I Think Bryan Cranston Gave The Funniest TV Performance Of 2025 So Far In The Studio Finale, And He Barely Said A Word

Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet streamed The Studio’s Season 1 finale with an Apple TV+ subscription.

Seth Rogen & Co. deserve a lot of praise for everything that’s made The Studio’s first season such a hilarious treat for streaming audiences, from A+ directors cameoing as themselves to the spot-on satire surrounding its Kool-Aid movie to Rogen’s proficiency with on-screen pratfalls. The main cast also excels, of course, but the finale firmly proves that recurring star Bryan Cranston is not only this show’s biggest highlight, but quite possibly the funniest thing on TV in 2025 altogether.

Of course, Cranston’s studio boss Griffin Mill wouldn’t have reached such unpredictably nutty highs and lows without the events of the preceding episode, "CinemaCon,” which goes a long way in supporting this argument. It’s of course where Griffin imbibed on countless shroom-enhanced chocolates and other drugs, leading to a largely bumbling and completely incoherent performance in “The Presentation.” Speaking of…

Bryan Cranston Deserves Awards For His Weekend At Bernie's-esque Physical Comedy

Matt's plight to pull off the most successful CinemaCon presentation imaginable seems all but possible on the morning of the event itself, considering no one involved is able to get any sleep, with Matt thinking it'd be a good idea to have a hallucinogen-fueled rager the night before. Who knows how successful he would have been if not for Griffin showing up and drinking, eating and snorting whatever was in his midst. Behavior that's made all the more troubling by Matt learning Griffin is 82, far older than what others believe him to be.

This perfect set-up for disaster is indeed hell for Matt, Sal and others, and the finale turns into a very self-aware semi-parody of 1989’s vacation-gone-awry movie Weekend at Bernie’s. (The second Andrew McCarthy movie reference, following Matt namechecking Mannequin in a previous episode.) That gimmick could easily lose its appeal with the quickness if handled wrong, but The Studio makes an artform out of it thanks to Bryan Cranston’s upper-echelon physical comedy talents.

The fact that Cranston isn’t playing a corpse makes his lolling and other unpredictable movements all the more hilarious, and there are moments where I felt positive a dummy was used in the actor’s place, only to realize the Breaking Bad star never left. Every single time his head rolled backwards or forwards, with his mouth awkwardly hanging open, I howled. Similarly, his every attempt to lick his ice cream cone floored me. I had to rewind several times because jokes were drowned out by my voice.

While many fans can’t wait to see Bryan Cranston return to the world of Malcolm in the Middle for that sitcom’s upcoming revival, I can’t imagine that anything he does in those four episodes will come anywhere near the excellence of his Studio performance. Which is made all the more impressive due to how completely incomprehensible the character was in the finale, with his only big line happening during the “Movies!” chant that closes things out.

It’s a perfect performance that just doesn’t happen very often in modern entertainment, but Cranston proves beyond all doubt that slapstick will never die. And if it turns out any of The Studio’s shelved episodes are about Griffin Mill, I will do whatever’s necessary to see them come to light.

Though Bryan Cranston's performance is on a wholly different level from everyone else in The Studio's finale, the episode also features the wildest scenes from Zoë Kravitz, who unwittingly chows down on way too many illicit chocolates before realizing that there's psilocybin in them.

I honestly could have watched everything that went down in Kravitz's hotel room in real time, considering how hiliariously childlike and completely random she became. Perhaps the biggest highlight? Her effortlessly nailing the Blackwing presentation for the CinemaCon crowd before walking backstage and gleefully confessing that she was peeing her pants. Pure chaos and pure comedy.

Honorable Mention #1: Zoë Kravitz On Mushrooms Is A+ Television

Honorable Mention #2: Dave Franco Should Always Be This Hysterically Loud And Unpredictable

As if there weren't already enough unpredictable moving parts wandering around Las Vegas during The Studio's final two episodes, Dave Franco's presence is almost completely uncessary from a narrative perspective, but absoultely necessary to ramp up the comedic quotient. He basically exists to offer the loudest and most sporadic exposition possible, as he's also under a number of different influences

It's a testament to Franco's unbridled id-energy and charismatic smile that his performance works so well, since there isn't much to it beyond him yelling and enjoying everything. I mean, he obviously gets as caught up in the mayhem as anyone, and pulls off his own CinemaCon presentation despite being covered in blood from an unrelated incident. And it's hard to judge the crowd for applauding it, since it's surprisingly effective for something so off-the-cuff.

So by the time the Emmys come around again, if Bryan Cranston's name isn't one of the Guest Actor nominees for his stellar work as Griffin Mill, I. guess the only next step would be to eat a bunch of mushroom-filled chocolates and then produce my own version of the Emmys at home. Nobody needs to see that, though.