Anytime I mention “The Morning Show” to a friend, the usual response is, “Oh, is it any good?” The answer is not so simple.
The show vibrates on a surreal frequency all its own. It’s tonally unhinged, ricocheting wildly between earnest journalism tribute, foul-mouthed screwball comedy and juicy workplace drama. Why do just one genre when you can do four or five every episode?
But is it any good? Well, as my father likes to say, how long is a piece of string?
Its greatest power is that it is deeply, deeply committed to the bit. If the person I’m speaking to has, in fact, seen a season or two or three, they usually refer to it as “the crazy show”: “Oh, the one where (giant A-lister) drives off a cliff” or “Isn’t that the one where (another huge star) goes to space?”
And the answer is, always, yes, it is the show where people drive off cliffs; it is the show where people randomly go to space. Or storm into their boss’s office to spit out, “I quit!” Or bellow things like, “Don’t you dare slam a car door in my face ever again!”
Watching what often feels like a high school drama production that somehow also features a dozen of the world’s most recognizable stars and character actors elicits a euphoria seldom felt in our dark era of assembly-line prestige dramas. This may sound like a dig, but it is, in fact, a heartfelt compliment. What we need is more good old-fashioned soaps, and “The Morning Show” — whose fun fourth season just debuted on Apple TV Plus — offers an unapologetic bounty of bubbles.
One of the show’s great strengths is how it revels in the internecine workings of ultrapowerful, often-scheming working women — in this case, the on-air talent, behind-the-scenes producers and network bigwigs on and around the titular program and parent network UBA.
“It’s nice to see women standing in their power,” says executive producer Reese Witherspoon, who stars as reporter Bradley Jackson. “Sometimes it can be messy — and that’s OK, too.”
“It’s a lot of messy,” adds fellow executive producer and star Jennifer Aniston, who plays reporter-turned-executive Alex Levy. “And standing up for themselves in the workplace, and asking for more, and not settling.”
The show offers ample bad-bitch dream scenarios, whether it’s bawling out your work frenemy or one-upping your toxic boss.
“In real life, there can be consequences for stepping outside the line or pushing too hard, so all your fantasies go into this show of how you’d really like to talk back to certain people, or the thing you’d like to do after people tell you no,” showrunner Charlotte Stoudt says. “It’s very liberating to write; it’s a little bit of wish fulfilment.”
And, she points out, the show isn’t that outrageous compared to what’s actually going on in the U.S. right now: “It’s funny because people are like, ‘This show is so crazy,’ and it’s like, did you wake up in America today? To me, we’re positively restrained. If we actually matched America, the show would be so crazy it would explode.”
Witherspoon’s favourite explosive scene this season is a meetup between Bradley and Alex that devolves into a screaming match about whether Bradley should rejoin the program, culminating in her hissing, “And I’ll see you at ‘The Morning Show!’”
“We tend to have these fun moments together,” Aniston says.
“It’s just so silly,” Witherspoon says with a laugh.
“And it’s just so not who we are,” Aniston adds, “so those are fun.”
As campy as the dialogue can be, it takes skill to sell it. Some cast members can successfully hurl it to the cheap seats, a few struggle to go full ham.
Tig Notaro, for example, plays billionaire Paul Marks’s (Jon Hamm) taciturn fixer, Amanda Robinson. “She gets a scene this year where she threatens me, and she and I could not stop laughing, like, ‘I am so not scared of you,’” Witherspoon remembers. “She was like, ‘I have dirt on you’ and I was like, ‘Oh, please!’”
Cast standout and fan favourite Billy Crudup, for one, has had to grapple with the reams of complex dialogue spewed by his oddball exec character Cory Ellison. “It’s forced me to stretch,” he says. ”(Mark Duplass) saw me stretching, in the first season, in a pretty obvious way, just standing in the corner, drilling my lines again and again, to make sure that my mouth would move as fast as Cory’s mouth.” Both Witherspoon and Aniston also say that scripts packed with esoteric references are a meaty thespian challenge.
This season, the show adds yet more feted actors to its fancy stable of scenery chewers, including Jeremy Irons as Alex’s cranky estranged father and Marion Cotillard as a vicious network head. (Ironically there isn’t much actual scenery to gnaw on; unlike other New York-based business shows, such as “Succession” and “Billions,” which feature real locations, “The Morning Show”’s constant use of smooth, gleaming, anonymous-luxe studio sets further enhances the feeling that the show takes place in some bizarre alternate universe.)
For those already imbibing the show’s strange brew, this season contains the usual quota of insanity, from spy craft at the opera to surprise self-euthanasia. Alex must deal with the challenges of being a newly minted executive, the reappearance of her difficult dad, an infuriating yet extremely hot shock jock (the ever-charming Boyd Holbrook) and a stern news executive (William Jackson Harper), while Bradley is snuffling out a potential coverup at the network and navigating an evolving entanglement with her old boss (Crudup).
Not into a current plot line? To paraphrase Mark Twain’s quip about the New England weather, just wait five minutes.
According to Mark Duplass, who plays earnest producer Chip Black, “Yes, (there are) hot-button topics: how wonderful to have Reese and Jen out there, talking about women’s rights in the age of Roe v. Wade being overturned, but also doing it in a way that’s not trying to be (Aaron) Sorkin. It’s allowing itself to do that with beautiful clothing, and hair and makeup, and some soapy plotting. That’s a hard line to find, and I think they found it.
“The show’s a unicorn,” he continues. “You may not like it, but you have to watch this because I don’t know any other shows that are taking such important issues and shoving them in the faces of international global audiences while ensconced in gorgeous hair, fun music, expensive wardrobe, which seem to be anathema to each other. When you’re taking bold swings, it’s usually low-budget storytelling. (These are) bold swings on one of the most expensive shows on TV.”
Bold swings sometime mean big misses — but the glorious possibility of even bigger dingers, too.
“I really think pleasure is important in a show,” Stoudt says. “Especially if you’re trying to say something serious occasionally. You have to lift it with a lot of pleasure.”
