The Morning Show Struggles to Avoid Becoming The Mourning Show
Filling in the vacuum of sanctimonious newsroom shows that pat themselves on the back for so effectively recreating the sanctimony of newsrooms left by the cancellation of Aaron Sorkin’s sanctimonious Newsroom on HBO comes Apple TV’s Sorkin light The Morning Show starring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Withersppon and Steve Carell. Created by Jay Carson and “inspired by” Brian Stelter’s Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV, it is no wonder the sanctimony drips with unironic self satisfaction that this is a world people care about.
Jay Carson is a former Democratic operative who worked for both the Clinton’s, Chuck Schumer, and was the Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles serving under Antonia Villagroso before turning to a career in Hollywood. He cut his teeth on House of Cards, a show I’ve never seen but one that is apparently about insufferable people that seems to resonate with an audience. The Morning Show is also a show about insufferable people. The first episode opens with the insufferable Charlie “Chip” Black played by Mark Duplass looking dead until his iPhone rings, and then we watch a soundless “Chip” answer the call that leaves him looking…well, dead.
The show then cuts to the insufferable Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell) who answers his pone and again silently receiving a message that leaves him looking devastated. Then we cut to Jennifer Aniston’s Alex Levy who before entering the news network building finds her producer “Chip” waiting for her, and she asks; “Who died?” From here the show cuts to Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) being her insufferable self to the point that her co-worker tells her she’s so insufferable she’s been passed over for promotion. This is not just a show about insufferable people however, it is a sanctimonious show about insufferable people.
Bradley is at a coal mining protest to interview some of the protesters but before she can do this, an agitator barrels into her cameraman knocking him to the ground. The insufferable Bradley valiantly and sanctimoniously grabs the agitator by his lapels and reads him the riot act. She rattles off a litany of damning facts about the ills of coal mining because she’s not just insufferable, she’s sanctimoniously so. Once she’s properly berated the happless agiator, she calmly goes about securing her interview.
From here the show cuts back and forth between the three central figures, Mitch, Alex and Bradley establishing their home and work lives. Mitch insufferably whines about his predicament, the guy who “died” has been fired for sexual insuborniation. Alex whines about her empty life and Bradely quits her job in self righteous insufferability to rush home to mom and her brother to quickly establish how she’s really just a great gal with a heart of gold, even if she is brimming with tough love and a personality often described as “asshole.”
Her little stunt at the coal mine protest has gone viral on the internet, and the Morning Show producers, always on the look-out for a titillating story, arrange for Bradley to be interviewed by Alex. Meanwhile, we are introduced to various insufferable employees of morning news show, including the least insufferable, and ironically the seeming villain of the show, Corey Ellison played with delicious relish by Billy Crudup. The power struggle that ensues following the vacuum created by Mitch’s departure consumes most of the first episode and, of course, the episodes that follow.
Yet that first episode is so hamfistedly put together, (like a quilt of tropes) that eye rolling becomes an affliction for the viewer. The normally likable Anniston just isn’t, and the aw shucks average guy of Duplass seems woefully out of place in a show that’s decidely about smug elite liberals. Carell’s Mitch, at this point is clearly scripted to be insufferable, as is apparently Witherspoon’s Bradley, but in this first episode she is the only one besides Crudup who manages to rise above the script and let some charm bleed through. Fortunately, once the tedious set up of the first episode is complete, finally the story allows Anniston’s Alex to show some depth.
As the episodes wear on a story begins to develop that will carry the show all the way to its season finale. It takes a while to fully develop its #MeToo story, but by the end it is finally crafty enough in its presentation to develop some genuine tension and suspense. The show stumbles greatly with Mitch however, and he is pretentiously presented as a maybe a predator, maybe a victim of an overzealous me too movement. Pretentious in that the scripts never create any real doubt that Mitch is indeed a predator. A shark, mindless in his pursuit of feeding.
The pretense that a character can so clearly be presented as a shark but somehow convince the viewer he’s really just a misunderstood porpoise is as dumb as naming the shark from Jaws Flipper and expecting an audience to buy that shark might just be friendly. There was never any need to even attempt an is he or isn’t he throughline in order to tell the story they ultimately settled on telling. While that story they did settle on ended in a fairly thrilling way, it was not without its missteps either.
One of the through-lines throughout this series has been the tension between Alex and Bradley. By the season finale that tension has turned to full blown hostility towards each other. Each one conniving behind the back of the other in a game of brinkmanship that culminates in the tragic death of one of the networks employees tied to this me too arc. Her death ultimately unites Alex and Bradley but the outrage it took to turn Alex into an ally of Bradley’s rather than a foe plays as faux.
Narrative wise the outrage is certain plausible, and Aniston does a fine job of letting a slow burn boil over. It is that the writers thought it wise to give Alex an expletive in her lines to punctuate her outrage. She’s the host of a morning news show for crying out loud. Alex’s use of this expletive only makes her come off as unprofessional at a time when her professionalism should have been the centerpiece of her outrage. It was a foolish move by the show-runners and as little as that might seem, it did much to damage what should have been a bang up finale.