On November 1st, Apple TV+ launched as a brand new streaming subscription service from the tech giant. You have already heard what we thought about two of the series Apple chose to launch their quasi-network, See and Dickinson. However, The Morning Show, created by Jay Carson and Kerry Ehrin, is Apple’s flagship series. It’s the most high profile and star-studded of all their offerings. It’s the one we have been hearing about the longest, but is it any good?
That’s actually a bit hard to answer. The series stars heavy weights Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Steve Carrell, among many many others, and is ostensibly an in-depth look at the behind the scenes of a network morning news show in the midst of a #MeToo controversy. Aniston plays Alex Levy, whose been America’s mom for the last 15 years as host of The Morning Show alongside her TV partner and “work husband” Mitch Kessler, played by Carrell. The series opens with the executive producer of the network news show, played wonderfully by Mark Duplass, one the floor at the studio in the wee hours of the morning as he gets the call that Mitch has been fired after news broke that he had several inappropriate sexual relationships with junior members of The Morning Show staff.
Alex apparently knew Mitch was a jerk and a bit of a dog but is shocked to learn the news, though she’s truly more worried about how this is going to impact her status on the show and her career moving forward. Aniston is doing excellent work in this role, toying with her image as America’s sweetheart while presenting a backstage persona that is high strung and egotistical in a way that makes for entertaining TV. Her performance feels brave and honest and even a bit like wish fulfillment as she pushes the boundaries of her innate likeability.
Meanwhile, on her way to a coal mine protest in West Virginia for her regional southeastern conservative cable news network, Bradley Jackson, played by Reese Witherspoon doing her very best Holly Hunter from Broadcast News impression, learns the news and quickly moves past it. She has bigger fish to fry (mainly loose her head at a protester who knocks down her cameraman in a moment that quickly goes viral) and has no interest in or respect for The Morning Show or it’s behind the scenes drama. Witherspoon’s performance starts out laughably over the top, to the point that hard to buy into her reality at all. The early episodes are built around cliffhangers for her character’s fate, and it seems like with every new cliffhanger she grows more comfortable and less heightened in the role.
After watching the first three episodes of this series (all of which were available on Apple TV+ at launch, with a subsequent seven posting weekly every Friday morning on the service), a few things have become clear. The Morning Show, much like the fictional news show it owes its name to, is a series in search of an identity. These early episodes lack a consistent tone or worldview. Is this a series about sexual politics in the workplace? Is it about #MeToo more broadly? Is it about ethics in journalism? Or is it just a workplace soap opera with an insane budget?
Honestly, from scene to scene the show is all of those things and then some. The cavern between Aniston’s sharply cynical world of ego-driven network news and Witherspoon’s down-home southern melodrama opposite Bret Butler in the first episode could not be wider. However, the key to this entire series finding its footing comes in the form of Billy Crudup’s wily Cory Ellison.
Ellison comes from the executive world of entertainment, and he’s trying to inject some of that narrative and drama into the news division he’s currently heading. The bombshell revelation of Mitch’s sexual misconduct and subsequent staff shake up gives Ellison the perfect opportunity to inject some spontaneity into the dinosaur of a morning news program he’s inherited. “Chaos is the new cocaine!” he exclaims at his boss as the elevator doors close in his face.
As you might have guessed from the quote, Crudup plays Ellison with a manic energy that makes it clear he is delighted to be living in the moment every moment he’s on screen, but he also might just have the most cunning master plan of anyone who thinks they are in the driver’s seat amidst the chaos. The show comes alive when he’s at its center, and the series’ tone, which veers wildly from soap opera to sanctimony, manages to actually make sense. He is the undeniable highlight of the series and well worth the price of admission.
Crudup isn’t the only quality performance on the series, of course. This series is bursting at the seams with talent, from Bel Powley to Gugu Mbatha-Raw to the aforementioned Mark Duplass. The show even managed to score Marcia Gay Harden for five lines across two episodes as a media reporter presenting an award to Aniston. However, most of these very talented people as of yet do not have actual characters that make sense or have coherent arcs. So while Mbatha-Raw may be quite compelling in single scene as a producer trying to talk one of Mitch’s accusers into giving an exclusive interview to The Morning Show instead of their chief ratings rival, it’s not at all clear how she fits into the series as a whole.
With that question, among many others, it’s clear that The Morning Show is still trying to figure out what kind of show it wants to be and whether or not it actually has anything of import to say on the topics it kicks up every so often. However, with stellar performances from Crudup and Aniston and a supporting cast talented enough to evolve as the series finds its footing, this series is a whole lot of fun with great potential. I just sometimes get the sense, while watching, that they were forced to pull this whole thing together on the fly not unlike how their characters have had to try and save the show within the show. If only James L. Brooks had been available to consult…
Morning Show is currently streaming on Apple TV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA7D4_qU9jo
