We Like Ike

ABLUpdated 2 days Ago3 Mins read0

Ike Barinholtz’s Sal Saperstein listens with his eyebrows up, his forehead wrinkled into a semi-permanent state of worry. His face, malleable and wide, absorbs everything from advice and feedback to abuse and the odd compliment. In Apple TV+’s The Studio, Sal is the devil atop Seth Rogen’s studio exec Matt Remick, indulging in every creative’s worst nightmare: He’s keen to sell out, get rich, and be lewd and sexist along the way. He is Hollywood’s Id embodied. It’s almost surprising this character made it through the Me Too era unscathed. Barinholtz, who recently executive-produced Netflix’s Running Point, has a strong sense of the type of suit Sal is supposed to be, sharklike and eager to hunt whatever blood he can sense in the water. As a performer, he’s always excelled with high-energy characters who oscillate wildly between high and low status (or sometimes both at the same time). In this series’ fifth episode, “The War,” we see Sal go up against Chase Sui Wonders’s Quinn over who should direct Continental’s Smile rip-off, Wink, the ensuing drama (and comedy) granting Barinholtz one of his finest half-hours across his decades of work on screens big and small.

“I’m smarter than you,” Quinn tells Sal, trailing him through the office, “I watch more films than you, I actually went to film school, and I care about filmmaking.” Her little digs come after Sal’s unsuccessful outing with his teen daughters at Musso & Frank’s, where one FaceTimes throughout the meal and the other points out that she’s been a vegan for a week when the lobster and steak arrive at the table. In their fight over their differing visions of what Wink can and could be: either a by-the-books piece of entertainment schlock directed by Parker Finn (who helmed Smile and Smile 2 — why fix what ain’t broken?) or Funny Pages’s Owen Kline, who wants to take the concept somewhere different. While most episodes of The Studio revolve around Matt’s inability to make a decision about what Continental can and should make, Sal and Quinn come to represent the warring past and future of an industry that would love to do something different if there was money to be promised down the line. But The Studio isn’t keen to be weighed down by overwrought discussion of how Hollywood can improve when instead it can go full sitcom high jinks, with Sal and Quinn’s feud escalating into a full-blown prank war.

Barinholtz, like a lot of classic slapstick performers, clearly delights in the physical tension that explodes in the final third of “The War.” A sequence where he marches through the Continental lot, getting hit with objects of varying textures, is a masterclass in comedic rage. There’s clear menace within Sal, but it’s all on stilts. He is impotent — career wise — unable to fully or successfully threaten his inferior, and otherwise left to panic and spiral out of control. It’d be easy for The Studio to paint Sal as purely villainous, but even at his nastiest, there is a pathetic and endearing quality to him, embodied by Barinholtz’s open, expressive face. Sal feels every insult, every quip, and every cold shoulder from one of his kids. Much of the episode revolves around how triggering it is for these men at the studio to hear the word “lame” — but Sal is lame, terribly so, and he knows it. “Just because I hate movies with subtitles doesn’t mean I have nothing to teach you,” he tells Quinn, his helpful offer inherently dismissive of himself.

Barinholtz’s wild swings as Sal ought to be no surprise to those who may have followed him since he broke big on Mad TV in 2002 or from his several seasons of The Mindy Project as chaotic nurse and ex-con Morgan Tookers. He’s brought a vibrant, chaotic sensibility to movies like Neighbors and most notably Blockers, which allowed him to show off a softer, empathetic side to his frantic roles. As Barinholtz has aged on screens, the bigness that once defined his comedic performances has transformed into a comedic persona that moves with elegance — each snap of an arm or shake of a head or squint backed up by whatever emotion he’s feeling cranked all the way up to eleven. Like any great clown, he wears his performance on every part of his body. “I’ve been doing this shit a very long time,” Sal says to Quinn, the exhaustion written across his face by the end of the episode. It’s true of Sal, but it’s true of Barinholtz too. This is a guy who knows what he’s doing — no one’s made being a loser look this fun.