S01.E04: The Missing Reel

[AnimeMania]

A reel of film goes missing, sending Matt and Sal on a race against the clock to find it.

Premiere Date: April 9, 2025   Apple TV+   

[SeanC]

Wilde does a game riff on all the drama around Don't Worry Darling.

Fittingly for a noir, the villain wins.

[aghst]

They are spending some money on the cinematography and movie-level stunts.

Lot of shots of the camera tracking Matt driving his expensive vintage convertible and outdoor scenes with stunts, like them tumbling down a hill.

Are they leaning too much on all the guest stars for these episode plots?  Maybe, but the rest of it seems to be interactions between Matt and Sal, Rogen and Barinholtz.

No Kathryn Hahn in this episode and her screen time is a fraction of Rogen and Barinholtz so far.

Is that a good thing?

Studio executive bros?

Matt isn't a bean counter though, he spends freely, first buying Scorcese's Jonestown script without reading it for $10 million,

Promising reshoots to his directors, private jets to his stars and now an expensive reshoot with film.

I don't know how long they plan to do the series.  Seems like expensive to produce, not only with the guest stars but the fancy, movie-level production values -- except for the noisy images.

Maybe he meant to do this one season, with the inevitable Matt being fired for spending too much.

Now, if these movies become big hits and/or get critical raves, maybe he gets a reprieve.

[sjankis630]

This is the first episode that fell flat for me. What was funny in episode 2 with both guys driving triumphantly into the shoot and then by the end of the episode basically running for their lives comes off really really boring here for me. I think I really missed the backup main characters here.

At some point about 1/2 way thru this episode I thought to myself, "they aren't just going to have these two just drive around talking and just stumble on the perpetrator are they." And that is just what that did. 

Rogan seemed like a bearded, slightly bigger asshole Woody Allen throughout.

[iMonrey]

Man, I can't believe how old Zac Efron is. It makes me feel really old.

[sjankis630]

2 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Man, I can't believe how old Zac Efron is. It makes me feel really old.

Old age is indeed a bitch - if we are lucky enough to survive. I was listening to an old James Brown album (In the Jungle Groove) and just remarking to myself just how great he was and how much energy he had. I remember his comeback in the 1980s with the Rocky movie and how cool he was then in his 50s. And after he died a comedian at the time described him as an "old black Chinese lady."

[John M]

I really enjoyed the first three episodes, this one just did not do it for me at all. The absurdity of the previous episodes was great but it also felt tied to some sort of reality at it's core and that it was making some meta statement about the film industry. I get what they were trying to do with this episode but it's not what I had previously understood them to be doing with the series in the other episodes, which is what I enjoyed about them.

I made it through the episode but I really considered bailing halfway through.

[QQQQ]

Has Seth's character taken a massive fall every episode?