by Jeff Alan, Contributing Writer
Apple’s very first and second most popular series, The Morning Show, wrapped up its third season — it was another one of intense drama and news-related story arcs. The show is comprised of Jennifer Aniston as Alex Levy and Reese Witherspoon as Bradley Jackson, followed closely by Billy Crudup as Cory, Greta Lee as Stella, Mark Duplass as Chip, and Julianna Margulies as Laura, among others. The cast also expands with the entrance of Mad Men alum Jon Hamm, playing the role of Paul Marks.
The third season of The Morning Show brings us nearly two years after the events of Season Two, when Alex, ailing with early bouts of COVID-19, on UBA+, streams about her experiences so far with COVID-19 and accepting herself for what was leaked about her at Mitch’s (Steve Carell) memorial. Now, in the semi-present, UBA is back at work, and Bradley is the evening new anchor, while Alex continues hosting The Morning Show with Yanko (Nestor Carbonell) and new co-host Christine Hunter (Nicole Beharie). Alex also has a show on UBA+ that she uses to have uncensored discussions and interviews with the people she wants. Cory is able to keep UBA+ afloat by cutting costs across the company, though without the support of board members like Cybil (Holland Taylor).
Bradley attempts to cover a story about an abortionist that keeps getting rejected by Cory, while Alex and the TMS crew are brought to Texas to take part in a spaceship launch (in vein of the fairly recent spaceflights done by Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson), and are met by Paul, the wealthy owner of the company Hyperion, who is giving them the opportunity to go aboard his spaceflight. During a private conversation with Alex, Paul tells her that he and Cory are working on a deal to acquire UBA and integrate it into Hyperion, and that the spaceflight is crucial to making that happen. But when Bradley comes to Texas as well to do the story on the abortionist, Alex leaves Hyperion to cover the story on the abortionist and Cory convinces Bradley takes her place on the spaceflight. After a successful flight into space, Cory, Bradley, and Paul return home, as do Alex and Chip from their impromptu trip, to cover the story, and they begin to dig into the details of the supposed deal between Paul and UBA.
That is merely the setup of the season, and to be honest, it doesn’t really build to anything very strong after that. Honestly, when looking back at the season as whole, a lot of the events should have happened in half the amount of time, but the stories just feel like they had to be stretched out just to fit the 10-episode season order.
Another odd thing about this season (and the series in general) is its use of real-world current events, which it weaves into the fictional story, making those events relevant to the characters’ lives. For instance, Hamm is brought in to play a character that’s not too dissimilar to Elon Musk: a rich engineer who owns his own space rocket company working with NASA, who makes a decision to buy out a successful media company for the purpose of making it his own. Sound familiar? I know art imitates life and everything, but it’s hard not to see what they are doing here.
There is also an arc in this season involving the January 6 insurrection, featuring a character who is aware that one of their close family members was involved in assaulting an officer in the Capitol Building, and is coming to grips of whether or not to turn them in or cover up their involvement. But this storyline is played out so much in the camp of “the insurrection is bad” that it’s almost cringy to watch at times, and that’s saying a lot coming from someone who watched the entire coverage of the insurrection in horror and felt anger toward all those people who stormed the Capitol. From January 6, to COVID, to the Musk parallels, it just seems like this show is trying to spoon-feed us all of these recent events with a very clear bias, which is off-putting, and not what I think this season should have been about.
The supposed deal between Paul and UBA takes the entire season to come to fruition, and a lot of frankly boring drama starts to weigh the season down. The show wants to be The Newsroom so badly, but it fails to bring any sort of journalistic excitement to the table. If this season had stuck to the deal between UBA and Paul, while looking into his past and at Hyperion (because you know they wouldn’t bring in a pro like Hamm to play someone who wasn’t doing something shady in the background), then I think there would have been a really interesting story to tell; but the season just gets so bogged down with all this other nonsense that I am sick of hearing about that I started to lose interest and wish I HAD actually watched The Newsroom instead. At least with that, I would have been able to listen to Aaron Sorkin’s whip-like dialogue and intelligent storytelling.
All in all, I think the performances are serviceable despite the lackluster stories and drama. I like seeing Hamm in more things, Lee gets a lot of opportunity to shine, and Crudup has an episode where we dig into his past a bit more as a short but interesting step away from the story. But for the most part, I didn’t feel like there was much of a satisfying ending — it will probably go down as being forgettable.
Rating: Didn’t Like It
The Morning Show is currently streaming on Apple TV+
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