The Franchise wraps up with a squishy finale

I have to hand it to The Franchise: Due to the hours I’ve spent watching these unlikable characters trudge through their ruts of workplace malaise and anxiety, I’ve become somewhat invested in the failure of Tecto: Eye Of The Storm. Maybe that was showrunner Jon Brown’s gambit all along: to bludgeon us with miserable snark to the point that we embraced the schadenfreude of seeing their worst efforts amount to professional and personal catastrophes. 

Imagine my bewilderment this week when Brown’s season finale ended on a happy note for nearly everyone involved with Tecto, save for its director, Eric (Daniel Bruhl), and overburdened VFX artist, Dave (George Fouracres). I’ll come back to them. For now, I’d like to grasp (if not appreciate) this reversal of fortune for the heretofore unsung champion of Tecto, 1st AD Daniel Kumar (Himesh Patel), who rescues this superhero underdog from studio euthanasia with a last-minute appeal to Maximum Studios’ mysterious Kevin Feige surrogate, Shane. Who knew a tonal pivot was key to rescuing an entire franchise? 

Putting on my Real-World Hat for a moment, there is a parallel between Warner Bros. Discovery and Daniel’s tectonic shift in tone that’s worth exploring. Recall that the dismal critical reaction to Man Of Steel and especially Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice forced a sweaty WB to change the cadence of Justice League mid-production, swapping directors, saturating the colors, hacking down its runtime, and tossing in jokes wherever possible. The result was a disaster that nearly killed the DC franchise until the more tonally consistent Aquaman swam in and put WB’s heroic adaptations on life support. If Justice League is the gauge by which we measure the future of Tecto, then this week’s cliffhanger suddenly becomes appropriately ominous—and gives some shape to the “Kumar Cut” jokes that Daniel keeps dropping.

Then again, I might be giving The Franchise too much credit. For one, it’s been careful not to cast shade at its WBD overlords, instead directing its bile for cape tentpole filmmaking at competitor Marvel Studios, from which Maximum is derived. And its dusty jokes about Marvel’s “women problem,” its hyper-fixation on San Diego Comic-Con (which gets a reprise this week), and “superhero fatigue” feel like gripes pulled from r/Marvel a decade ago, making them safe to mock. Any resemblance to people or entities alive or dead is probably coincidental. After all, Tecto isn’t a team-up movie, Eric isn’t Zack Snyder, and Daniel certainly isn’t Joss Whedon. He’s just a former comic fan who has a kid and wants his work to have value.

And if Daniel has to hijack Eric’s movie once again to save it from the German auteur’s subversive antics and Maximum’s interference, so be it. Take the macro view of Tecto’s production: Nearly every change Daniel has brought to the movie seems to make it better, right? Remember, he ditched The Eye’s (Richard E. Grant) supernova monologue for a practical explosion, impressing Christopher Nolan enough to share waffles with Dag (Lolly Adefope). And sure, Dag blew up the wrong Armenian bridge under Daniel’s direction, but watching her dread potential imprisonment for most of the finale felt like punishment enough for everyone. The point is that Daniel’s vision for Tecto aligns more with Maximum’s content mill structure, but he also wants to make it an enjoyable experience. What’s the harm if the product Maximum cranks out also happens to be fun? 

Ask Eric. His volatile artistic temperament has been wrong for Tecto and disruptive to shooting, and it’s finally pushed every department in his crew to rebel. Check the length of that shoelace Eric pulled from his mouthful of craft-services porridge. (“It’s used instead of bay leaves,” Daniel quips, not missing a beat.) “I have a funny feeling things are happening behind my back,” Eric says to Daniel, who feigns a battery of “no no nos” to little effect. Oops: In his mad scramble to save the movie, Daniel clumsily reveals his subterfuge, setting the tone for today’s shoot in a small cavern where Peter (Grant) is to have his big death scene. Catharsis comes for the core unit of Tecto: Eric knows Daniel is undermining him and vents his fury in typical dramatic fashion.  

And who else would go berserk on Tecto but Dave, that mentally exhausted effects maestro who maxed out his creative stores episodes ago? He appeared to be hanging by a thread last week when he accidentally showed Eric and Daniel his pre-vizzed “work in progress,” a loop of him slamming his head into a laptop over and over again. This week, Daniel’s secret first-act switcheroo—establishing the movie’s tone to be more in line with the comics—has robbed Dave of his one day off. Naturally, he snaps, with the subsequent lockdown confining Eric, Daniel, Peter, Adam, Dag, and Anita in the cavern set. Dave’s demand: to change the film’s title to honor his daughter, Emily: Eye Of The Storm. Daniel, rescuing again, pretends to agree, while Eric, oblivious to his ruse, indulges another ill-advised tirade.

I’m mixed on this sequence. Visually, it resembles hell; You can feel the heat from the cave’s dim amber lighting and almost smell the subtextual brimstone. There’s danger outside with Dave running amok with a knife (or rather, a pen). And Peter had just wrapped shooting for himself. The mood is purgatorial. Eric would love it. Here’s my problem: The sequence should, by rights, be ground zero for a Caligula-esque orgy of grievances, one final eruption of Tecto enmity. Instead, each player sits in their corner. Dag riffs about her seemingly imminent extradition to Armenia, Adam prattles on about his “cusping” article in GQ, Peter mutters darkly to himself (Bryan Singer just passed on him), and Anita does nothing. (Why does The Franchise continue to forsake Aya Cash?) 

Still, the scene showcases a bitter and consequential exchange between the director and his 1st AD. Eric is fed up with Daniel’s subversions, while Daniel is just fed up. “I thought you were going to punch him!” Dag says, to which Daniel gently replies: “What? And quit show business?” (The Franchise often fumbles its punchlines, but when they land, as Daniel’s line does here, they can be brilliant.) With glops of The Eye’s purple brains smeared all over him, applied in a fit of rage by Eric, Dan measures his next steps as Tecto totters on the edge of oblivion. (Now that we’re talking: Edge Of Oblivion is not a bad subtitle for Tecto 2.)

Of all people, Pat (Darren Goldstein) saves the day. As it happens, Many Man, the character originally meant to cameo in Tecto that was replaced at the last minute by The Gurgler (Nick Kroll), was played by a sex pest who’s just been outed via Rolling Stone. This revelation puts Centurios 2 in a death spiral, which pushes Tecto to full-on summer tentpole status. What was once a losing proposition for Maximum Studios is now its top priority, with triple the budget and double the production window (making Day 100 technically Day 50). The squeeze, as Pat puts it, starts now. The first step is getting rid of Eric. 

Meager hopes crushed by disaster and disappointment: That’s been The Franchise’s tempo all season long. These hugs and smiles over Pat’s SDCC update should feel like a grim prelude to the production hardship and calamities yet to come—the setup before the punchline, say—so why don’t they? The problem with this squishy finale is plain to see: If season two never materializes, the show just compromised its cynical ethos for the sake of a left-field happy ending. Right or wrong, The Franchise has always committed to bitterness and snark. Flipping the script to tee up future seasons is a level of pandering worthy of Maximum. 

Maybe this is just The Franchise’s latest contemptible twist. Should there be a season two, and Daniel returns for more creative compromises and studio horseshit after this last-minute career rescue, then the series will have remained true to its bitter spirit, a clear and significant success for a series overburdened by character vagaries and satirical bile. So begins the waiting game. Season two or no? Crappy happy ending or a harbinger of even more cape-movie carnage to come? I suppose that’s the challenge of playing the long game in an industry that fears risk: We may never find out. 

Stray observations

• • “My hands are forming into claws from too much laptop.” 
• • There was no big Shane reveal this week. I feel cheated. Plus, his sudden sickness robbed us of more time with Isaac Powell’s Bryson, who was my second favorite character on the show. Bryson’s chipper passive aggression and omnipresent cap-and-backpack number were always appreciated. 
• • As to my favorite Franchise fiend, I will miss Richard E. Grant’s Peter the most. He looked fabulous in lipstick and brought some sharply-honed bawdiness to a series generally saddled with moping and stupidity. My big studio note: Should The Franchise get a season two, the focus should shift to Peter. He’s the diva The Franchise didn’t deserve but desperately needed. 
• • Season MVP goes to Himesh Patel’s Daniel, who most closely resembled a human being among a cast of archetypes. His weariness belied a furnace of ambition that burned some (Dave, the Armenian whiskered bat) and boosted others (Dag, Adam, Anita). I hope he gets his pint in the shower and a few moments to watch the football match with his kid. He’ll need the recharge. 
• • What material is left for a potential season two of The Franchise? A.I., I suppose. (Dag alludes to it this week.) I also guess cancellation is in the air due to Many Man’s offscreen malfeasances. (Could Peter finally meet the ax? Who could wield it against him?) Oh god, what would The Franchise do with the multiverse? Do I want to know?