What the hell was the aspect ratio of this (saw it on Netflix)

It started off at 2.35:1 as listed on IMDB .Then, after a few minutes of intro, it went into a 16x9 image embedded in a 4x3 frame.Kind of like when you watch a widescreen movie on your SD channels on your HDTV. I thought maybe it was meant to signify the fact that they were taping, but it seemed like even the non taping scenes stayed that way. So I ended up doing a zoom to fill my TV screen while maintaing the same proportion and not sacrificing any of the image.