The Morning Show-Apple TV

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think one part of the reason that Bradley didn't turn her brother in or release the footage is that she knew it would reflect poorly on her and could impact her reputation, and thus her career.

I also think she wanted to protect him and had enormous guilt about her mom's death and leaving her family behind with her success, but it doesn't have to be either/or. When she saw him at the Capitol, I absolutely think part of her thinking was realizing that she could be in some way implicated and wanting the problem to go away.

I also think that asking for evening news as she delivered the J6 footage to Stella was a calculated move to protect herself, knowing that the network might cut ties with a morning co-anchor who did something unethical or had a brother who was a felon, but would do more to protect their evening anchor. She wanted the leverage, both to protect her brother AND to protect herself.

This show is about ambition and what people are willing to do in service to it.

Yeah - maybe that's right about her not wanting to be implicated. I hadn't thought of that!

I'm not sure the show is about ambition? I'm not sure what it's about at all actually. It's just very soapy. I enjoy it, but it's not like Succession where it was clear that every character would slit a guy's throat for a little power.

I think it's about ambition but the universe of network news is more complex than the empire on Succession where one person was in charge and the battle was about currying favor with him and hopefully getting his job.

The Morning Show has no one locus of power. The network and the people who run it are powerful but beholden to shareholders. The news celebrities have power and leverage but their audience can turn on them. The people who work behind the scenes don't have much absolute power but they often love their proximity to power as well as the very real power they wield over the news and how it gets delivered. There is this constant jockeying between all these moving parts for leverage and power, all while trying to project the image of being serious journalists who only care about doing their jobs (which sometimes they are, and sometimes they aren't).

Paul Marks is interesting because he's not like this. He's like the people on Succession -- he has more absolute power in the form of a mountain of cash that he gets to decide how to use. So I think it could be interesting to watch him interact with these people who are used to having to sing for their supper all the time. He definitely has the upper hand, but his day with Alex indicates that she might know how to work him.

But for what? In Succession, they were all trying to curry favor with the man who'd always denied them what they really wanted - love and respect.

Here - no one seems to be hurting for any money. None of them seem to really be more ambitions than where they are now - except maybe Alex? What do you think Bradley wants? When she started, she seemed to want a bigger platform to talk about what matters to her - and... ? What does Cory want? I guess love - he wants someone who loves him. Stella? I think we're learning what she wants. Maybe revenge, or?

How about Mia?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think one part of the reason that Bradley didn't turn her brother in or release the footage is that she knew it would reflect poorly on her and could impact her reputation, and thus her career.

I also think she wanted to protect him and had enormous guilt about her mom's death and leaving her family behind with her success, but it doesn't have to be either/or. When she saw him at the Capitol, I absolutely think part of her thinking was realizing that she could be in some way implicated and wanting the problem to go away.

I also think that asking for evening news as she delivered the J6 footage to Stella was a calculated move to protect herself, knowing that the network might cut ties with a morning co-anchor who did something unethical or had a brother who was a felon, but would do more to protect their evening anchor. She wanted the leverage, both to protect her brother AND to protect herself.

This show is about ambition and what people are willing to do in service to it.

Yeah - maybe that's right about her not wanting to be implicated. I hadn't thought of that!

I'm not sure the show is about ambition? I'm not sure what it's about at all actually. It's just very soapy. I enjoy it, but it's not like Succession where it was clear that every character would slit a guy's throat for a little power.

I think it's about ambition but the universe of network news is more complex than the empire on Succession where one person was in charge and the battle was about currying favor with him and hopefully getting his job.

The Morning Show has no one locus of power. The network and the people who run it are powerful but beholden to shareholders. The news celebrities have power and leverage but their audience can turn on them. The people who work behind the scenes don't have much absolute power but they often love their proximity to power as well as the very real power they wield over the news and how it gets delivered. There is this constant jockeying between all these moving parts for leverage and power, all while trying to project the image of being serious journalists who only care about doing their jobs (which sometimes they are, and sometimes they aren't).

Paul Marks is interesting because he's not like this. He's like the people on Succession -- he has more absolute power in the form of a mountain of cash that he gets to decide how to use. So I think it could be interesting to watch him interact with these people who are used to having to sing for their supper all the time. He definitely has the upper hand, but his day with Alex indicates that she might know how to work him.

But for what? In Succession, they were all trying to curry favor with the man who'd always denied them what they really wanted - love and respect.

Here - no one seems to be hurting for any money. None of them seem to really be more ambitions than where they are now - except maybe Alex? What do you think Bradley wants? When she started, she seemed to want a bigger platform to talk about what matters to her - and... ? What does Cory want? I guess love - he wants someone who loves him. Stella? I think we're learning what she wants. Maybe revenge, or?

How about Mia?

I mean I think it varies by the person, as you just demonstrated. I think Cory is someone who wants control and professional success but yeah, it seems driven by a need for approval/love (which he seems to think are the same thing). I think Alex wants power and also seems the most sure of herself and in command of her life right now. She's basically peaked as a TV news personality and she wants to level up into real corporate power.

I think both Stella and Mia want professional power and success but I think both of them are also struggling with the responsibility/desire to use that power to effect change, and Chris is the newer, younger version of this. I think those three women will likely have an opportunity to do something that feels meaningful to them in terms of promoting the interests of WOC at UBA, and that they will either compromise it for their own benefit, or the opportunity will be taken away.

I don't really get Bradley as a character, don't know what she wants, and don't think her behavior is very consistent. They lean really hard into the idea of her being an outsider but then she constantly gets opportunities that no one else gets and just kind of stumbles into success. The stuff with her family feels like nothing but drama with no real narrative focus or purpose. Her storylines always feel like pure soap to me, whereas I think there's some actual meaning and intrigue with most of the other characters on the show. She really does not fit and I wonder to what degree her character was shoe-horned in for Reese in order to get the show greenlit because I don't get it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I found this last episode irritating -- I think it was a clumsy way to reveal key details of what happened between seasons, to explain Bradley's relationships with Laura and Cory, and also what's going on with Mia. I think it would have worked better if they'd sprinkled the flashbacks through multiple episodes, especially since Mia's storyline was really separate while Bradley's, Stella's, and Cory's were interrelated, so it made Mia's scenes feel really tacked on.

I still don't really get exactly what happened with Mia and her boyfriend. There was virtually no prelude to him going out drinking and it is never explained why he did it, even though I feel like it would have been relatively easy to show him getting increasingly annoyed with isolation while Mia was really committed. Instead it felt extremely abrupt and then he goes to Afghanistan. I think they could have spent an entire episode on Mia and this guy, and on Mia dealing with the pandemic and with BLM and how that impacts her relationship and her work, but instead they shoehorned it into an episode that really belongs to Bradley. Lame.

Regarding Bradley, I continue to not love Reese in this role and find so many of her characters choices just utterly baffling. She has previously been shown to be the kind of person who does the "right" thing even when it's really annoying for other characters, so seeing her turn on a dime to protect her brother was so inconsistent. The implication is she's doing it for her niece, but that felt so inauthentic. I also just think the whole way her storyline unfolded, with her mom dying offscreen while she and Laura are playing celebrity in Montana, and then lots of shots of Cory NOT calling her or reaching out, then suddenly she's in DC but even the timeline of that was weird because she's suddenly in the Capitol with no build up, and then she's in a hotel room with her brother, and then she's in the office. There was just no sense of place in those scenes and it felt really disjointed and not driven by character or relationships at all, just the show deciding "Ok how do we shoehorn in J6, well let's send Bradley there." It just felt like they were moving pieces around on a chessboard and not like a story unfolding.

I had been liking the season up until this episode so I'm hoping now that they've got that exposition out of the way, we can get back to some actual character and story development with these people.

I didn't love this ep either - mostly because I have less than zero interest in revisiting what it felt like living in the COVID years.

That said - I think Bradley is feeling enormous guilt over leaving her family behind, and her mother's death, and she is trying to protect her brother. Like, she can't do much to fix things, but she can at least not air video of her brother actively assaulting a Capitol police officer. I'm not sure why Cory helped her, except I guess he still sorta loves her and COVID made people do weird things.

Mia and her boyfriend - I think we're seeing that everyone's at their best and lovey dovey at the beginning of lockdown. Then people sorta lose their minds in different ways. Her boyfriend let off steam by going to bars and getting drunk - and Mia flipped (reasonably? unreasonably? I don't know). Then he felt abandoned/guilty, and got an assignment to go to Afghanistan - and just took it. People were not at their best, and had started sabotaging themselves and their relationships.

+1 - especially the part about not wanting to relive Covid. This episode got so much of that right - the "fun" of the beginning of the lockdown...when everyone thought it was just going to be for a few weeks. Than the growing boredom and despair when it dragged on and on. I think what it missed was the actual fear/stress of being locked down, but I guess these people were all rich enough to have everything delivered, and no kids - so absolutely no stress around how to school your kids at home.

I actually thought Mia's flip out on her boyfriend going out was totally unreasonable, considering she was going to work every day and had come to terms with some risk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I found this last episode irritating -- I think it was a clumsy way to reveal key details of what happened between seasons, to explain Bradley's relationships with Laura and Cory, and also what's going on with Mia. I think it would have worked better if they'd sprinkled the flashbacks through multiple episodes, especially since Mia's storyline was really separate while Bradley's, Stella's, and Cory's were interrelated, so it made Mia's scenes feel really tacked on.

I still don't really get exactly what happened with Mia and her boyfriend. There was virtually no prelude to him going out drinking and it is never explained why he did it, even though I feel like it would have been relatively easy to show him getting increasingly annoyed with isolation while Mia was really committed. Instead it felt extremely abrupt and then he goes to Afghanistan. I think they could have spent an entire episode on Mia and this guy, and on Mia dealing with the pandemic and with BLM and how that impacts her relationship and her work, but instead they shoehorned it into an episode that really belongs to Bradley. Lame.

Regarding Bradley, I continue to not love Reese in this role and find so many of her characters choices just utterly baffling. She has previously been shown to be the kind of person who does the "right" thing even when it's really annoying for other characters, so seeing her turn on a dime to protect her brother was so inconsistent. The implication is she's doing it for her niece, but that felt so inauthentic. I also just think the whole way her storyline unfolded, with her mom dying offscreen while she and Laura are playing celebrity in Montana, and then lots of shots of Cory NOT calling her or reaching out, then suddenly she's in DC but even the timeline of that was weird because she's suddenly in the Capitol with no build up, and then she's in a hotel room with her brother, and then she's in the office. There was just no sense of place in those scenes and it felt really disjointed and not driven by character or relationships at all, just the show deciding "Ok how do we shoehorn in J6, well let's send Bradley there." It just felt like they were moving pieces around on a chessboard and not like a story unfolding.

I had been liking the season up until this episode so I'm hoping now that they've got that exposition out of the way, we can get back to some actual character and story development with these people.

I didn't love this ep either - mostly because I have less than zero interest in revisiting what it felt like living in the COVID years.

That said - I think Bradley is feeling enormous guilt over leaving her family behind, and her mother's death, and she is trying to protect her brother. Like, she can't do much to fix things, but she can at least not air video of her brother actively assaulting a Capitol police officer. I'm not sure why Cory helped her, except I guess he still sorta loves her and COVID made people do weird things.

Mia and her boyfriend - I think we're seeing that everyone's at their best and lovey dovey at the beginning of lockdown. Then people sorta lose their minds in different ways. Her boyfriend let off steam by going to bars and getting drunk - and Mia flipped (reasonably? unreasonably? I don't know). Then he felt abandoned/guilty, and got an assignment to go to Afghanistan - and just took it. People were not at their best, and had started sabotaging themselves and their relationships.

+1 - especially the part about not wanting to relive Covid. This episode got so much of that right - the "fun" of the beginning of the lockdown...when everyone thought it was just going to be for a few weeks. Than the growing boredom and despair when it dragged on and on. I think what it missed was the actual fear/stress of being locked down, but I guess these people were all rich enough to have everything delivered, and no kids - so absolutely no stress around how to school your kids at home.

I actually thought Mia's flip out on her boyfriend going out was totally unreasonable, considering she was going to work every day and had come to terms with some risk.

It did seem extreme - but I think it was a good way to show how everyone was doing this but not that, and somehow thought that their way must be the best way to stay safe, and anyone who did it a different way was a selfish a-turd who was going to get us all killed. This was part of the problem of life under Trump and life in a novel virus like this one - we all had to act like our own public health agencies. We didn't have any good direction about what to do if your partner went to a couple of bars one night, and you got scared and angry about it. Did you have to quarantine? Did you have to drink bleach? Did you have to break up?

Also I think she was angry about his reaction to her disclosure about Mitch, and this might have been her way of acting out about that.

I have to say, I am so gd grateful that my spouse and I were basically on the same page about what was safe and what wasn't, what were reasonable risks to take, etc. We both already worked from home, and no kids, so our lives were scary and smaller - but not so drastically different that we turned into monsters toward each other. It would have been so hard if one of us decided to go bar hopping while the other wasn't even getting takeout. For the rest of my life, I will be grateful that we didn't have to navigate THAT.

[Anonymous]

I agree that the show did a good job of capturing the absurdity of life in that first Covid year. Like Laura playing charades on the patio of her huge Montana ranch as Bradley's mom dies of Covid, and Bradley caught in the middle. Mia getting so angry at her boyfriend for going out to some bars that she leaves the apartment, even though he obviously wasn't alone at those bars and his behavior wasn't such a huge outlier statistically -- Mia's was. The plexiglass dividers in the empty UBS offices to protect the 10 executives in the office from each other, and then Cory getting his vaccine super early from some corporate concierge doctor. And so on. Just absolute absurdity.

But yes -- no kids, no elderly relatives living in their homes, no spouse working in the ER, no jobs that require standing behind a checkout counter. None of the actual thorny issues that most of us had to navigate during that time, except when those issues intrude on Bradley's storyline a bit via her normy family. And then that is resolved by pulling strings, too.

Really mixed feelings about it. Some of it felt familiar but a lot of it just felt like a joke.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree that the show did a good job of capturing the absurdity of life in that first Covid year. Like Laura playing charades on the patio of her huge Montana ranch as Bradley's mom dies of Covid, and Bradley caught in the middle. Mia getting so angry at her boyfriend for going out to some bars that she leaves the apartment, even though he obviously wasn't alone at those bars and his behavior wasn't such a huge outlier statistically -- Mia's was. The plexiglass dividers in the empty UBS offices to protect the 10 executives in the office from each other, and then Cory getting his vaccine super early from some corporate concierge doctor. And so on. Just absolute absurdity.

But yes -- no kids, no elderly relatives living in their homes, no spouse working in the ER, no jobs that require standing behind a checkout counter. None of the actual thorny issues that most of us had to navigate during that time, except when those issues intrude on Bradley's storyline a bit via her normy family. And then that is resolved by pulling strings, too.

Really mixed feelings about it. Some of it felt familiar but a lot of it just felt like a joke.

That's a great point that no one on this show has kids. Mitch did - but is he really the only one?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree that the show did a good job of capturing the absurdity of life in that first Covid year. Like Laura playing charades on the patio of her huge Montana ranch as Bradley's mom dies of Covid, and Bradley caught in the middle. Mia getting so angry at her boyfriend for going out to some bars that she leaves the apartment, even though he obviously wasn't alone at those bars and his behavior wasn't such a huge outlier statistically -- Mia's was. The plexiglass dividers in the empty UBS offices to protect the 10 executives in the office from each other, and then Cory getting his vaccine super early from some corporate concierge doctor. And so on. Just absolute absurdity.

But yes -- no kids, no elderly relatives living in their homes, no spouse working in the ER, no jobs that require standing behind a checkout counter. None of the actual thorny issues that most of us had to navigate during that time, except when those issues intrude on Bradley's storyline a bit via her normy family. And then that is resolved by pulling strings, too.

Really mixed feelings about it. Some of it felt familiar but a lot of it just felt like a joke.

That's a great point that no one on this show has kids. Mitch did - but is he really the only one?!

Alex has a daughter but she’s grown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree that the show did a good job of capturing the absurdity of life in that first Covid year. Like Laura playing charades on the patio of her huge Montana ranch as Bradley's mom dies of Covid, and Bradley caught in the middle. Mia getting so angry at her boyfriend for going out to some bars that she leaves the apartment, even though he obviously wasn't alone at those bars and his behavior wasn't such a huge outlier statistically -- Mia's was. The plexiglass dividers in the empty UBS offices to protect the 10 executives in the office from each other, and then Cory getting his vaccine super early from some corporate concierge doctor. And so on. Just absolute absurdity.

But yes -- no kids, no elderly relatives living in their homes, no spouse working in the ER, no jobs that require standing behind a checkout counter. None of the actual thorny issues that most of us had to navigate during that time, except when those issues intrude on Bradley's storyline a bit via her normy family. And then that is resolved by pulling strings, too.

Really mixed feelings about it. Some of it felt familiar but a lot of it just felt like a joke.

That's a great point that no one on this show has kids. Mitch did - but is he really the only one?!

Alex has a daughter (and Chip LOL!).

[Anonymous]

Why did Cory break up with the real estate lady? And why did he hold onto the bracelet? Then threw it away. Pretty much shows he’s callous.

I almost thought the agent was played by Sasha Alexander but I didn’t think so once the mask came off.

[Anonymous]

I didn’t think Cory broke up w her…I thought she left her bracelet there and Bradley picked it up and noticed it. Then, he started cleaning after she left and I thought he just threw it back into the bowl? Guess I missed something.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t think Cory broke up w her…I thought she left her bracelet there and Bradley picked it up and noticed it. Then, he started cleaning after she left and I thought he just threw it back into the bowl? Guess I missed something.

No I think he threw it in the trash, and it was Cartier! Because he loves Bradley.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t think Cory broke up w her…I thought she left her bracelet there and Bradley picked it up and noticed it. Then, he started cleaning after she left and I thought he just threw it back into the bowl? Guess I missed something.

No he threw it in the trash.

I thought a substantial amount of time passed from when she texts him about leaving her bracelet there and then when Bradley sees the bracelet at his house, which would indicate he'd ghosted the realtor without returning her bracelet (which is a major d**k move because that's an expensive bracelet and no way is she as rich as he is).

It almost felt like they were implying that he left the bracelet in the bowl on purpose, like he hoped Bradley would show up one day and see it? I mean that would be insane but the fixation on the bracelet, and his decision to throw it away after (like it had served its purpose) sort of makes it seem that way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t think Cory broke up w her…I thought she left her bracelet there and Bradley picked it up and noticed it. Then, he started cleaning after she left and I thought he just threw it back into the bowl? Guess I missed something.

I interpretted he threw it away as a covid thing. He was crazy cleaning after Bradley left, assuming due to covid. And Bradley had touched the bracelet. Easiest just to toss it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t think Cory broke up w her…I thought she left her bracelet there and Bradley picked it up and noticed it. Then, he started cleaning after she left and I thought he just threw it back into the bowl? Guess I missed something.

I interpretted he threw it away as a covid thing. He was crazy cleaning after Bradley left, assuming due to covid. And Bradley had touched the bracelet. Easiest just to toss it.

Eh, we don't see him being super crazy cleaning at any other time though. When he first met with the realtor, he was like "are we really going to do masks?" I think he threw away the bracelet as a way to show that he had zero attachment to that realtor and also that he didn't care about Bradley either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t think Cory broke up w her…I thought she left her bracelet there and Bradley picked it up and noticed it. Then, he started cleaning after she left and I thought he just threw it back into the bowl? Guess I missed something.

No he threw it in the trash.

I thought a substantial amount of time passed from when she texts him about leaving her bracelet there and then when Bradley sees the bracelet at his house, which would indicate he'd ghosted the realtor without returning her bracelet (which is a major d**k move because that's an expensive bracelet and no way is she as rich as he is).

It almost felt like they were implying that he left the bracelet in the bowl on purpose, like he hoped Bradley would show up one day and see it? I mean that would be insane but the fixation on the bracelet, and his decision to throw it away after (like it had served its purpose) sort of makes it seem that way.

Yes totally agree with all of this.