The Morning Show continues to be extremely divisive. Alex had her first day back on the show with special guests, the Foo Fighters. You can tell that Alex and Bradley are trying to get along for the sake of the network more than anything. Bradley has an agenda to work the political debates for the network. Alex’s only concern is making sure she can do the type of show she wants while under contract. Part of her ambition includes the opportunity to moderate the presidential debates when they occur slightly before November. The aspiration of Alex puts her squarely in the crosshairs of Bradley. Bradley is discovering that she is bisexual by being in a relationship with Laura from the previous episode. Meanwhile, Mitch Kessler is working with that Italian documentarian to improve the rights of citizens in Italy. To succeed in her mission, she interviews a high-profile figure from the Italian government.
I’m beginning to ask myself one basic question. What is the point of all this? What am I supposed to be learning from these characters? Lately, it doesn’t feel like any of them are growing and changing in positive ways. Across The Morning Show team, the staff continues to do their commitments as usual, and while there’s nothing wrong with that, it doesn’t make compelling television. The problem with The Morning Show is that while every character has personality, none of it is used effectively to serve the story. This behavior is particularly evident when we’re talking about Alex and Bradley. Alex is a control freak, and while demonstrated well throughout the other episodes, I still have no idea what her end game is or how she plans to get there.
Bradley has the ambition to be a legitimate journalist. The Morning Show is her springboard, and a means to an end. The writers spend more time with her being hurt and offended that her boss Corey doesn’t give her enough freedom to make the content that would change lives in Bradley’s mind. This puts them at loggerheads. What makes this more problematic is that I don’t see either individual really fighting to earn respect. Corey seems to feel that respect is owed to him because he is in a position of power. Both Corey and Bradley spend more time arguing about what they want rather than fighting to achieve it. I understand that this show wants to highlight the difficulty of having any sort of power while being a woman in the workplace but, there are different ways to show that which don’t require fighting between women or their bosses.
The most interesting aspect of this episode was learning that Mitch Kessler and his documentarian partner, Paola, contracted COVID. I will be very interested to see how that virus affects their system and whether they survive it or not. The other interesting aspect of this episode is Daniel trying to illustrate the importance of COVID to his Morning Show family. To be honest, I’m not surprised that he is being dismissed and failing at every turn. America didn’t wanna know about the pandemic that was coming because it meant they had to let go of all of the activities they enjoyed. I will be curious to see how they adjust once the pandemic enters its alpha phase. Now that will be appointment television. Let’s hope the writing staff does something interesting with it.
This episode was all about learning about yourself and what you want to achieve. I think both Alex and Bradley are still figuring that out. So far, they’ve had four episodes to really grow and build relationships and move forward past the horrible atrocities that occurred the previous year. Both want to remind each other of the damage caused by their own conflict. The more quickly they get over that, the better the show will be. I’ll keep tuning in. I hope you do too.
The Morning Show is now streaming on Apple TV+.
