We’ve been looking at “The Morning Show” all wrong.
The conventional wisdom is that it is a prestige drama, the one that launched Apple TV+ as a content creator, a talent magnet that attracts movie and TV stars to its orbit, where they can garner awards nominations (and if you’re Billy Crudup, win a well-deserved Emmy, he’s great).
Nah.
It’s a comedy. A laugh-out-loud farce, a thumbing of the nose at serious storytelling. Granted, the people making “The Morning Show” don’t seem to be in on the joke, as most of the comedy is unintentional. But it is a laugh riot.
There is no story of global importance that it cannot trivialize for personal melodrama so brazen it would make afternoon soap operas (when they were still a thing) blanch.
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“The Morning Show” returns Wednesday with two episodes. The other eight arrive on successive Wednesdays. And weirdly, it’s can’t-miss TV, albeit not for the reasons intended.
For the uninitiated, Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) is the powerful former anchor of “The Morning Show” on UBA, a national network based in New York.
Alex has since, post-COVID-19, become the host of a magazine-like show on the network. Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) now hosts the evening news, but was originally plucked from the boonies by Alex to co-host the morning show in a surprise move during season one.
Steve Carell’s Mitch Kessler was Alex’s previous co-host, a Matt Lauer-like character ensnared in a #MeToo plot from the get-go; he’s since been dispatched to that great newsroom in the sky. Crudup plays Cory Ellison, the network’s weasel of a CEO. Stella Bak runs the newsroom; the great Greta Lee, whose performance in “Past Lives” is one of the year’s best, plays her with an icy veneer.
Other characters come and go, but these are the heart of the show, the ones most likely to become ensnared in the ludicrous personal drama that plays out against things like pandemics, the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol and more. It’s like ripped-from-the-headlines fare, if the headlines were an embarrassingly personal Substack newsletter.
And yet, I watch it anyway.
Why? Good question.
Part of it is to see how far the show will go in service to its characters’ emotional instability. (The answer: no matter how far you think, further than that.)
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This season Jon Hamm signs on as Paul Marks, a tech-bro billionaire trying to get a rocket off the ground. Alex is supposed to accompany him on one of those Jeff Bezos-like trips to the edges of the atmosphere. Glitches of the personal and technical variety change things around a bit, leaving Paul angry — and determined to buy UBA.
The season revolves around the deal, which in addition to the usual business machinations involves romantic entanglements, which if you have seen the trailer you know about already, and if you haven’t, it’ll take you about three seconds to guess who they involve.
You’ve got two famous, gorgeous people in the cast — what are you going to do, have their characters behave professionally and observe journalistic standards?
Hahahaha. Told you it was a comedy.
This is not to say that it isn’t compulsively watchable, because it is. Everyone involved is all-in on the melodrama, though seeing Aniston’s Alex talk tough about her interviewing prowess is a bit much.
But everything is a bit much. Not even a bit! And that’s the point.
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The show seems determined to soften Cory a little this season, but who wants to see the human side of a heartless cynic? Crudup was more enjoyable when he was dishing out the pain, not enduring it.
Bradley’s Jan. 6-related missteps finally go beyond the pale, though in fairness the show eventually cops to this. It takes a while, though.
If there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure, then watching this is a kind of glorious masochism.
That everyone involved is so talented helps. And there’s just something about watching the whole thing unfold that is addictive, like most bad habits.
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How to watch ‘The Morning Show’
The first two episodes stream Wednesday on Apple TV+. New episodes drop on successive Wednesdays.
Reach Goodykoontz at [email protected]. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. X, formerly known as Twitter: @goodyk.
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