It might sound a little silly, but as the credits rolled for the finale of The Franchise, I was surprised by my response. My relationship with the show, as you will have probably detected across the last seven write-ups, has varied between enjoyment, mild amusement, and ambivalence; while there are parts that I have loved (Daniel Brühl, Richard E. Grant’s acidic line-reads, the space-age score provided by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Jeff Cardoni) there are others that have been a slog, and it isn’t a series I expected to miss. And yet, by the end of “The Death of Eye,” I found myself a little sad.
Not to overstate it. Generally speaking, this first season of The Franchise (which ends on a cliffhanger, though at the time of writing, it is yet to be renewed for season two) never really got out of first or second gear satirically. But what I think has worked best in the show — and probably would have kept drawing me back each week if I had no professional obligation to watch it — is its cast of characters and the performers behind them. I have mentioned Brühl countless times; I’m going to miss our weekly rendezvouses with Eric and Brühl’s brilliant ability to bring new energy to Eric’s episodic breakdowns. In retrospect, I’m not sure that I’ve been generous enough in my praise of Himesh Patel, whose Daniel seemed to fade a little in prominence midway through the season but is re-centred in “The Death of Eye,” which picks up towards the end of the Tecto shoot.
Patel is given some of his best work to do in this episode, leading the revolt that he hopes will see the movie saved and leave Eric with daggers in his back. There’s the scene in which his betrayal is comically revealed by the VFX artist, who has been pressed into his own sorry state of mania by crunch working conditions. There is also Daniel’s final plea to a seemingly indifferent Shane; it doesn’t save his job as Tecto’s 1st AD, but as the final scene teases, it might just have won him an upgrade to the director’s chair. What Patel has emphasised in Daniel throughout is his weariness, but he has never portrayed him as a guy who just wants to get in and out. That he is unwilling to treat Tecto as just another job, because he cares, is kind of Daniel’s fatal flaw. And that’s why we root for him, the unassuming geek who wants the movie to be good while everyone else prioritizes their career, and how they might use Tecto as a springboard to better, brighter, less franchise-y things.
More generally speaking, the various resolutions of the episode are very satisfying. Peter’s explosive rant at Eric’s overbearing direction feels as though it has been bottled up since the very beginning, compounded by his insecurity of being a once-respected tredder of the boards who is now shouldered with the indignity of wearing a cape and helmet, having to act for a tennis ball would be anyone’s final straw. Dag is given a little less to do, mostly fretting over the terrifying prospect of being shipped off to an Armenian prison (where they shit in shared buckets, or so goes her main preoccupation) for destroying the bridge in the last episode. That isn’t to say that Lolly Adefope isn’t an enjoyable screen presence, however, even if Dag feels a little limited and one-note on the page. I also liked Daniel symbolically handing over the mic, anointing her the next 1st AD, which she probably deserves after an episode of prison-based anxiety.
However, the conflict that has primarily simmered in the background throughout The Franchise concerns Tecto’s precarious place on the Maximum Studios slate. At the beginning of “The Death of Eye,” Pat asks Anita to check over his notes for Maximum’s upcoming Comic-Con presentation, where she reads that the film is to be potentially “pulled.” She takes that to mean that Tecto may soon face the chop, such has been the Sword of Damocles long hanging over its head. It has been a shit show, after all, with Eric’s discordant creative vision so often coming to blows with studio mandates and, well … common sense. Anita, Daniel, and Dag resolve to take matters in their own hands, pitching a new vision for Tecto straight to Shane — or rather to Bryson, acting until the end as Shane’s go-between. (I half expected that Shane would be revealed in a seconds-long finale cameo from some major comic-book movie personality as a meta-joke, but playing out the absence bit until the very end is a wise move.)
What nobody has realized, however — though I think it has been breadcrumbed throughout the series, as we might now notice watching it back — is that Centurios 2, Maximum’s main Avengers-grade summer tentpole, is the one that has really gone off the rails. At one moment in this episode, we see that literally a hundred writers have been drafted in for last-minute rewrites. Later, when Pat assembles the Tecto team for what they expect to be a genocide, he reveals that the film has actually been pulled forward into the Centurios 2 spot, which is now on hold with its main actor, the guy who plays Many Man, “accused of multiple acts of perversion” per a Rolling Stone investigation. It seems that Daniel’s last-minute hail mary pitch appealed to Shane, who decided to elevate this new vision for Tecto over another of the B-tier Maximum titles. Alas, for his attempted coup d’état, Eric fires Daniel anyway — to be fair, kind of understandably — despite, by his own admission, saving his movie. (Perhaps evoking Judas, or likelier The Godfather Pt. II, Eric dispatches Daniel with a parodic kiss of death.)
Daniel doesn’t seem especially down about it. If anything, he’s relieved. It’s not like anyone can say he didn’t try. The thing that gets him in the end — or at least as seems to be the case until the series’ very final moment — is that he tried too much. Just as Daniel resolves to go home and finally spend some time with his son, Pat arrives at his car window. Shane wants Daniel to stick around, and it sounds like he’ll give him anything to do so. Does that mean he’ll take over from Eric on Tecto? Will he be given his own Maximum film to helm? I, for one, hope he drives off into the sunset, not least if he values his continued sanity and good physical health. But then again, I’m reminded of the conversation Daniel has with Dag, in the very same place, at the end of the first episode. The circus joke. “What, and quit show business?”
Post-Credit Scenes
• This week in nominative determinism: the author of the Rolling Stone article is surnamed Moss.
• I enjoyed the many jokes about Bryan Singer in this episode, not least Adam’s loaded suggestion that he “isn’t a good guy.”
• Taken as an overall package, I think this was a fine, largely enjoyable season of television that established solid foundations for a continuing series, if it is indeed renewed. I hope it is: it’s written solidly enough on a character and dialogue level that its more rote elements are easy to forgive, and I’d like to see where the characters’ journeys take them for at least one more season.
