Billy Crudup, Reese Witherspoon and Jon Hamm in The Morning Show Photo: Erin Simkin
This year is the most glamorous series on television it was all about love and rockets. The third season of Apple's The Morning Show kicked off with its penultimate episode with a candid—and hilariously serious—love scene between Jennifer Aniston's powerful news anchor Alex Levy and Jon Hamm's Paul Marks.
< p >Paul who? «Paul Marks», despite sounding like a fake name for someone trying to get you to give up your credit card details, is The Morning Show's version of Elon Musk. He is an internet technology genius with a side hustle in space exploration. Only he's played by Jon Hamm. So he is also the most polite person on Earth or any other planet.
The charming dot-com fan is obviously a huge contradiction (even Elon Musk doesn't find Elon Musk charming). But reality has never been of much interest to The Morning Show. This is despite the fact that it originated in a 2013 non-fiction book. In Top of the Morning, journalist Brian Stelter laid out the betrayal, fraud and sleep deprivation mania that fueled America's breakfast television industry (ironically, Stelter himself was later fired by CNN amid a «Morning Show»-style power struggle). This made Phil v Holly on This Morning look like Zag and Zag from The Big Breakfast.
When it was announced that Top of the Morning would be semi-adapted into a prestige drama starring heavyweight pairing Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon — and with Steve Carrell in third place — the stage seemed set for a hardcore binge. /p>
But The Morning Show, which debuted in late 2019, turned out to be something completely different. It was hysterical in both good and bad ways—and expensive, with a budget of $15 million per episode, putting it among the most expensive streaming content ever. The personalities of the characters changed from scene to scene — Carrell, in particular, had to play the villain one moment and the usual victim of circumstances the next. And that was before Jon Hamm showed up, trying to impress Levi Aniston with the size of his ballistics, and sent a crazy disc into the stratosphere.
By that point, Carrell's Mitch Kessler had disappeared from view. He was based on Matt Lauer, a doyen of morning television who was damaged by the #MeToo scandal. The Morning Show writers insisted that «Mitch is not Matt,» but the parallels were obvious. Producer Michael Ellenberg eventually admitted that Lauer «was a landmark.»
Lauer has long since faded into obscurity. The same thing happened to Mitch: With #MeToo no longer dominating the news cycle, The Morning Show moved on and killed him in a car accident in Italy (he let go of the wheel and drove off the road, as if sacrificing himself to the needs of society). plot). No problem, here's Don Draper as Elon Musk as Jon Hamm.
The show's tone has consistently been crazy throughout all three seasons, but especially this year as it reached a state of gleeful insanity. Aniston's Alex Levy is supposedly America's morning TV favorite — a cross between Oprah Winfrey and Holly Willoughby. However, Aniston plays her as a charmless, neurotic woman, and at no point in the series is her connection with her audience seen; if anything, she comes across as distant and fragile.
Jon Hamm and Jennifer Aniston on The Morning Show Photo: Caroline Wojtasik
That doesn't stop everyone she works with from idolizing her. Among her fans is her fictional UBA Network boss Corey Ellison (a manic Billy Crudup). “Alex Levy is Lazarus… which makes me Jesus, I guess,” he says in the first episode of the new season—the kind of exaggerated line unique to The Morning Show.
Moreover, yes. , it's possible — it's Witherspoon's Bradley Jackson. She's the new kid on the block (even though she's about the same age as Levi).
UBA hired her in part because she's from a one-horse town in Virginia and thus the embodiment of the «real America» that trendy urban slickers have historically struggled to connect with online. However, like Levy, The Morning Show was too busy telling us how «real» Jackson was to ever show us that. Instead, her colorful romantic life was in full swing as Crudup's Corey confessed his undying love to her and she entered into an on-off relationship with co-host Laura Peterson (Julianna Margulies), which took things to the next level this year (poor Corey) .
If it was stunning for the audience, it was no less hot for the actors. “It was merciless! Honestly, at some point I thought the writers were trying to kill me!” Aniston said at the end of the second episode. “I thought, 'Oh my gosh. You guys! I’m literally crawling to the finish line here.”
Reese Witherspoon and Billy Crudup in “The Morning Show” Photo: Erin Simkin < p>Is this crazy enough? Not for The Morning Show. It also features a random cameo from Stephen Fry as a UBA board member. He dresses like Sherlock Holmes, who has a fashion problem, and asks, «Did he just say that?» it's about his father being a garbage man. Oh, and his name is Leonard Cromwell, which sounds like a villain from an obscure Agatha Christie novel.
And at the Upfronts, the annual TV party for advertisers, there is a scene in which two sleazy advertising executives, drunk on vodka, tell UBA news chief Stella Buck (Greta Lee) that they will sign with the network reported , if she forces the waitress to lick up a spilled drink (for which he will receive a $20,000 tip). It's like something out of a Pasolini film parachuted into a streaming hit.
While these storylines were ricocheting, The Morning Show was doing something extraordinary by tying its action to real-life events. The second season took place against the backdrop of a pandemic — Levi's fight with Covid became an important plot point.
Ninja — how Reese Witherspoon attacks the Capitol Hill. Photo: Erin Simkin
Meanwhile, in the latest series, Bradley, recovering from the death of her mother (from Covid), finds herself in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, as Donald Trump supporters riot on Capitol Hill. We follow her to the Capitol building, where, dressed as a ninja, she films protesters fighting police and then realizes that one of the insurrectionists is her own brother.
He later decides that he will turn himself in for the good of his family. Bradley changes his mind — he invites him to his television studio and interviews another participant in the January 6 riots, already serving a prison sentence and devastated by separation from his family. She's not entirely selfless: she erased some footage of her brother. If he falls, she may well follow him.
Bradley has been through a lot. The January 6 episode featured a midseason flashback that began with Corey trying to impress Paul Marks by broadcasting Levi from space. He wants Marx to buy the ailing UBA — what better way to win his favor than by sending his best leader into high orbit? But Alex, stalling for a new contract, plays hardball and slips away from his rocket trip. And Bradley, a grief-stricken survivor of the Capitol riots, leaves in his place.
When you record a segment on The Morning Show, it sounds disjointed with the bells on — a throwback to '80s soaps like Dallas, minus the «it was a dream» shower scene (though you won't run out of that). To their credit, Aniston and especially Witherspoon sell the bullshit: their high-end glamor keeps you on the edge of your seat.
Oddly enough, amidst the mania of The Morning Show there can also be moments of incredible sincerity. The episode about workplace racism and unconscious bias was amazingly detailed and moving — one of the best reflections on everyday prejudice you'll see in America today.
But then the race begins again as Paul Marks is revealed to be deceived Stella, a high-ranking UBA student, out of her dot-com fortune decades ago — a topic Levi confronts him with when he agrees to be interviewed. Marx cries and says that he has changed as a person. He and Alex then roll around in bed together. All this, and there's still one more episode to go. It's a morning show: anything can happen. More sex, bonus rockets, alien invasion. In this series, everything is predetermined — that's what makes it so wild and at the same time so exciting.
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