July 10, 2025 • 8 mins
🎬😂 In this episode of The Rank Podcast, John returns to his Sitcom Rankings with a look at the 2025 comedy series The Studio, starring Seth Rogen. This week, he reviews Episode 9 – “CinemaCon,” where the chaos of Hollywood hits the road as the writing team heads to Las Vegas for the annual industry expo.
As the crew attempts to hype their show to distributors, press, and skeptical execs, everything that can go wrong… does. From botched panels to ego-driven interviews and one unforgettable afterparty, CinemaCon is a wild ride of showbiz satire, ego clashes, and behind-the-scenes blunders.
John unpacks the episode’s sharp humor, inside-industry jabs, and whether this glitzy detour helps or hinders the show’s momentum. Does CinemaCon steal the spotlight in his sitcom rankings, or get lost in the lights of Vegas?
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.
Visit The Rank's website for up-to-date rankings at TheRankpodcast.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
A lot of the series has felt refreshing and fun.
The inside baseball look at Hollywood.
But this just felt like an excuse to have Rogan do some
drug comedy, some drug acting. You know?
It's not acting. Welcome back to another episode
(00:30):
of the rank. I'm John and today we're going
to be ranking another episode ofthe 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 of each
episode for the whole series. Let me figure out what sitcom is
the best one of all time. Now, if you're enjoying these
episodes, if you're just a fan of the studio and enjoy
consuming content about it, please consider subscribing and
(00:52):
or following like the episodes and comment or e-mail your
suggestions at the e-mail below.And please also consider
becoming a patron on our patreonpage@patreon.com/the Rank
podcast. Now today we're ranking the 9th
episode of the first season of the studio titled Cinemacon,
which was written by Alex Gregory and directed by Seth
Rogen and Evan Goldberg. And since this is a new series,
(01:13):
I am avoiding spoilers. So there shouldn't be spoilers.
But you know, I, I think I've been doing a good job of
avoiding them. But you know, I think we should
still say warning that there might be spoilers.
Anyway, let's get into it, starting with the potent
Notables, as they are want to do.
They like to reference movies inthis show and in this episode
(01:34):
it's swingers driving through Vegas.
Matt, Sal and Quinn quote swingers several times, even
talking about swingers with Vegas and you're so money.
So just a cute little reference thing there.
And then on to our cameo of the episode, which is Dave Franco.
Dave who says he's a very boringperson these days.
Those are that's his quote. Really enjoyed playing a drugged
(01:54):
up party animal version of himself that there was a quote
niceness in the unhingedness of it all.
I take it to a level where it becomes kind of toxic
positivity. But yes, it's very fun to play a
part that is very different thanwho I am.
So to continue hammering this point, he added, quote, I do not
go to Vegas. I barely even drink.
I definitely don't do drugs. An exciting night these days is
(02:17):
staying home and watching a documentary with our two cats.
End Quote. And you believe that maybe
overcompensated here? I don't know.
But anyway, Even so, he found freedom and playing himself that
he could take it as far as he wanted to go.
Quote, It's like the crazier yougo, the better.
Just poke fun at yourself and beas silly as possible.
And there's no wrong answer because it's like, hey, I'm
playing me. You can't fault me for what I'm
(02:38):
doing in any of these scenes. This is now as far as picking
Dave Franco for this, Seth Rogensaid.
Quote, Honestly, there were veryfew people that could have
filled the roles that the peoplehad filled because we really
specifically were catering the stories to certain traits that
celebrities have with Dave. It's like, who do you believe
would be in a Ron Howard movie? It's a pretty dramatic movie.
Who could do that? But also we knew that he would
(02:59):
come back and do this truly ridiculous, stupid thing later
in the season. End Quote.
So those are the Pope notables. Let's go to the episode overview
for this episode. Instead of a behind the scenes
of Cinemacon, we end up getting a Seth Rogen drug comedy.
Now for any of you who have listened to the episode when
Zach and I ranked the night before, you'll know that I'd
enjoy that type of comedy, especially from Seth Rogen
(03:19):
because he does it so well. That being said, it wasn't
really what I was looking for orhoping for from him in this
series. It's not that the episode didn't
work, it still made me laugh andit's it's very well made and
Seth Rogen still does drug addled humor better than most if
not all. It's just that it didn't feel
particularly new. A lot of the series has felt
refreshing and fun. The inside baseball look at
(03:41):
Hollywood. But this just felt like an
excuse to have Rogan do some drug comedy, some drug acting.
You know, it's not acting. The premise here is that they
are headed to Cinemacon, Matt's first as the studio head, and
when they get there, he finds out from Griffin Mill, the CEO
played played by Bryan Cranston,that the board of Comworld, the
owner of which is the owner of Continental Studios, is trying
(04:01):
to sell the studio to Amazon. Now the pressure is on because
they believe that if they can have a killer presentation at
this year's Cinemacon that it'llmake the studio too valuable to
sell. Now to me this is confusing
because this logic just Wouldn'tAmazon be even more interested
in the studio if it looked like they were going to make a lot of
money? It actually would make more
sense to make the studio look like it had no value, which
(04:21):
would convince the board not to bother selling it because they
wouldn't get as much as they would want for it, right?
Anyway, that's how we are presented.
The plot. Now what would you do if you
found out you have to have the absolute best presentation the
next day starting at 7:30 in themorning or you'll lose your job?
If your first thought is to throw a raging party with drugs
and alcohol, you'd be on the exact same page is Matt Remick.
I'm sure you can imagine it thatnothing goes wrong from here.
(04:44):
Now, I know I'm making it sound like I didn't like it, and I
didn't like it as much as other episodes, but there's a reason
that Seth Rogen has made so muchmoney making drugs.
He's really good at playing high.
And with that, this episode doeshave a few more laughs than some
of the other better episodes. Not quite as much as last week's
episode, but pretty decent. Still though, this episode was a
bit of a let down, so let's see how it ended up ranking a wank.
(05:08):
So the rank is where I rank the episode based on five
categories, story, acting, dialogue, episode coherence, and
character relatability. I rank it on a score of one to
five, one being the worst, five being the best.
And then we have a laugh counterwhere I tally up the amount of
times that the episode made me laugh out loud, one point per
laugh out loud, and that gets added to the score.
The first category is story, which I gave a 2 1/2.
The story is that Seth Rogen wanted to have a drug episode
(05:30):
and he did. It's not terrible, it's not
good. It says the kids would say mid.
That feels natural when I say it, right?
How do you do fellow kids? What?
All right, let's go to acting, which I gave a four and a half.
Well, the story may not be my cup of tea, but the acting was
certainly really good. Actually, Ike Barinholtz playing
coked up was one of his better performances.
Sort of makes me wonder about him a little bit.
(05:50):
Hope you're all right over there.
Ike Seth obviously plays druggedup better than anyone.
Everyone was great. I did really enjoy Dave Franco
and this as well. He seems like such a happy guy
and nuts too, so that's fun. Next category is dialogue, which
I gave a four. It was definitely funny, but,
and I'm sorry to keep harping onthis, but it was so look,
they're doing drugs. Isn't that funny?
(06:11):
They have great writers on this show, so it's still excellent.
Just could have been better if they had focused more on satire
like the first eight episodes. Next category is episode
coherence, which I gave a 2.25. I addressed some of this in the
overview. Like, why would they think that
having a great presentation would stop a sale?
It would just mean they'd potentially get more for the
sale, right? Why would you throw a rager the
night before you're supposed to be up early to give a
(06:32):
presentation which you now believe your entire studio and
your job is at stake to get right?
On top of those hearings issues,we've also got the sort of
haphazard, all over the place madcap thing going on, and I'm
avoiding giving any spoilers by saying it the way I said it.
But while it wasn't that it wasn't fun, it also was a little
too absurd. So let's go to character
relatability, which I gave a four.
(06:53):
So the coherence issues I mentioned may seem a little like
a bleed over into relatability, but I think the characters are
pretty relatable. As much as I find Matt pathetic,
I can empathize with his need tobe accepted by the industry and
people in it that he so reveres right.
I can certainly appreciate appreciate Patty, especially at
the end. Griffin Mills, probably the
least relatable in the episode. He makes a lot of bizarre
(07:15):
choices, but whatever. All right, so let's go to the
laugh counter, which definitely saved this episode.
I got 13 laughs out of it, whichis not super high, but it's
enough to keep it from being being a poor ranking.
So the total for this episode isa 30.25, which just which means
it squeaks into I'd watch it again.
That puts the series average at a 32.4, which means it continues
(07:38):
to be. I'd watch it again.
So thanks for listening and or watching.
If you'd like to see a list of our episodes, the series
rankings, you can do that on ourwebsite at the rankpodcast.com.
Remember to subscribe, review and comment.
Please consider supporting us onour Patreon site at
patreon.com/the Rank Podcast where you'll get access to all
of our archived episodes. And I will leave you with this.
Then we're going to do a big presentation.
But now it's all messed up and Iknow why.
(08:00):
Why ma'am? Because they got high, because
they got high, because they got high.
Just never do that again. Now, what would you do if you
(08:24):
had, motherfucker? Maybe it's the drugs.
A lot of the series has felt refreshing and fun.
The inside baseball look at Hollywood.
But this just felt like an excuse to have Rogan do some
drug comedy, some drug acting. You know?
It's not acting. Welcome back to another episode
(00:30):
of the rank. I'm John and today we're going
to be ranking another episode ofthe 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 of each
episode for the whole series. Let me figure out what sitcom is
the best one of all time. Now, if you're enjoying these
episodes, if you're just a fan of the studio and enjoy
consuming content about it, please consider subscribing and
(00:52):
or following like the episodes and comment or e-mail your
suggestions at the e-mail below.And please also consider
becoming a patron on our patreonpage@patreon.com/the Rank
podcast. Now today we're ranking the 9th
episode of the first season of the studio titled Cinemacon,
which was written by Alex Gregory and directed by Seth
Rogen and Evan Goldberg. And since this is a new series,
(01:13):
I am avoiding spoilers. So there shouldn't be spoilers.
But you know, I, I think I've been doing a good job of
avoiding them. But you know, I think we should
still say warning that there might be spoilers.
Anyway, let's get into it, starting with the potent
Notables, as they are want to do.
They like to reference movies inthis show and in this episode
(01:34):
it's swingers driving through Vegas.
Matt, Sal and Quinn quote swingers several times, even
talking about swingers with Vegas and you're so money.
So just a cute little reference thing there.
And then on to our cameo of the episode, which is Dave Franco.
Dave who says he's a very boringperson these days.
Those are that's his quote. Really enjoyed playing a drugged
(01:54):
up party animal version of himself that there was a quote
niceness in the unhingedness of it all.
I take it to a level where it becomes kind of toxic
positivity. But yes, it's very fun to play a
part that is very different thanwho I am.
So to continue hammering this point, he added, quote, I do not
go to Vegas. I barely even drink.
I definitely don't do drugs. An exciting night these days is
(02:17):
staying home and watching a documentary with our two cats.
End Quote. And you believe that maybe
overcompensated here? I don't know.
But anyway, Even so, he found freedom and playing himself that
he could take it as far as he wanted to go.
Quote, It's like the crazier yougo, the better.
Just poke fun at yourself and beas silly as possible.
And there's no wrong answer because it's like, hey, I'm
playing me. You can't fault me for what I'm
(02:38):
doing in any of these scenes. This is now as far as picking
Dave Franco for this, Seth Rogensaid.
Quote, Honestly, there were veryfew people that could have
filled the roles that the peoplehad filled because we really
specifically were catering the stories to certain traits that
celebrities have with Dave. It's like, who do you believe
would be in a Ron Howard movie? It's a pretty dramatic movie.
Who could do that? But also we knew that he would
(02:59):
come back and do this truly ridiculous, stupid thing later
in the season. End Quote.
So those are the Pope notables. Let's go to the episode overview
for this episode. Instead of a behind the scenes
of Cinemacon, we end up getting a Seth Rogen drug comedy.
Now for any of you who have listened to the episode when
Zach and I ranked the night before, you'll know that I'd
enjoy that type of comedy, especially from Seth Rogen
(03:19):
because he does it so well. That being said, it wasn't
really what I was looking for orhoping for from him in this
series. It's not that the episode didn't
work, it still made me laugh andit's it's very well made and
Seth Rogen still does drug addled humor better than most if
not all. It's just that it didn't feel
particularly new. A lot of the series has felt
refreshing and fun. The inside baseball look at
(03:41):
Hollywood. But this just felt like an
excuse to have Rogan do some drug comedy, some drug acting.
You know, it's not acting. The premise here is that they
are headed to Cinemacon, Matt's first as the studio head, and
when they get there, he finds out from Griffin Mill, the CEO
played played by Bryan Cranston,that the board of Comworld, the
owner of which is the owner of Continental Studios, is trying
(04:01):
to sell the studio to Amazon. Now the pressure is on because
they believe that if they can have a killer presentation at
this year's Cinemacon that it'llmake the studio too valuable to
sell. Now to me this is confusing
because this logic just Wouldn'tAmazon be even more interested
in the studio if it looked like they were going to make a lot of
money? It actually would make more
sense to make the studio look like it had no value, which
(04:21):
would convince the board not to bother selling it because they
wouldn't get as much as they would want for it, right?
Anyway, that's how we are presented.
The plot. Now what would you do if you
found out you have to have the absolute best presentation the
next day starting at 7:30 in themorning or you'll lose your job?
If your first thought is to throw a raging party with drugs
and alcohol, you'd be on the exact same page is Matt Remick.
I'm sure you can imagine it thatnothing goes wrong from here.
(04:44):
Now, I know I'm making it sound like I didn't like it, and I
didn't like it as much as other episodes, but there's a reason
that Seth Rogen has made so muchmoney making drugs.
He's really good at playing high.
And with that, this episode doeshave a few more laughs than some
of the other better episodes. Not quite as much as last week's
episode, but pretty decent. Still though, this episode was a
bit of a let down, so let's see how it ended up ranking a wank.
(05:08):
So the rank is where I rank the episode based on five
categories, story, acting, dialogue, episode coherence, and
character relatability. I rank it on a score of one to
five, one being the worst, five being the best.
And then we have a laugh counterwhere I tally up the amount of
times that the episode made me laugh out loud, one point per
laugh out loud, and that gets added to the score.
The first category is story, which I gave a 2 1/2.
The story is that Seth Rogen wanted to have a drug episode
(05:30):
and he did. It's not terrible, it's not
good. It says the kids would say mid.
That feels natural when I say it, right?
How do you do fellow kids? What?
All right, let's go to acting, which I gave a four and a half.
Well, the story may not be my cup of tea, but the acting was
certainly really good. Actually, Ike Barinholtz playing
coked up was one of his better performances.
Sort of makes me wonder about him a little bit.
(05:50):
Hope you're all right over there.
Ike Seth obviously plays druggedup better than anyone.
Everyone was great. I did really enjoy Dave Franco
and this as well. He seems like such a happy guy
and nuts too, so that's fun. Next category is dialogue, which
I gave a four. It was definitely funny, but,
and I'm sorry to keep harping onthis, but it was so look,
they're doing drugs. Isn't that funny?
(06:11):
They have great writers on this show, so it's still excellent.
Just could have been better if they had focused more on satire
like the first eight episodes. Next category is episode
coherence, which I gave a 2.25. I addressed some of this in the
overview. Like, why would they think that
having a great presentation would stop a sale?
It would just mean they'd potentially get more for the
sale, right? Why would you throw a rager the
night before you're supposed to be up early to give a
(06:32):
presentation which you now believe your entire studio and
your job is at stake to get right?
On top of those hearings issues,we've also got the sort of
haphazard, all over the place madcap thing going on, and I'm
avoiding giving any spoilers by saying it the way I said it.
But while it wasn't that it wasn't fun, it also was a little
too absurd. So let's go to character
relatability, which I gave a four.
(06:53):
So the coherence issues I mentioned may seem a little like
a bleed over into relatability, but I think the characters are
pretty relatable. As much as I find Matt pathetic,
I can empathize with his need tobe accepted by the industry and
people in it that he so reveres right.
I can certainly appreciate appreciate Patty, especially at
the end. Griffin Mills, probably the
least relatable in the episode. He makes a lot of bizarre
(07:15):
choices, but whatever. All right, so let's go to the
laugh counter, which definitely saved this episode.
I got 13 laughs out of it, whichis not super high, but it's
enough to keep it from being being a poor ranking.
So the total for this episode isa 30.25, which just which means
it squeaks into I'd watch it again.
That puts the series average at a 32.4, which means it continues
(07:38):
to be. I'd watch it again.
So thanks for listening and or watching.
If you'd like to see a list of our episodes, the series
rankings, you can do that on ourwebsite at the rankpodcast.com.
Remember to subscribe, review and comment.
Please consider supporting us onour Patreon site at
patreon.com/the Rank Podcast where you'll get access to all
of our archived episodes. And I will leave you with this.
Then we're going to do a big presentation.
But now it's all messed up and Iknow why.
(08:00):
Why ma'am? Because they got high, because
they got high, because they got high.
Just never do that again. Now, what would you do if you
(08:24):
had, motherfucker? Maybe it's the drugs.
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