The most rewarding and chuckleworthy part of The Franchise continues to be the slow, tragicomic unraveling of Eric, who in the first five episodes has been squashed from visionary auteur into just another cog in the Maximum Studios machine. Not only is it true to life — how many exciting indie filmmakers have been chewed up and spat out by the superhero-studio system? — but it also feels like an apt analogy for how comic-book movies have beaten audiences into submission over the years. The movies have trended down for some time, but we’ve acclimated to the smell, so even a modest success now seems like a big hit.
Appropriately, this episode revolves around Eric’s capacity to further pinch his nose as Pat and the studio try to force some … conspicuous product placement into Tecto. But we’re not just talking about Daniel Craig’s James Bond hammering Heinekensâ„¢ or emailing on his Sony Vaioâ„¢ — if Pat gets his way, Tecto is about to become the latest propaganda wing of the Chinese Communist Party. How? The expectation is for Eric to smuggle Chinese-made tractors into the background of the movie. The only problem is that the entirety of Tecto is set in space; I’m not sure if you’ve been to space recently, but there aren’t many tractors. (“Eric won’t like it; he’s a former ad guy,†Daniel says early on. “On Reddit, they still call him the Cheese Man of Düsseldorf. It haunts him.â€)
Look, the entire concept of the episode is patently ridiculous, and it still feels as if we’re being bludgeoned by very on-the-nose satire. But meeting it on its wavelength — which is to say to accept that Tecto exists in a world where movie studios are so willfully negligent and self-destructive as to torpedo their own films out of petty revenge … Well, maybe that isn’t so hard to believe — it’s probably the most fun The Franchise has been since the pilot.
After Eric ram-raided the Centurios 2 set last episode, Pat is looking to make an example of him and bring him back in line. Such is where the demand for Xi-approved product placement comes in: Pat informs Anita early in “Scene 16: Eric’s Hospital Scene†that while the domestic box office for Maximum Studios is down, the Chinese market is on the up. But in exchange for allowing their movies past the Great Wall of Censorship, the Chinese government is looking for a “reach-around.†Maximum would never force such an indignity — sorry, great honor! — onto their main tentpole, but it’s increasingly apparent that Tecto is the studio latrine, and what’s more shit on top of a pile of shit?
Eric, nevertheless, is riding pretty high to begin with. Today, they’re shooting the scene that is the “beating heart†of Tecto, a weepy hospital scene in which the titular hero visits his dying wife. It has everything a European art filmmaker with tiny glasses and a proclivity for inside scarves might dream of: pathos! Emotionality! Realism! Little does Eric know that the scene will be cut in post anyway — it’s just being shot to appease him. So there he is, swinging his dick around. We’ll see how long that newfound confidence lasts. (Spoiler alert: A few tractors later and he’ll be back on terra firma.)
The whole episode is mostly buildup to the grand payoff of another Eric outburst, really, in which he denounces … the entire Chinese state after the director of Centurios 2 refuses to stomach his own share of product placement. “Fuck China,†he says, very publicly, over mic for everyone on set to hear. “Fuck finger traps. Fuck Mulan. Fuck fortune cookies. Fuck sweet-sour! … Eric say ‘Fuck Confucius!’â€
It’s a funny (but also kinda sad) moment. Not because China is catching strays — I have no interest in wading into testy geopolitical waters nor myself having to enlist a PR team to apologize on my behalf to the Chinese government — but because it represents, once again, just how deleterious an effect this whole Tecto thing is having on Eric’s psyche, which manifests in another deranged, aimless rant. (It’s like his brain is plucking random stereotypes out of the air in real time. Those poor pandas.) I have enjoyed Daniel Brühl enormously before but never quite like this. Even when The Franchise is meh, Eric is one of the highlights of my TV week.
Unfortunately for Eric, the outburst is leaked by a Variety journalist (“Did Eric Bouchard Just Declare War on China?â€). Soon, there are fears that he might be targeted by China for retribution — or, worse, that he’ll trigger a full-scale war with the biggest country in the world (“They’ve got fucking nukes, Eric,†says a panicked Steph). Pat, luxuriating in another chance for petty revenge, beams into the Tecto set via giant-screen FaceTime to offer a bitter compromise: China will back down if Tecto will advertise a poisoned-baby-milk brand as safe to drink, shoehorning yet more product placement into the film.
This is the position that Team Tecto now finds itself in, to borrow Anita’s Clockwork Orange metaphor: forced to watch its work go to waste as Pat turns Tecto into an elaborate, torturous scheme to ruin Eric’s reputation, career, and life overall, while everyone else catches strays for sticking with it. But that’s show business, folks. At least the mollusk-man is finally getting his moment in the limelight.
Post-Credits Scenes
• I wrote in my recap of the first episode that I had reservations about whether the premise of The Franchise could be sustained over eight episodes without getting boring. It’s just about hanging on, mostly at a variously half-funny, snort-producing simmer. This was probably my favorite episode, but I can’t say I’m overly enthusiastic about it, not that it was without filler.
• On that subject: I wasn’t a huge fan of the fecal-transplant stuff, though I did enjoy the way Lolly Adefope played Dag’s descent into panic as she thought that Shitgate had caused a scandal in the trades.
• No one reacting to Steph having a — long-awaited but not entirely expected — tantrum after Eric shoots down her space-cheese suggestion … very funny!