by Mike Hilty, Contributing Writer
Do you know how I typically get my news in 2021? Twitter. We don’t have cable anymore, and I don’t really watch morning news anymore. We live in an age where news is becoming scarce and content for information is starting to become a void between fact and opinion (factpinon, if I may). That’s the unfortunate truth about news in the 21st century. News comes about at lightning speed and is in a bit of a grey area in terms of truth. Also, as is the case with so many things like McDonald’s meals to Android phones, you can customize the news with whatever content we want from whomever anchor/journalist/personality we want. There was a bit of a meta line in The Morning Show’s last episode where they talk about how they people get the news. One of the character’s says, “This is the news [pointing at his phone]. Everyone’s carrying around the news. [The Morning Show is] just the news for people who have too much time.” It felt a little on the nose about the current state of the news.
It was also a bit of an ominous warning for something the show lacks. Before we get to season two, let’s do a very brief recap of how we ended up here.
Previously on The Morning Show season one…
Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell), a prominent anchor on The Morning Show (TMS) on UBA network, is accused of sexual harassment/misconduct. His co-anchor, Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston), is dealing with the fallout of his actions, but more importantly, her and the network’s actions (or rather lack thereof) to curtain Kessler’s behavior. Levy, on the whim, announces that her new co-anchor is Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon), a reporter that has hopped around from network to network due to a plucked and high-spirited, yet abrasive attitude. The season tackles the fallout from individual people such as Kessler’s victims, family, friends, and coworkers to the very idea of corporate responsibility and the media’s role in promoting unhealthy culture in the name of success. Season one ends with Levy and Jackson exposing UBA network’s President Fred Micklen (Tom Irwin) after an unfortunate incident brought about directly by Kessler’s actions changes the situation.
Season two begins right after the moments of the final episode of Season one. Alex and Bradley are both dealing with the fallout of their admission for themselves, the show, and the network as a whole. We fast forward to New Year’s Eve 2019 to see Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) working with Stella Bak (Greta Lee) to figure out the direction of TMS. Bradley and her new TMS co-anchor Eric Nomani (Hasan Minhaj) are counting down to 2020 in Time Square. Alex has given up on TMS to reflect on her life. Mitch has abandoned ship and is in hiding. We eventually get to a point where Alex is asked to come back to TMS, which does not go as expected.
Season one, for all its’ warts, had a focused A story with the fallout of Mitch’s sexual misconduct. It focused on quite a few different elements of how this affects a number of people on the show. The crew and coworkers on TMS wrestle with how to handle these choppy waters and balance friendships with ugly truths about someone likable. The victims of Mitch’s misconduct all have to deal with their situation and how it affects them in different ways. Mitch himself even deals with the repercussions of his behavior, while also trying to rationalize his actions somehow. The season circled on that storyline with a lot of the B storylines to tell their own arc, but still managing to blend it into Mitch’s storyline.
If season one was a surgical knife, season two is a shotgun blast.
The primary concern of the story for season two is that it is trying to hit a lot of topics and storylines, but does not give any of their stories enough time to actually develop. We run the gamut on story points for this season that it’s hard to keep track of all of them. We move from story arcs on cancel culture, to drug rehab and drug abuse, to family bonds and issues with that, to tabloid journalism, to LGBTQIA+ and identity issues, to racism, to streaming wars, among many others. Then there’s a story arc regarding COVID-19.
For a lot of people, the COVID-19 pandemic got real around March 11, 2020. A whole slew of different things happened that day. I remember that day vividly because I was hosting trivia at a local bar and there was a definite sense of unease because most people weren’t even sure if it would be safe to even be out during such volatile times. I announced during trivia that Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson had COVID-19 and that the NBA was suspending its regular season. It would be the last time in 2020 I would host trivia and wouldn’t come back until July 2021, right in time for the summer Delta variant wave. Season two’s treatment of COVID-19 is weird. It looms over the first part of the season, but then becomes more of a focal point for the second half of the season. I don’t know about you, but I’m not prepared to relive the early days of the pandemic like this and it feels a bit shoehorned in. This also causes a lot of other stories to take a backseat. Because of this, none of these story arcs jell together. Instead of it being a puzzle of telling a compelling story, it’s just random puzzle pieces that happen to be in the same area that don’t really fit together.
Character-wise, a big issue with this season is including all these characters from the first season, while trying to introduce new characters for season two. Alex and Bradley have a lot going on in this season. Bradley has a story arc that comes absolutely out of nowhere. If some foundation was laid down in season one, I must have missed it. By the end of episode three, the game had completely changed for her, and it was rather jarring.
Alex is an even bigger problem in this season. In season one, we are waffling between rooting for Alex and wishing her uppance will come at some point. It’s what makes her such a compelling character. Season two is filled with a lot of decisions and choices by Alex that were infuriating for me as a viewer and fan of the show. Other season one characters are relegated to the background — Daniel Henderson (Desean Terry), Yanko Flores (Nestor Carbnell), Hal Jackson (Joe Tippett), and Mia Jordan (Karen Pittman in a good and underutilized performance). Newer characters like Laura Peterson (Julianna Marguiles) and Stella don’t get enough time to flourish.
One central theme from season two is consequences of actions and accountability. There’s a lot of talk about with consequences of actions, some showing the consequences, but some characters (particularly the upper class, Caucasian, and famous ones) do not share the consequences that the general public face. Mitch’s story suffers the most from the consequences standpoint because of the direction the show decides to take with Mitch himself. What happens to him this season feels a bit like a copout for dealing with what his actual consequences should be for his actions, which is frustrating and upsetting to see. Alex and Bradley don’t really get to see the consequences of their actions either because for the most part, you don’t get to see them play out on screen or they don’t really exist for them. Some characters are making CRAZY decisions, and we are left to our own devices about what the consequences of these actions should be. For a show that had such a strong message during season one about how these actions of sexual misconduct are wrong, it does a weird job of showing the consequences that some of these people actually face.
Greatest Hits: here are my favorite moments of the season in no particular order (shoutout to the show Lost for giving me the idea). I will make these as spoil free as possible:
- Any scene with Doug! Need more Doug for season two.
- Is Billy Crudup the unsung MVP of this show? He very well might be, even though most of his story doesn’t make a lick of sense. But pinball metaphors and a genuine-ish care about the events of last season even though there was some selfish motivation still worked for me.
- I loved the Ty Fitzgerald scenes. It’s so 2020 to have that part of a morning news show.
- Alex’s dog is super cute and although I had mild concerns about who is taking care of that dog while Alex was at work, I still enjoyed all the times the dog was on screen.
- More Laura and Stella next season. At this point, my greatest hits for this season is more like a wishlist for what I hope for in season three (if there even is one).
I have no idea what season three has in store, if there is one. It’s honestly been a long time since a show’s second season has disappointed me this much. Season two of The Morning Show squanders its star power and good graces built up from season one. I’m not at the point where I’m ready to give up on the show, but it’s honestly not that far away. Until then, proceed with caution with season two of The Morning Show and keep expectation levels tempered. The final episode is a bad finale and it’s going to have a lot to clean up in the aftermath. We’ll see if the ratings will warrant another chance.
Grade: D+
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