So far, The Studio hasn’t shown much interest in telling a serialized story. We haven’t, for instance, heard a word about the Kool-Aid movie since the premiere or the fate of Sarah Polley’s movie since the second episode. Each installment has been self-contained, but that doesn’t mean what happens in one episode doesn’t have consequences in those that follow. For instance, even though Matt landed the studio head job instead of Sal, who thought he had a shot at the position, the two friends have remained close. But their relationship has suffered at least a little. The heart-to-heart they have toward the end of “The Missing Reel” plays like the opening of a conversation they’ll have to resume later.

In “The War,” the series’s fifth episode (and the first penned by co-creator Frida Perez), we start to see some of the aftershocks of Matt’s promotion. Sal’s remained in the same spot as before. Quinn has moved up. But is there room on the team for both of them? There’s certainly not room for both of them in studio parking. As the episode opens, Matt, Sal, and Quinn arrive at work in cars suited for their characters. Matt drives a classic for which he probably paid an outrageous sum, Sal a loud Porsche, and Quinn a sensible but stylish Mini Cooper convertible. The first two float effortlessly into their assigned parking spots, but Quinn gets turned away from the parking garage, which is clogged thanks to a visiting Netflix production shooting a show about the Battle of Waterloo. Sure, she’s worked there for five years and she’s now a Creative Executive, but she still has to take the long walk from the remote lot back to the office.

Quinn’s got other problems, too. She really wants Matt to consider making a low-budget slasher movie written by Owen Kline (who plays himself). Kline wants to direct it as his follow-up to the indie black comedy Funny Pages, but Sal’s already developing his own slasher movie and is this close to getting Smile creator Parker Finn (also playing himself) to sign onto it. Sure, it’s called Wink and its premise is maybe a little too close to Smile’s, but he thinks he can get it done anyway. Maybe Quinn could just, you know, help Sal out? That’d be okay, right?

Quinn’s understandably not into it. Nor, for that matter, is Sal. And that’s understandable, too. Quinn immediately sets to throwing cold water on hiring Finn for the project. Why not Owen Kline? Though Matt sees Kline’s bonafides — Cannes, A24, an endorsement from the Safdies — as a selling point, Sal does not. Wink is not that kind of movie. It’s not, in his words, made “for a bunch of pansexual mixologists living in Bed-Stuy.” Does he have a point, or is he out of touch? Maybe even … lame?

If there’s one word that sets Matt off it’s “lame.” It’s the last thing he wants to be. So, before he makes up his mind, he agrees to meet with both Kline and Finn. This sounds reasonable enough, but once out of earshot, Sal and Quinn launch into an argument. By his reckoning, she should know her place and respect the hierarchy. Quinn, however, sees things differently. She can’t let it go, either. It distracts her in bed with her boyfriend. “Why’d I get promoted if I can’t talk in meetings?” she asks him. As far as she’s concerned, Sal has a target on his back.

Would it make any difference if she knew he had two daughters to care for? True, Sal doesn’t seem all that close to Skye and Bella, both of whom seem more connected to their phones than their dad as they sit down for lunch at Musso and Frank. One’s insolent, calling him lame and old, and the other affectedly infantile, but both are exhausting in their own way.

As Sal returns from lunch, Quinn schemes. And, after Petra (Keyla Monterroso Mejia), Matt’s executive assistant, leaves for the day, Quinn gets to work changing his calendar. That means he’ll have to miss the meeting with Finn to have drinks with Chris Hemsworth. This does not sit well with Finn, who came to Continental specifically to meet Matt. With only a little bit of sleuthing — Sal’s detective abilities are becoming something of a motif after the previous episode — Sal figures out that Quinn’s the culprit. In retaliation, he sets about sabotaging Quinn and Matt’s meeting with Kline. This starts by commenting on the 32-year-old Kline’s babyfaced appearance (which is kind of remarkable), then escalates as Sal dominates the meeting with talk about all the compromises the independent-minded filmmaker will have to make working for Continental. This, predictably, scares Kline off and sways Matt back to Sal’s side of the argument.

At this point, it’s worth remembering that this episode is called “The War,” and, at this point, the battle lines have been drawn. Quinn has messed with Sal’s projects. Sal thinks she should know her place and wait her turn (while admitting it might never arrive). He’s craven, but she loves film, Quinn argues. They don’t make films, they’re in the business of making movies. Then, as a finishing move, Sal calls Quinn a “D-Girl,” a disparaging description that doubles as a Sopranos reference.

Quinn believes she has no choice but to escalate, and after a fun site gag that finds her accidentally leading a handful of extras dressed as Napoleonic-era soldiers, she parks a golf cart in Sal’s space. This sets off a chain reaction. Sal’s parking on the Waterloo set leads to him getting his suit covered in chili. This makes him ill-equipped to comfort an angry Finn, who abandons their meeting. Then, in a subsequent fight with Quinn, he throws a burrito at her but misses, hitting a moving golf cart that then crashes into and collapses the Waterloo set.

When this provokes an HR investigation, Quinn and Sal ultimately decide they’re better off working together to avoid getting in trouble, but not until Sal opens up, admitting that Quinn reminds him of his daughters because they, too, make him feel irrelevant and old. She feels for him, but she also calls him out for not being a mentor to her. She could use his experience. He could benefit from her youthful, arthouse-informed perspective. (She’ll also take his parking space while she’s at it.)

In some respects, it’s a shame they couldn’t see this from the start, but then we wouldn’t have had this funny episode if they had. “The War” works well as commentary on the downside of being a cutthroat, even in a cutthroat industry. Both Finn and Kline might have made fine low-budget slasher movies. But, when they do, they won’t be for Continental. But it’s a terrific showcase for Ike Barinholtz and Chase Sui Wonders and a fun exercise in mounting tension and increasingly destructive acts of sabotage that reaches its own comic Waterloo as Netflix’s simulated Waterloo falls apart. Will they be allies going forward? Possibly, though, at this point, it seems almost as possible that The Studio will forget about the events of this episode by the time the next one arrives. For now at least the team has solidified and Quinn can enjoy a short walk from the Mini Cooper to her office as she eats her burrito.

• Ghosts that wink could be scary but the face Sal makes is disturbing in other ways.

• It feels like Keyla Monterroso Mejia has been waiting for a big breakout scene. She doesn’t quite get one in this episode, but she has some terrific moments.

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