On The Morning Show, The Revolution Will Be Televised

On The Morning Show, the cameras never stop rolling. The series came out swinging as a cornerstone of the newly minted Apple TV+ streaming service in 2019, and quickly impressed with whip smart writing and an all-star cast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaIyoo-KLHk

Jennifer Anniston (Alex Levy) and Reese Witherspoon (Bradley Jackson) starred as two journalists — one cynical veteran and one young idealist — grappling with the legacy of predatory former news anchor Mitch Kessler (Steve Carrell). A laser focus on Levy and Jackson's relationship — and their mutual fight to uncover the corruption that had allowed a sexual predator to flourish in their own newsroom — helped the series to set itself apart from other, less biting attempts to dramatize the news. But the show, like the world, lost its way somewhat in Season 2, with an in-world depiction of the COVID-19 pandemic bursting onto the scene to distract from the series' original plot.

With the Season 2 finale sending the series' primary antagonist literally flying off a cliff, I was left with some doubt as to whether the show could muster enough narrative coherence to guide another season. I will humbly admit I was wrong. While The Morning Show takes some faltering missteps in its recently concluded third run, it makes up for them with electrifying writing and incandescent performances on the parts of Witherspoon and Anniston.

Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) and Stella Bak (Greta Lee) struggle to keep their newsroom alive in a changing media landscape.

As Season 3 begins, Cory "chaos is the new cocaine" Ellison (Billy Crudup) has taken the CEO's chair at UBA news, only to face a staggering shortage of money. His solution: a merger with the corporate empire of billionaire Paul Marks (Jon Hamm), a thinly-veiled Elon Musk equivalent as divisive and erratic as his real-world counterpart. Hamm brings a frightening charisma to the role, and his character serves as an excellent foil to bring out the worst in UBA news and its journalists. The power struggle that ensues is worthy of Succession, and is made all the more disturbing by its setting in a newsroom.

Jon Hamm (far right) stars as a billionaire who, among other things, launches journalists into space.

(It's a weird episode.)

And therein lies this season's greatest strength and greatest weakness. While it may still be set in the newsroom, the series no longer seems to concern itself overmuch with journalism or journalists. Instead we get a high-octane — and admittedly deliciously written — game of wits, as various gumshoes, producers, stock traders, and billionaires vie for the top chair. This is, it must be said, a great deal of fun, but somewhere along its way to becoming must-watch television The Morning Show seems to have forgotten what made it unique in the first place: a quick-witted, wryly-written exploration of power, the news, and the people who wield both.

As a result, Season 3 presents a distinct shift in tone for the series. Its first two seasons were disturbing, yes, but they always carried an undercurrent of fundamental optimism: bold journalists, fighting the good fight, speaking truth to power and making the world a better place a little bit at a time.

Season 3 still has echoes of that old fervor, but it's tinged with an almost morbid current of cynicism. For every Bradley Jackson insisting with tears in her eyes that she thought she could make a real difference, change the world one word at a time, there's a Cory Ellison monologuing that "people don't know what the truth is until we mash it up and feed it to them."

On and off air, Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) faces her demons this season.

Old principles are abandoned. Untouchable characters are corrupted. Money and power wash over everything like a wave, and idealism falls before them.

And through all of that, the series becomes, at times, darkly funny. "They really made you cut together your own obituary," asks Bradley, "and they wouldn't even pay for an original song?" "Budget cuts," quips Alex. It's as though the writers' room — both on and off screen — no longer truly believes in the power of journalism. Bradley and Alex are still here, still (mostly) themselves, but the good fight they've sworn themselves to has become more Quixotic than crusading. Their story is tinged with a growing sardonic note, a great dark joke, a question, unasked but echoing: "The journalists are still here, but for how long?"

The Morning Show doesn't seem to know the answer to that question. Neither do I. But if Season 3's searing final episodes are anything to go by, the show still has a lot more to say before the cameras go dark on UBA news for the final time. I, for one, will be eagerly awaiting their next broadcast.