With just two more episodes left in this season, The Morning Show is turning up the heat and also maybe lowkey turning into a spy drama? There’s a lot to take in this week, but most of it is set up for larger payoffs coming at the end of the season, and so I am going to give you a character by character rundown, saving the best (the gay stuff) for last!
Alex
Can you believe sleeping with the billionaire who is about to buy the company she works for is not going great for Alex? Shocking, I know! The photo of them making out has hit the blogs, and whew they are out for blood!
SCREAMING at this headline!
But Alex is, well, Alex, so she spends the majority of this episode storming around, telling everyone within earshot that her personal life is not the story! In fact, it is so not the story that she is going to pull the interview she did with Paul! Cory, god bless him is…understandably annoyed that she now wants to pull the interview she demanded they do in the first place. But the story must be about Roe v Wade, and even though Anita Hill and the head of Planned Parenthood won’t go on Alex Unfiltered, she is the hero the people need! She is so desperate to get a guest to talk about the SCOTUS leak that she lets Chip book Jess Bennett, the “co-founder of that online magazine, The Break” who correctly predicted that Roe would be overturned way back in 2016. It’s never really…explicit, but it does feel like Chip has set Alex up to flop because he saw her making out with Paul and he is in love with her or whatever?
Either way, the interview goes rather badly for Madam Levy, as Jess gets to what she sees at the heart of the matter: billionaires with special interests who hold an undue amount of power at all levels of society. “If a reporter hooks up with a billionaire who is buying her media company? People are going to ask questions, like ‘Is she actually capable of speaking truth to power?'” Gagged her QUITE a bit there, Jess! (It’s neither here nor there but Shannon Woodward is in a rather bonkers episode of Law and Order: SVU that also stars Jared Harris, so if you were staring at her and wondering why she looked familiar, that is why. She’s also queer and was recently in a queer thriller.)
Post interview, Alex is furious that Chip left her hanging on air, thus making her look like an idiot (girl, you have got to get a better on air poker face!) and fires him. Then she goes back to her place, where Paul brings up the idea of tearing UBA to pieces and starting from scratch. Alex could build the media empire she’s always dreamed of! Certainly Paul isn’t suggesting this because he is running out of money to fund his dumb long range rocket! Certainly not!!
Chris
Having a bucket of paint thrown on you is probably top among the worst ways to start a day, right? Unsurprisingly, Chris’ “Abort the Court” post from last night touched a nerve. Mia and Layla have to sit her down to tell her that not only will they be pulling her off political issues for the foreseeable future, but she will also have increased security in the form of a giant man named Preston. Chris is understandably pissed and takes herself to the track for a run. Former Olympian has to do what a former Olympian has to do! But…”former” is really the key word there, as her run is cut short by a pulled muscle.
This is the face of a STAR
She has a really lovely moment with Yanko, of all people, about it, and it another show case for Nicole Beharie to do so much with so little! She’s at a bit of a crossroads here—she knows she can’t race again, but does she want to be hosting TMS? “I dream of the final lap, the final turn. Passing on the outside…never get caught.” The tear work she is doing here is stunning, never falling, just a sheen in her eyes. And look, as…strange as I find Yanko, their camaraderie is sweet, and I like that he invites her to the memorial for Hannah!
Bradley and Laura
Well, we start out good with our girlfriends in the news! Laura comes by after work and brings Bradley bagels in bed while still maintaining a three foot distance between them. I have to admit I did love Bradley assuming the bagels were from like, the office kitchen and Laura being aghast at the very suggestion. And! We get our second kiss! Huge!
Love that it is so backlit you can barely see it
…things take a turn for the worse, though, when Laura finds the Mondale/Ferraro pin on Bradley’s blouse. She doesn’t love the fact that her girlfriend was hanging out with her boss’s mother, which, you know, fair enough. Bradley bravely describes the day as “very weird,” and not “a psychosexual horror show that would stun even Freud,” but she basically glosses over it, clearly hoping Laura will forget about it. No! Such! Luck! Laura can’t stop thinking about it and even brings it up to Audra (Mindy Kaling) her co-anchor on the TMS competitor, Your Day America. Audra, despite finding Cory “oddly compelling in a kind of Patrick Bateman in a vinyl raincoat kind of way” immediately suggests Laura look through Bradley’s emails. That website with all the information from the hack is still up, after all! It barely counts as an invasion of privacy!
This is possibly Mindy’s best work and no, she is not acting
Meanwhile, Bradley has been tasked by Stella to talk to Natalie Morales and find out what she knows about Paul and Hyperion. She’s a little nervous about it, because the last time she pushed a woman to talk (Hannah) that woman died. But she just loves the truth and journalism SO much that she must investigate. This is The Morning Show, Spy Edition. It begins when Bradley is delivered a cup of coffee for “Kate D.” She isn’t Kate D…but Natalie Morales is and has left a note to meet at closed theater later that night. A lot had to go exactly right for this little coffee cup gambit to work, huh?
Laura, despite looking appalled by Audra’s suggestion, finds herself unable to resist the temptation. Everything about this scene of Serious Investigative Journalism is art to me, from the fact that it is set to Lianne La Havas’ “Forget” to all the zoomed in computer text that reads JAN 6 FOOTAGE and highlights words like EDITED OUT. That’s right folks, Laura did not uncover anything about Bradley and Cory, but she did figure out about the COVER UP. Please enjoy this gorgeous array of shocked discovery faces!
This is also my face reading any one of Julianna Margulies’ Instagram posts over the last two weeks!
When Bradley calls after her failed meet up with Kate, Laura begs off hanging out, saying she’s not feeling well. Boldly, Bradley takes this time to tell Laura that she loves her, and Laura says it back! Will she drop the bomb on Bradley next week? Will she use this to get herself an evening anchor job? Wait, that would be iconic, actually. We will just have to wait and see!
The fact that I heard the drath knell when Bradley told Laura she loved her does not bode well for them. Also, Laura prying into Bradley’s emails and texts, leaked or not seemed very OOC for her. I feel like the writers did that just to inject more unnecessary drama into this pairing. Doubt they’ll make it in the long run.
Death knell* siiiiiiigh…
I don’t know what the long story will be for BradleyLaura, but I’ve been mulling over the OOC stuff. I don’t know if it’s *out* of character as much as just insufficiently set up because of how little screen time and character development the character’s enjoyed. We needed more of Laura’s POV. Because it could well be that the way she feels about Bradley is different (building on the comment she made about Bradley “scaring her a little” in 2×09), and so she’s making choices she wouldn’t normally — against her better judgement. And that’s fine, but they need to show us her POV, her inner conflict, how this love is/might be different and what that means for Laura (heck, I’d also like to get a better sense of what the relationship means to Bradley)… Because otherwise, based on what we had to go on in season 2, these choices do seem OOC, and we have no idea what the real stakes and conflicts are because we’re lacking so much info. If they just spent less screen time inserting Cory into everything… 👀
The caption under the “gorgeous array of shocked discovery faces” 😂 My sentiments exactly, up to a few minutes ago 🥴
I don’t think the caption under the “gorgeous array of shocked discovery faces” is funny at all. I actually find it insensitive and also ignoring growing antisemitism and Muslim phobia in this country. Unfortunately, the moment we’re going through is difficult, including for Jewish community members in America like Julianne. I appreciate in the other hand the series of respectful dialogue generated by the articles you all have published separately about this but inserting your opinion here in such a brief way seems like reducing your opinion about something complex and painful for many people to a meme.I do notice that I have not seen anything published from a Jewish left perspective (many oppose the violence we’re seeing in Gaza and are also experiencing the grief of losing relatives and friends, including young children l, in Israel on October 7th, just three weeks ago). I appreciate your reviews usually but this one kind of took me off guard and surprised me. :-(
You couldn’t even bring yourself to say “Palestine” at any point and that speaks volumes.
Also, Drew has written about this so youve either not looked well enough or you’re overlooking the Jewish Trans woman who has been vocal about this.
Finally, to bring it to the crux of your post, there’s a whole undertaking of ethnic cleansing going on in Gaza right now with THOUSANDS of innocents dead and you’re getting upset over a caption with a bit of snark? Videos after videos of the horrors being carried out and someone dares to highlight that this person is a relevant supporter of this dehumanising campaign of utter destruction of a culture and of a people? Get over yourself.
Thank you for pointing out the weirdness that is Yanko. HIMBO on TMS.