The Franchise is sinking

In the early years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, before Paul Rudd became the Avengers-reassembling darling of Avengers: Endgame (to ignominious ends), Ant-Man’s role in the MCU seemed tenuous. For starters, the production of the character’s 2015 film was a broken home, with Marvel Studios replacing Edgar Wright with the more pliable Yes Man director Peyton Reed. Plus, there was no overcoming the smallness of Ant-Man after Marvel’s gargantuan Phase 2 capper Avengers: Age Of Ultron. As a troubled production and a crucial bridge between Phases, Reed’s mini-movie needed a boost. A ringer. So Marvel hit the cameo button.  

Thus Ant-Man tapped the brakes halfway through its runtime to accommodate Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson, a.k.a. The Falcon, for a three-minute fight scene cameo that may or may not have played a tiny part in the movie’s modestly successful box-office returns. Regardless of The Falcon’s overall contribution to Ant-Man, the movie’s producers were undoubtedly grateful for the lifeline Mackie’s character brought to the production. The future Captain America gave Ant-Man an air of Avengers-level legitimacy. Tecto can only dream of that kind of goodwill.

Of course, this being The Franchise, Jon Brown’s wearying and increasingly predictable send-up of the superhero-industrial complex, its cameo is another disaster for Tecto: Eye Of The Storm. As the degraded production enters day 65 of its ill-fated 117-day shoot, Daniel (Hamish Patel) musters the meager bit of enthusiasm left within him to utter the dread C-word—for Maximum Studios has deemed today Cameo Day. Yet, as it is with every dramatic development in The Franchise, the monkey’s paw giveth to the woe of all. Instead of Many Man joining the set of Tecto, Maximum has sent over a second-stringer hostile to Tecto’s success.

Enter The Gurgler, played by Kyle, a smarmy, vicious, unappealing actor portrayed by the vastly less unsettling comedian Nick Kroll. Many Man was meant to be a lifeline for Tecto and a branch to Maximum’s wider universe—think Ant-Man but, y’know, ironic. However, with reshoots on Many Man 2 locking up its star, Daniel and his perpetually flummoxed director Eric (Daniel Brühl) have to make do with The Gurgler, so named for his ability to hawk up toxic loogies (“throat-based proton blobs,” according to canon, a solid metaphor for The Franchise’s acidic dialogue if there ever was one).

With the advent of Kyle, Adam’s (Billy Magnussen) spiraling self-image takes another devastating blow. He’s spotted in the early hours using a dodgy solution drip meant to make his baby blues even bluer. (Adam is competing with the higher-paid and more well-known Many Man, after all.) But when he catches a glimpse of The Gurgler in all his dodgy green glory, all Adam sees is red. But he dares not protest, as Anita (Aya Cash), the producer trying and failing to keep Tecto on the rails, says that if Maximum’s executive blunt object Pat (Darren Goldstein) orders Eric to shoot The Gurgler, then everyone must “pre-vis” their happy faces and collectively kiss Gurgler’s verdant tush. So they do. And Adam, bless him, does his best to make Kyle feel welcome, perhaps because he’s too dim to recall their rocky history together on a little sitcom called Brad & Butter.

Kyle comes to the Tecto flanked by his lawyer, manager, assistant, and agent. What purpose do they serve? Maybe they’re around to bolster Kyle’s self-confidence onset, or perhaps they’re here to keep him in check, as Kyle’s disturbing behavior further into the episode suggests. Either way, any hopes that Kyle might contribute some positive vibes to Tecto are nipped in the bud early on: The cadence of his visit is adversarial. As it happens, Kyle has nurtured a grudge against his former co-star since his heavier Butter days when hunky Adam ditched the fledgling show to pursue a movie career. Kyle exploits this cameo to take petty revenge on Adam, with the unexpected side effect of his animus being the inevitable unraveling of Eric, our German auteur. More on that in a bit.

It makes a sick sort of sense that Kyle would get along with Peter (Richard E. Grant), the sexist/racist stage actor whose personal hate-on for Adam can only be described as fiendish. “You have excellent energy!” Peter says, shaking Kyle’s hand, establishing the only productive team-up Tecto will see on this ignominious Cameo Day. With introductions out of the way, we finally move on to the big crossover scene, which concerns the Reality Crystal, an Eric-contrived subtextual McGuffin. “[It’s] Adam’s cosmic butt-plug!” Kyle squeals. Eric is unamused: “This is reality—it’s the realest thing in my movie. Maybe in any movie,” he says to Adam, who appears mesmerized by the thing.

I appreciate the sincerity with which Magnussen portrays Adam, this struggling B-lister who foolishly hitched his fortunes to a big superhero picture, expecting glory and receiving misery. His frayed performance lends a tragic bent to the short-sighted choices his character makes to stay upbeat: those wool-gathering steroids, the blue toxic eyedrops, the long stretches of isolation in his trailer. Every agonized scene with Adam is framed as a cry for help, though how any of that’s supposed to be funny eludes me. If there’s a victim to be found on The Franchise, it’s not the death of film culture at the hands of cookie-cutter superhero fare; it’s the emotionally vulnerable performers who invest far more of themselves into their projects than these projects will ever invest into them. 

One aspect of the show we haven’t discussed yet is the cheery, try-hard presence of Steph (Jessica Hynes), whose sexual harassment of the poor Fish/Mullosk Man extra (Justin Edwards) last week belied a simmering romantic interest. This week, we discover this extra, Rufus, is engaged to be married. And while I’m sure Steph mourns this revelation, the more pressing issue is that Maximum requires a full body cast from Rufus, requiring him to be shaved head to toe. Naturally, Rufus prefers to keep his hair for the big day. Aiming for a semblance of decency, Eric allows Jules a reprieve from the shaving, declaring, “I want my set to run on positive vibes!” It’s a noble sentiment that Daniel silently resents. Today is not going to end well. 

How could it? With Kyle going rogue and delivering the Reality Crystal to Centurious 2 for covertly scummy reasons, Eric’s positive vibes are evaporating in real time. (For the record, Kyle stashed the crystal in his pants. Is this a Freudian attempt to thwart Adam?) 

But the Reality Dilemma will have to wait for now, as we return once again to Adam’s trailer, where the actor, pacing and stammering, implores Steph to inject some banter into his scenes with The Gurgler in a misguided attempt to pay Kyle back for a bit of off-screen “non-consensual improv” that involved his lunch. (As we didn’t see this scene, your guess is as good as mine.) Despite quietly mourning her crush on Rufus, Steph still has limitless encouragement to give. She’s happy to oblige, teasing, “I’m going to fill your head so full of jokes, they’re going to call you… um….” (Speaking of improv, was this scene that? Because it was dreadful.)

Anyway, Kyle’s disastrous cameo—and they haven’t even shot a single scene yet!—forces Daniel, Anita, and Eric to hop in a golf cart and speed over to Centurios 2 to plead with Pat for another actor. At least we get a glimpse of how a real Maximum tentpole is run, ruled by “Uncle Pat’s Fun Stick,” an inflatable baseball bat he gleefully brandishes to his beleaguered Tecto crew. “Who wants to take a swing at me?” Pat chirps, prompting Dag, who loves a good ill-advised swipe, to bop Pat good on his capped dome. “I’ll remember you now,” Pat says, with the tone of one who’s discovered a new enemy.

While at Centurios, we learn that Xan Van Dusen, Maximum’s golden goose director, has overspent on budget, yet Pat’s surprisingly upbeat about it. I detect fear wafting from the generally blustery Pat as he tries to keep the peace on Maximum’s biggest project while Tecto devolves into what Anita aptly calls a “refugee camp for displaced IP.” (Is a reckoning with the mysterious, Feige-coded Shane in the offing?) Another twist: Xan has plans to feature the Reality Crystal in Centurios 2, set to premiere before Eric’s film. And Tecto? The film is stuck with Kyle. “Sometimes you have to suck shit!” Anita tells Daniel. 

Back on the Tecto set, we witness the tragicomic demise of Steph and Adam’s improvisational attempts to thwart Kyle. “I’ve harvested some joke-onium,” she chirps, to which Adam desperately counters, “Joke me out!” But Steph’s punchlines—”Well, that went well!” and “Said no one ever!” (plus a borrowed gem from her YA novel, “Cat got your tongue? Or is it in your throat?”) can’t compete with Kyle, who has spent years improvising after Adam abandoned their sitcom all those years ago. In the episode’s liveliest scene (Kroll and Magnussen rock it here), Kyle takes Steph’s “Said no one ever” and crams it down Adam’s throat with a few hard truths about his position in the Maximum hierarchy. The other Centurions call Adam “sweaty” and say he’s missing that crucial “five percent” that would make him an A-lister. Brutal.

Eric observes this scene with dead eyes, sapped of any semblance of leadership or artistic integrity. Think about the compromises he’s made for Tecto since the premiere: the jettisoning of the Moss Men, that “Stick Of Maximum Potency” kerfuffle, the “Invisible Jackhammer” bit. Then he discovers that Centurios 2 has used all the glittery paint in Europe and that his even bigger Reality Crystal—his reprisal against Maximum—looks like a depressed block of black nothing. How many indignities should an artist such as he endure? Maximum twists the knife even deeper. Centurios has also cleaned out Tecto’s craft-services swordfish. Would Eric be happy choking down some cod instead? 

As Eric speeds the golf cart back to Centuros 2 with his answer, and we reach the halfway point of The Franchise, a sad truth is beginning to take shape: Should Tecto: Eye Of The Storm ever see the inside of a movie theater, the director’s credit likely won’t say “Eric Bouchard.” And should Tecto get a Yes Man of its own, or an “Alan Smithee,” at least Eric will return to his sphere of topical arthouse fare with a few stories to share with Chris Nolan, his cherished pen pal. 

Stray observations

• • Did anyone else totally buy Adam’s line read during the “Reality Crystal” scene? “A crystal blacker than a million black holes—the Reality Crystal.” I think Billy Magnussen is ready for prime time. My dork fan casting: Booster Gold. 
• • “Please don’t sabotage my movie,” Eric pleads. Not to sound like Dag, but it’s a bit late for that, innit?
• • If we took plot beats in The Franchise seriously or were otherwise invested in its onset politics, one might wonder why the studio is burning so much cash to make a dud like Tecto instead of nuking it Sisters Squad-style. Perhaps the series has a Batgirl-tinted tax evasion joke waiting in the wings. (I doubt it.)
• • I enjoyed Tom and Benji, Tecto’s deadpan “gag writers,” here to punch up Tecto and Gargler’s big crossover scene while looking like they haven’t laughed in decades. 
• • “Someday, all of this will be mine!” Bryson says of the Centurios 2 set within earshot of Daniel. I’m telling you, guys, Bryson’s shady. 
• • Another opportunity for Pat to show his plebian streak rears its head this week: Anita evokes Ingmar Bergman, so Pat, his face a mask of confusion, asks: “Berg-Man? Which one is that, the iceberg guy?” 
• • Questions on the way out: Do you think Dag has anything to fear from Pat, or is his bark worse than his bite? Is Eric about to be swapped out for a Maximum Yes Man? Was that guy on the Centurios set the Maximum Nick Fury? Fire away in the comments.