For some, possibly in the middle of the country, there’s nothing more American than a wholesome Today Show/GMA-esque morning network television show. A safe, middle-of-the-road program that starts your day, tries to appeal to everyone, never rocks the boat and kills in the ratings because of its dependable inoffensiveness.
But what if the so-called honesty and reliability of a beloved morning show were shaken when a Matt Lauer-esque scandal rocks the program? This idea of American purity, the pearl-clutching shock of Lauer’s #MeToo disgrace and what it reveals about those once perceived as trustworthy, are the launching pad for AppleTV’s expensive and glossy “The Morning Show.” It’s a series that wants to touch on America’s current climate, its crisis of identity and confidence in itself—and the way morning TV supposedly comforts a nation—and wants to use the #MeToo movement to speak truth to power about female frustration, empowerment and the way the tectonic plates of our cultural landscape are changing. And while well-intentioned, “The Morning Show,” after building up a head of decent dramatic steam, almost always falls into contrived and hokey moments of soap-opera-ish melodrama. It’s also can be entertaining and addictively watchable because of its cast and the engaging clip the story runs at, until the outlandishness of the overwrought, histrionic writing overwhelms all of its guilty-pleasure hookiness.
Created by Kerry Ehrin and directed, in part, by Mimi Leder (also an exec-producer), “The Morning Show” begins in crisis. Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell), The Morning Show co-anchor, America’s adored dad, is fired following a sexual misconduct scandal which puts his co-host, Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston), the show, and ostensibly, America, into an emotional tailspin. Levy, in particular, Kessler’s on-air partner and friend for 15 years, is distraught, feeling betrayed, abandoned and conflicted. She’s lost a work husband and friend, but she’s also given up everything for the show and is feeling extremely lost and vulnerable (not for nothing, her contract renegotiation has stalled and there’s sensitive drama there).
With the Morning Show in triage, exec show producer Chip Black (Mark Duplass) is trying to mitigate the disaster, and the UBA network hawks swoop in with the damage control techniques. Fred (Tom Irwin), the angry UBA exec, wants to contain the catastrophe, but the ambitious and manipulative network newcomer and President Cory Ellison (a terrific Billy Crudup, who is one of the show’s highlights, even if he’s sometimes playing a silly agent of chaos and Network Joker™), who wants wake the Morning Show out of its rating doldrums, sees an opportunity to shake things up.
Enter Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon), a feisty correspondent and journalist for a conservative network (“actually more of a libertarian”) in the South who’s talented, but mouthy and self-sabotaging. Jackson becomes Twitter famous for a minute when an (affected, overwritten, unconvincing) confrontation with an ignorant agitator at a coal mining protest goes viral. Her ballistic, “I’ve f*cking had it with partisan, ill-informed b*llshit of political tribalism” rant strikes a nerve with a divided America and while the Morning Show drama metastasizes, she’s quickly booked as a guest in one of the early follow-up episodes meant to soften the Mitch Kessler PR nightmare.
When she goes toe to toe with the agitated and distressed Levy in her interview—the Morning Show host questioning the authenticity of the clip—the devilish Ellison lights up with an opportunistic idea. Soon, Jackson finds herself a pawn in the behind-the-scenes drama and cutthroat power struggle of the Morning Show between Levy and the execs who don’t want to meet her contract renegotiation demands. Long story short, in a heated, “oh, you wanna f*ck with me?” power play struggle and moment of impulsive retaliation, Jackson’s world is turned upside down when Levy surprise announces at an award dinner that this newcomer will be the new The Morning Show co-host. The network is aghast and while Ellison did have ambitious plans for Jackson, maybe even the co-host spot eventually, even he is taken aback at Levy’s punitive move that throws the show and all who work there into deeper chaos.
And that’s the crux of “The Morning Show,” a series that wants to say something about this volatile moment in American culture, through what should be the soothing stability of an amiable American television show, and the still-tender ache of the post #MeToo moment. But “The Morning Show”—sensationalist and often hammy—is still ultimately more interested in an Aaron Sorkin-like or “Broadcast News“-esque look at the Westeros-ian power dynamics and how-the-sausage-is-made behind-the-scenes melodrama of a morning TV show with dialogue and wittiness that not even half as clever (definitely more “The Newsroom” and less “The West Wing” when it comes to quality).
While there should be a tension between the serious topics the show is supposed to broach—the abuses of powerful men, workplace harassment and iniquities, gender discrimination—and the entertaining qualities of betrayals, backstabbing, opportunist careerism, and insecurities—it’s often like watching a show that doesn’t know what it wants to be.
A little banal, but still largely watchable at first, especially in the first three episodes carefully selected for press reviews, “The Morning Show” only gets worse as it goes on. Many of the “serious” moments—some of them terrifically acted by Jennifer Aniston who does some of her best work in recent years here—are undermined by phony and precious self-righteous monologues where you can practically feel the set go dark and the spotlight fall on the actor for their soliloquy. Apart from all the self-serious speeches, there’s also a lot of theatrical yelling, and just overcooked moments (see Witherspoon’s crucial, but overworked viral moment).
Some of the writing is just hilariously bad and the show sometimes borders on uncancel-culture, trying to get you to sympathize with Kessler just a wee bit too much. There’s a both-sides-ism that’s both unintentionally funny and troublesome in terms of examining #MeToo from both the victim and predator’s perspective (Kessler’s “first they came for the rapists and I did not speak” speech to his former boss and friend in Duplass’ Black should be its own viral, “can you believe they actually wrote this?” moment). Martin Short guest stars as a veteran, critically-acclaimed filmmaker from the ’60s and ’70s who now finds himself persona non grata thanks to a belated #MeToo tell-all and nearly every scene trying to defend bad behavior sounds like it was written by Bill O’Reilly (or Andy Signore).
The show’s sense of female agency and empowerment is iffy too. Aniston can be terrific, Witherspoon great too, but too often the show has to grapple with its own tendencies towards the catty backbiting, desperate ambition and huge egos that undercut the narrative (cue Mindy Kaling cameo). Worse, much of the feminist presentation is hackneyed, a kind of clichéd housewife feminism—Kelly Clarkson showing up to belt out a banal song—that has a you go girl!, this is a new era of the Morning Show! hair twirl flair to it.
Granted, when it’s at its best—generally Aniston in an emotional, vulnerable place—the way it gives voice to spiritual fatigue, female frustration and rage can be extremely on point and satisfying, but while well-intentioned in its ideas of feminism, “The Morning Show” is in desperate need of more thoughtful and nuanced writers (“Chaos is the New Cocaine,” is actually the title of one of the episodes).
Witherspoon’s Jackson is meant to be a genuine, sassy, messy truth-teller that’s both a wake-up call to America and the complacency that’s defined the show and Aniston’s shook character. She often speaks to the heart of the matter by articulating double standards, difficult-to-reconcile hypocrisies or illuminating false truths, pointing out the illusion of transparency without any of the actual risks, in sensitive situations. And ironically, that’s a little bit like “The Morning Show,” a series that purports to have an authentic humanist heart, that’s actually slick and often rings false. If you can get past all that, and the naive idea that any savvy viewer actually gives a shit about synthetic morning television or looks at it to speak real truths, “The Morning Show” can be compelling in fits and starts, but the later episodes really tank an intriguing beginning and reveal a show that’s as narratively injurious as it is toothlessly benign. [C-]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA7D4_qU9jo
