: Baptism of Fire

Season 1

Episode 6

Editor’s Rating

3 stars

***

Photo: Colin Hutton/HBO

Mutiny threatens a Tecto night shoot in the latest episode of The Franchise, which feels like the most inside baseball episode of the series yet, and is fun enough as long as you have a passing interest in Hollywood’s inner workings. (Those with less curiosity as to how the sausage is made will probably just find it a bit boring, but then I’d wonder why you’re watching The Franchise at all.) It’s enjoyable as a peak behind the scenes of how an especially calamitous production can play out when morale has reached its nadir, the below-the-line folk are threatening to down tools, and the egotistical director has mentally closed up shop. On balance, I have come to accept that while The Franchise isn’t especially funny, it’s a better way to pass a half-hour than watching the rote first act of most modern superhero movies, and that probably counts for something.

I’ve argued since the beginning of the series, basically, that Daniel Brühl is by far and away the standout in the cast. The show usually suffers without his presence — especially given Eric is one of three, maybe four characters with an interesting arc, such that you’re invested in what he’s going to do next. He’s less consequential in this episode, parked to one side with a case of the hiccups, brought about by glugging down a load of water too quickly (and a little creative anxiety).

Eric’s other source of stress? His friend Christopher Nolan, who Eric name dropped in a previous episode, is hitting up the studio for a recce, and word is that he’s going to swing by Tecto. Cue the shrinking of Eric’s directorial dick: he worries that the scene scheduled for the evening’s shoot, featuring an enormous gas-powered fireball, will pale in comparison to the practical firestorm of Oppenheimer’s nuke test. Eric has essentially gone for a piss at the urinal, peaked over at Nolan’s humongous studio-schlong, and cowered off to the stalls.

On the subject of dick jokes, which The Franchise really enjoys slapping on the table: the ever HR-averse Peter has a manhood problem of his own in the form of a perma-stiffy that may threaten the shoot. (Daniel’s solution: to massage out Peter’s bulge in post effects.) In another HR violation that should probably get Peter fired (or cancelled, god willing — as Peter says: “Every day is a Saturday if you’re cancelled”) he enlists Dag in some very intimate assistant work, asking her to fix an app that is connected to his wife’s vibrator. Dag has emerged as a shrewd operator, endearing herself to all of Tecto’s power brokers, and indeed anyone that floats through who could advance her career; in a world wherein your colleagues will happily smile in your face while they stick the dagger in, it helps that she is down to Earth and, fundamentally, nice. (A healthy dose of deference, such as she shows one Chris Nolan at the end of the episode, hardly goes amiss, too.)

This is also the first episode that I’ve noticed The Franchise trying to give Isaac Powell’s Bryson a little welcome color — who is now wearing an eyepatch after he was so overloaded with work that he forgot to remove a contact lens and it became fused to his eyeball. (Fellow blinds will know how terrible a time you’ll have falling asleep wearing contact lenses, let alone going an entire month.) I still don’t feel like I care all that much about any of the tertiary characters because they are only afforded slivers of development and are sort of uninteresting — for one example, Steph’s will-they won’t-they arc with the Mollusk Man is a little boring, although that is offset by the fact that Jessica Hynes plays her, and I’m a huge Spaced fan — but I think, of the lot, Bryson is the most endearing. We can all relate to a beleaguered, chronically overworked PA exploited by a system that relies on individual passion and goodwill to function, right? (It also helps that Powell is a fun screen presence.)

Such is why Daniel is a compelling hero to get behind, too, because he cares a lot about his job and we’d like to see him succeed. A chance he is afforded when he successfully marshals the night shoot — which swiftly threatens to fall apart at the seams, not least thanks to Pat winning the crew raffle set up to bolster morale — in Eric’s absence, who disappears to his trailer after the threat of insurrection reaches fever pitch. It all falls to Daniel to ensure that the fireball scene gets shot.

When Eric writes a new monologue for Peter to learn, and read, at the very last minute (good try!) Daniel makes the executive decision to bin it and go ahead with the shoot, cranking the gas up to 11. By this point, we’re conditioned to expect disaster since nothing has really gone Daniel’s way up to this point — not without healthy resistance, at least — but it’s … perfect; the first scene in the entire production that everyone on set agrees was a stroke of brilliance.

Eric gets the credit, of course. He’s the genius. But maybe this is the rare win that Daniel needs to survive.

Post-Credit Scenes

• My scene of the week comes early in the episode, when Pat is recording different versions of a line to be spliced into the making-of documentary that will end up on the Tecto Blu-ray. “Sparks will fly!” / “Sparks. Will. Fly.” / “[monotone] Sparks will fly.” / “Sparks will fly!”

• Also had a good laugh at Bryson’s phone call with his mom, who bought him V-Bucks for his birthday. My only question is when Bryson would ever get the time to actually play Fortnite.

• If we were to organise the characters of The Franchise into a power ranking right now, we’d probably have Dag and Daniel jostling it out for the top spot — the latter for demonstrating his directorial bonafides with the night shoot, and Dag for her personable knack at schmoozing the studio big wigs. How will that bear out by the end? With two episodes to wrap up, I can only imagine that the movie will squeak through just barely, and they’ll come away reasonably unscathed. But maybe it’ll just blow up like a big ‘ol fireball.

• From a distance, if you squint, the Christopher Nolan and Tom Cruise stand-ins do kind of look like them. Good for them!