June 26, 2025 • 10 mins
🎭😂 In this episode of The Rank Podcast, John returns to his Sitcom Rankings with a review of the 2025 comedy series The Studio, starring Seth Rogen. This week, he breaks down Episode 7 – “Casting”, where the writers’ room descends into chaos as the team struggles to cast the perfect lead for their show-within-a-show.
From ego-fueled debates and bizarre audition tapes to surprise celebrity cameos, “Casting” delivers a sharp and hilarious look at the behind-the-scenes drama of television production. John explores how the episode balances industry satire with laugh-out-loud moments, and whether it hits the comedic mark or misses the part entirely.
Does “Casting” earn a call-back in John's Sitcom Rankings? Tune in to find out!
E-mail your fan questions, comments, and suggestions to TheRankwithJohnandZac@protonmail.com.
Support the show by becoming a patron at Patreon.com/TheRankPodcast.
For up-to-date rankings, check out The Rank's website at TheRankwithJohnandZac.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So for this episode, the studio decided to satirize, well,
wokeness, I guess. That being said, I actually
think it's a good thing that they essentially stop and ask
themselves, did we just do something racist?
We might actually all benefit asa society if we all stopped and
asked ourselves that question. Sometimes, like a little soapbox
moment here. But I think the bigger issue is
(00:20):
automatically denying your own racism.
I think we've all got it at least a little bit, and what we
need to do is introspection instead of denial.
Anyway, too serious a note for asitcom probably.
I'm always saying that this should be more funny, and here I
am talking about inherent racism, so I'll be curious to
see if Antonio leaves this in. Please don't cancel it please.
(00:59):
Welcome back to another episode of the rank.
I'm John, and today we're going to be ranking another episode of
the studio. Now the premise of this whole
thing is to figure out what sitcom is the best of all time
by going through every episode and ranking them and then
averaging the rankings to figureout which series is best
overall. Now, if you're enjoying these
episodes or if you're just a fanof the studio and enjoy
(01:20):
consuming content about it, please subscribe and or follow
like the episodes and comment ore-mail your questions and
suggestions and all that jazz jazz.
Please also consider becoming a patron on our
patreonpage@patreon.com/the Rankpodcast where you can get all of
our archived episodes. Now today we're ranking the 7th
episode of the first season of the studio titled Casting, which
(01:42):
was written by Alex Gregory and directed by Seth Rogen and Evan
Goldberg. And since this is a new series
and it's still fairly recent that it came out, I am going to
avoid spoilers if there could bea potential form.
So potential spoilers. All right, let's get into it,
starting with the potent notables.
So the cameos have become a staple of the show at this
point. And Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg
(02:04):
talked about the difficulty in setting these cameos up.
Rogan said, quote, getting people on board was one of the
biggest challenges we had for the first season.
We've called in all our favors many, many years ago.
We got everyone who was willing to do this stuff because we were
friends with them. We had a few of those left I
think. Then Evan added, quote, we know
we had to top ourselves, then top ourselves again and then
(02:24):
triple top ourselves this time, as is usually our best strategy.
And that was by far the hardest part of the show, delivering
those cameos. It was exhausting.
Every single day at lunch duringpre production, we had to go and
do a phone call with a differentcelebrity of some nature or the
filmmaker and it was really draining.
End Quote. They did a lot of work getting
these cameos for us, which is kind of fun.
(02:45):
In setting up to do the show, Evan and Seth wanted to create a
realistic version of Hollywood, which is a scary thought, one
where there were no more quote scumbags and egomaniacs here
than what you could find in finance, real estate dealings,
the construction is industry or manufacturing.
They're just more seen. They get this bad rap.
But most of the people in Hollywood are beautiful,
wonderful people who could have done anything else and chose to
(03:05):
do this because they love it, from the props master to the Pas
to the craft service producers to the actors.
So when we're showing the dirtier, shittier sides of the
industry, it doesn't feel like we're taking cheap potshots
because the whole thing is a love letter and one that we want
to be. Again, a realistic portrayal of
Hollywood, not a shined up one or a dirty End Quote.
O hopefully this isn't too realistic on what execs are like
(03:28):
in Hollywood. Seems like maybe it is, I don't
know. But anyway, those are the potent
notables. Let's go on to the episode
overview. So for this episode, the studio
decided to satirize, well, wokeness, I guess.
That being said, I actually think it's a good thing that
they essentially stop and ask themselves, did we just do
something racist? We might actually all benefit as
a society if we all stopped and asked ourselves that question
(03:51):
sometimes like a little soapbox moment here.
But I think the bigger issue is automatically denying your own
racism. I think we've all got it at
least a little bit. And what we need to do is
introspection instead of denial.Anyway, too serious a note for a
sitcom probably. I'm always saying that this
should be more funny in here. I am talking about inherent
racism, so I'll be curious to see if Antonio leaves this in.
(04:13):
Please don't cancel this. This was a really fun satire of
white people trying not to offend anybody and then
basically asking people of colorif they're offended, which is
both patronizing and also incredibly relatable.
I don't know what that says about about me, but I do find
that relatable in a good way. I think most white people do,
even if they don't want to admitit.
(04:34):
Besides the satire though, I kind of enjoyed the premise of
them casting a movie and talkingabout the attributes of their
casting choices, the ones that they like and the ones they
don't like and all that kind of stuff, and what what execs are
looking at for for casting. I thought that was a cool look
inside Hollywood. The one thing that they didn't
touch on during it though was the bankability of the actors
(04:55):
they were choosing. I would think that would weigh
heavily on casting decisions, especially for the leads, and I
would have liked to have seen that portrayed.
I just would have been curious to be like, this guy always
pulls X amount of dollars. Could this person really be in a
billion dollar movie and that kind of a thing?
I think that would have been funto see.
I'm attempting not to give any spoilers here, so I'm avoiding
saying that who they're choosingfor the leads, because I don't
(05:16):
know if that's a spoiler, really.
I mean, I don't know. Yeah, I'm just not going to say
it. So I'll be evasive and say that
the conundrum boiled down to them having a black man voice,
the kool-aid man, and that's where the snowball started, and
it rolled downhill and picked upa whole lot of snow as it went
down. So the show is definitely going
the route of Silicon Valley style aggravation.
Like the main characters just don't seem to be able to win and
(05:38):
then tend to make the wrong choices along the way.
The problem is that they're all fairly likable, so it would be
nice to see them get a win. Now.
I know conflict drives story andengagement, but has anyone ever
actually tested that? Like have they ever done a show
where shit just works out for characters you like?
I feel like I would enjoy watching that.
I would not. What good thing is going to
happen to him or her this week, you know?
(05:59):
And I don't mean the family sitcom style thing where there's
a problem, they solve it and there's a happy ending in every
episode, you know, like a teachable moment or whatever.
I mean like with these workplacestyle comedies, right?
Like what if some of the episodes shit just works out and
the movie does well and people are like, wow, you're doing a
really good job. Boy, does that sound boring.
You know, I say it out loud. I realize that's a more boring
(06:22):
show, I suppose, but I mean, damn, does it always have to be
strife anyway, That's not a spoiler by the way.
That's just the form Camila of this show.
If I if I told you it was a happy ending, that would be the
shocking spoiler. The frustrating ending should be
what you've come to expect. Also, just one more thing.
I like Katherine Hahn a lot. I think she's really funny.
However, this Maya character she's playing gets on my nerves.
(06:43):
I think she's probably supposed to, but I want to like her more
and the show just really won't let me.
All right, on that note, let's see how this episode ranked.
On to the rank A wank. So the rank is where I rank the
episode based on five categories, story, acting,
dialogue, episode coherence, andcharacter relatability.
I rank it on a scale of one to five, one being the worst, five
(07:04):
being the best. Then we have a laugh counter
where I tally up the amount of times that the episode made me
laugh out loud. One point per laugh out loud
gets added to the score. So the first category is story,
and I gave story A4. Story is good.
It's a little conceptual. It's a satire of the way we view
Hollywood's racial concerns. It does the satire well, but
again, it's more constantly so all right, let's go to acting,
(07:28):
which I also gave a four. The acting on this has been
really good and continues to be really good.
I actually thought Chase 2 wonders was the best actor in
this episode. She was she was really good.
Everyone else was good to reallygood.
Hence it's not a 5, but still really good like a 4 isn't bad.
You know, I feel like gotten used to giving these higher
rankings and whenever I give a four now it feels like I'm
(07:48):
shitting on it, but I'm not it'sa good score.
The next category is dialogue, which I gave a 4.85.
It didn't get me to laugh a ton,but the satire was really well
done. So when we get to my laugh
counter, it's going to bly the way I felt about this episode
because I really enjoyed it. I thought it was really well
done and well put together and it had me smiling quite a bit,
but it just didn't have that hammer punchline.
(08:11):
It didn't push me over the edge to laughter that you would maybe
expect it to. That being said, I barely
laughed more at this episode than any previous episode, so
the laughs that they did get from me were quite Hardy.
So let's go to the episode coherence category, which I gave
a four. Now this category has been
consistently the best category for the show, but because this
(08:33):
episode is more conceptual and less story driven, this was
probably the least coherent of the episodes.
And and it's not bad coherence, just that we were kind of all
going all over the place and just felt a little bit like they
wanted to do this satire and maybe didn't have it as fleshed
out as they would have liked or have had in the previous
episodes. Also, we don't really get a
conclusion here. Like what did they decide on
(08:55):
with the cast? I don't know.
So that's why not a 5. So let's go to character
relatability, which I did give afive.
I think this is really relatable.
It's especially relatable from awhite person's perspective,
which, you know, that's me. The concern about fence is
definitely out there. And I think sometimes we we
overthink it, which is also pretty relatable.
(09:15):
And I would imagine that the sort of annoyance from people of
color being asked whether something as offensive or not is
also relatable. That's just my supposition.
I don't know for sure. Anyway, let's go to my laugh
counter. And I had 9, which is really
low. I mean, 9 makes it sound like it
wasn't funny. It was funny.
(09:35):
It was a funny episode. I, when I finished it, I
thought, oh, this is going to have the best laugh counter I've
had. And it had nine.
And I was like, oh, I was expecting more.
Anyway, that puts the total for the episode at a 30.85.
And that makes it in. I'd watch it again.
And that puts the series averageat a 31.7, which means it
continues to be I'd watch it again.
(09:56):
So thanks for listening and or watching.
And if you'd like to see a list of our episode and series
rankings, you can do that on ourwebsite at the rank with John
and zach.com. Remember to subscribe, review
and comment. And please consider supporting
us on our Patreon site at patreon.com/the Rank podcast,
where you can get access to all of our archived episodes.
And I'll leave you with this. What did the suit say when Evan
and Seth asked what they thoughtof having an ice cube cameo?
(10:18):
Well, they probably said an ice cube like solid water Well, and
then when Seth and Evan remindedthem who ice cube is, they said,
Oh yeah, that's the worst joke I've ever heard in my entire
life. Why can't I say fucking?
(10:46):
It says episode here and for some reason I keep saying
fucking show episode you motherfucker.
English motherfucker.
So for this episode, the studio decided to satirize, well,
wokeness, I guess. That being said, I actually
think it's a good thing that they essentially stop and ask
themselves, did we just do something racist?
We might actually all benefit asa society if we all stopped and
asked ourselves that question. Sometimes, like a little soapbox
moment here. But I think the bigger issue is
(00:20):
automatically denying your own racism.
I think we've all got it at least a little bit, and what we
need to do is introspection instead of denial.
Anyway, too serious a note for asitcom probably.
I'm always saying that this should be more funny, and here I
am talking about inherent racism, so I'll be curious to
see if Antonio leaves this in. Please don't cancel it please.
(00:59):
Welcome back to another episode of the rank.
I'm John, and today we're going to be ranking another episode of
the studio. Now the premise of this whole
thing is to figure out what sitcom is the best of all time
by going through every episode and ranking them and then
averaging the rankings to figureout which series is best
overall. Now, if you're enjoying these
episodes or if you're just a fanof the studio and enjoy
(01:20):
consuming content about it, please subscribe and or follow
like the episodes and comment ore-mail your questions and
suggestions and all that jazz jazz.
Please also consider becoming a patron on our
patreonpage@patreon.com/the Rankpodcast where you can get all of
our archived episodes. Now today we're ranking the 7th
episode of the first season of the studio titled Casting, which
(01:42):
was written by Alex Gregory and directed by Seth Rogen and Evan
Goldberg. And since this is a new series
and it's still fairly recent that it came out, I am going to
avoid spoilers if there could bea potential form.
So potential spoilers. All right, let's get into it,
starting with the potent notables.
So the cameos have become a staple of the show at this
point. And Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg
(02:04):
talked about the difficulty in setting these cameos up.
Rogan said, quote, getting people on board was one of the
biggest challenges we had for the first season.
We've called in all our favors many, many years ago.
We got everyone who was willing to do this stuff because we were
friends with them. We had a few of those left I
think. Then Evan added, quote, we know
we had to top ourselves, then top ourselves again and then
(02:24):
triple top ourselves this time, as is usually our best strategy.
And that was by far the hardest part of the show, delivering
those cameos. It was exhausting.
Every single day at lunch duringpre production, we had to go and
do a phone call with a differentcelebrity of some nature or the
filmmaker and it was really draining.
End Quote. They did a lot of work getting
these cameos for us, which is kind of fun.
(02:45):
In setting up to do the show, Evan and Seth wanted to create a
realistic version of Hollywood, which is a scary thought, one
where there were no more quote scumbags and egomaniacs here
than what you could find in finance, real estate dealings,
the construction is industry or manufacturing.
They're just more seen. They get this bad rap.
But most of the people in Hollywood are beautiful,
wonderful people who could have done anything else and chose to
(03:05):
do this because they love it, from the props master to the Pas
to the craft service producers to the actors.
So when we're showing the dirtier, shittier sides of the
industry, it doesn't feel like we're taking cheap potshots
because the whole thing is a love letter and one that we want
to be. Again, a realistic portrayal of
Hollywood, not a shined up one or a dirty End Quote.
O hopefully this isn't too realistic on what execs are like
(03:28):
in Hollywood. Seems like maybe it is, I don't
know. But anyway, those are the potent
notables. Let's go on to the episode
overview. So for this episode, the studio
decided to satirize, well, wokeness, I guess.
That being said, I actually think it's a good thing that
they essentially stop and ask themselves, did we just do
something racist? We might actually all benefit as
a society if we all stopped and asked ourselves that question
(03:51):
sometimes like a little soapbox moment here.
But I think the bigger issue is automatically denying your own
racism. I think we've all got it at
least a little bit. And what we need to do is
introspection instead of denial.Anyway, too serious a note for a
sitcom probably. I'm always saying that this
should be more funny in here. I am talking about inherent
racism, so I'll be curious to see if Antonio leaves this in.
(04:13):
Please don't cancel this. This was a really fun satire of
white people trying not to offend anybody and then
basically asking people of colorif they're offended, which is
both patronizing and also incredibly relatable.
I don't know what that says about about me, but I do find
that relatable in a good way. I think most white people do,
even if they don't want to admitit.
(04:34):
Besides the satire though, I kind of enjoyed the premise of
them casting a movie and talkingabout the attributes of their
casting choices, the ones that they like and the ones they
don't like and all that kind of stuff, and what what execs are
looking at for for casting. I thought that was a cool look
inside Hollywood. The one thing that they didn't
touch on during it though was the bankability of the actors
(04:55):
they were choosing. I would think that would weigh
heavily on casting decisions, especially for the leads, and I
would have liked to have seen that portrayed.
I just would have been curious to be like, this guy always
pulls X amount of dollars. Could this person really be in a
billion dollar movie and that kind of a thing?
I think that would have been funto see.
I'm attempting not to give any spoilers here, so I'm avoiding
saying that who they're choosingfor the leads, because I don't
(05:16):
know if that's a spoiler, really.
I mean, I don't know. Yeah, I'm just not going to say
it. So I'll be evasive and say that
the conundrum boiled down to them having a black man voice,
the kool-aid man, and that's where the snowball started, and
it rolled downhill and picked upa whole lot of snow as it went
down. So the show is definitely going
the route of Silicon Valley style aggravation.
Like the main characters just don't seem to be able to win and
(05:38):
then tend to make the wrong choices along the way.
The problem is that they're all fairly likable, so it would be
nice to see them get a win. Now.
I know conflict drives story andengagement, but has anyone ever
actually tested that? Like have they ever done a show
where shit just works out for characters you like?
I feel like I would enjoy watching that.
I would not. What good thing is going to
happen to him or her this week, you know?
(05:59):
And I don't mean the family sitcom style thing where there's
a problem, they solve it and there's a happy ending in every
episode, you know, like a teachable moment or whatever.
I mean like with these workplacestyle comedies, right?
Like what if some of the episodes shit just works out and
the movie does well and people are like, wow, you're doing a
really good job. Boy, does that sound boring.
You know, I say it out loud. I realize that's a more boring
(06:22):
show, I suppose, but I mean, damn, does it always have to be
strife anyway, That's not a spoiler by the way.
That's just the form Camila of this show.
If I if I told you it was a happy ending, that would be the
shocking spoiler. The frustrating ending should be
what you've come to expect. Also, just one more thing.
I like Katherine Hahn a lot. I think she's really funny.
However, this Maya character she's playing gets on my nerves.
(06:43):
I think she's probably supposed to, but I want to like her more
and the show just really won't let me.
All right, on that note, let's see how this episode ranked.
On to the rank A wank. So the rank is where I rank the
episode based on five categories, story, acting,
dialogue, episode coherence, andcharacter relatability.
I rank it on a scale of one to five, one being the worst, five
(07:04):
being the best. Then we have a laugh counter
where I tally up the amount of times that the episode made me
laugh out loud. One point per laugh out loud
gets added to the score. So the first category is story,
and I gave story A4. Story is good.
It's a little conceptual. It's a satire of the way we view
Hollywood's racial concerns. It does the satire well, but
again, it's more constantly so all right, let's go to acting,
(07:28):
which I also gave a four. The acting on this has been
really good and continues to be really good.
I actually thought Chase 2 wonders was the best actor in
this episode. She was she was really good.
Everyone else was good to reallygood.
Hence it's not a 5, but still really good like a 4 isn't bad.
You know, I feel like gotten used to giving these higher
rankings and whenever I give a four now it feels like I'm
(07:48):
shitting on it, but I'm not it'sa good score.
The next category is dialogue, which I gave a 4.85.
It didn't get me to laugh a ton,but the satire was really well
done. So when we get to my laugh
counter, it's going to bly the way I felt about this episode
because I really enjoyed it. I thought it was really well
done and well put together and it had me smiling quite a bit,
but it just didn't have that hammer punchline.
(08:11):
It didn't push me over the edge to laughter that you would maybe
expect it to. That being said, I barely
laughed more at this episode than any previous episode, so
the laughs that they did get from me were quite Hardy.
So let's go to the episode coherence category, which I gave
a four. Now this category has been
consistently the best category for the show, but because this
(08:33):
episode is more conceptual and less story driven, this was
probably the least coherent of the episodes.
And and it's not bad coherence, just that we were kind of all
going all over the place and just felt a little bit like they
wanted to do this satire and maybe didn't have it as fleshed
out as they would have liked or have had in the previous
episodes. Also, we don't really get a
conclusion here. Like what did they decide on
(08:55):
with the cast? I don't know.
So that's why not a 5. So let's go to character
relatability, which I did give afive.
I think this is really relatable.
It's especially relatable from awhite person's perspective,
which, you know, that's me. The concern about fence is
definitely out there. And I think sometimes we we
overthink it, which is also pretty relatable.
(09:15):
And I would imagine that the sort of annoyance from people of
color being asked whether something as offensive or not is
also relatable. That's just my supposition.
I don't know for sure. Anyway, let's go to my laugh
counter. And I had 9, which is really
low. I mean, 9 makes it sound like it
wasn't funny. It was funny.
(09:35):
It was a funny episode. I, when I finished it, I
thought, oh, this is going to have the best laugh counter I've
had. And it had nine.
And I was like, oh, I was expecting more.
Anyway, that puts the total for the episode at a 30.85.
And that makes it in. I'd watch it again.
And that puts the series averageat a 31.7, which means it
continues to be I'd watch it again.
(09:56):
So thanks for listening and or watching.
And if you'd like to see a list of our episode and series
rankings, you can do that on ourwebsite at the rank with John
and zach.com. Remember to subscribe, review
and comment. And please consider supporting
us on our Patreon site at patreon.com/the Rank podcast,
where you can get access to all of our archived episodes.
And I'll leave you with this. What did the suit say when Evan
and Seth asked what they thoughtof having an ice cube cameo?
(10:18):
Well, they probably said an ice cube like solid water Well, and
then when Seth and Evan remindedthem who ice cube is, they said,
Oh yeah, that's the worst joke I've ever heard in my entire
life. Why can't I say fucking?
(10:46):
It says episode here and for some reason I keep saying
fucking show episode you motherfucker.
English motherfucker.
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