The Morning Show-Apple TV

[Anonymous]

I still don't know how to read Cory's mother's warning at the piano. Was she right, that Cory was ultimately playing Bradley, to try to get her to do what he wanted? Or was he just trying to appease his mom? Is everything transactional with Cory? I really thought he had deeper feelings for Bradley, but I wonder if as PP is saying above if he's mostly "in love" with her because her whole empowered-on-the-outside-but-still-black-hole-of-neediness-on-the-inside thing reminds him of his mother.

Gosh, his mom asks so much of Cory and then is flabbergasted when he doesn't visit her more often. (First her retreating to the basement and needing her ego appeased about them not staying; then he had to kill all the lobsters and not mind his mother's remarks about him not being bothered at all by the killing; then her retreating again and needing her ego appeased about the FBI lunch; and THEN the humiliating comments about how Cory uses everyone and has no feelings for anyone). Sheesh, mom, we're not all perfect for sure but go a little easier on your kid and maybe he will come visit you more, just a suggestion.

[Anonymous]

Chips reaction to Alex and Paul Marks kissing in the office- he clearly knew something was up at the interview, and his girlfriend knew too, and knew that he knew. Why is he so shocked to catch them?

[Anonymous]

The Roe thing in the bathroom was weird. No way would a bunch of liberal white New Yorkers would think the upset black woman was weird because she was upset about Roe. Every liberal woman of every race that I know was really upset.

[Anonymous]

Cory's mother is awful. So dead-eyed, with that weird low voice. I've liked Lindsay Duncan in other roles (The Leftovers, for instance), but really hated her character here. Can't imagine why Cory doesn't visit more often!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Chips reaction to Alex and Paul Marks kissing in the office- he clearly knew something was up at the interview, and his girlfriend knew too, and knew that he knew. Why is he so shocked to catch them?

Because he's secretly in love with Alex. His girlfriend (the other assistant) knows this too, as seen in the episode before this one when they're leaving the Hamptons interview and she's silently crying in the car. I wonder if they're still together?

[Anonymous]

Thoughts about this weeks episode:

- Alex is definitely in the wrong (IMO) regarding her relationship with Paul, but I actually sort of love how Aniston and the show are playing her arrogance/cluelessness about it. I find it entirely believable that someone at Alex's level would truly believe she could have a relationship with the billionaire buying her network and that everyone should just trust that she is objective. It makes Alex an interesting, if less likable, character, which I appreciate.

- The wheels are coming off Paul Marks, btw. Whatever is going on with his rocket launch and the drinking and the money problems... I like that we've seen him as ultra-controlled and powerful until this point and now we get to see him in over his head and acting impulsively.

- Mia's boyfriend coming back without a word was messed up. Their relationship is very dysfunctional and I'm pretty over it.

- The whole plot line with Laura getting suspicious about Bradley and Cory, then Audra telling her to search the hacked data for evidence of a relationship, and that leading Laura to single-handedly uncovering the Hal/J6 coverup because she's just perfectly positioned to know what she was looking at, was sort of genius. That was actually some pretty good plotting work by the show and I LOVE the idea of Laura being the person in possession of that info -- she loves Bradley, she's very ambitious, but she also takes journalistic integrity more seriously than pretty much anyone on the show. I really don't know what she's going to do which is great.

- Speaking of Bradley, I really don't get what the point was of dragging her out to that theater in Brooklyn only for Kate to stand her up. Something about that whole situation isn't adding up, I hope it gets explained.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This week's episode was bizarre. The Evening News anchor just doesn't show up because the exec wants her to have dinner with his mother? Where they went to get her help, but when she offers her help her turns her down? Jennifer Aniston's character kisses her new boss in an open office? Seemed completely nonsensical this week.

Yeah, a little out there. But I enjoyed having some backstory on the show's most complicated character.

Can someone do a good psychoanalysis of Cory's mom, and her effects on Cory? This storyline was awful and sad, and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take from it (except for sympathy for Cory).

I love to psychoanalyze fictional characters, thank you so much for asking.

I think Cory's mom is completely enmeshed with him, and that as a single mom to one son, she used him as a replacement partner. He's her emotional support and has learned to validate and appease her to keep her happy, so that he could in turn get the validation and support he needed as a child. But a child should not need to take care of their parent's emotional needs in order to get validation and support -- a child should get those things from their caregivers no matter what. So this dynamic tuned Cory into a classic co-dependent people pleaser. That behavior has no doubt served him well in his career, where he has ingratiated himself with a lot of different people with enormous egos (from deep pockets like Paul Marks and Cybil, to celebrity talent like Alex, Laura, and Bradley) by knowing how to massage their egos in the right way at the right time. But it has come at a cost, as by always looking to please and serve others, he struggles to develop truly mutual relationships with anyone.

Even his attraction to Bradley is concerning because while on the surface it seems healthy for him to be interested in someone so fiercely independent, it's apparent after meeting his mom that a major part of his attraction is that Bradley is fiercely independent in the same way his mom is, and that even Bradley's rejections and efforts to distance from him have likely repeated patterns with his mom that have been going on since childhood. He probably needs years of therapy to untangle his enmeshment with his mother and learn what it looks like to have a relationship where the other person's needs are not always paramount, and where serving those needs doesn't require sacrifice and flagellation on his part.

As for Cory's mom herself, it's harder to assess with only a handful of scenes, but there's definitely a high level of narcissism at play, specifically a vulnerable narcissism where she is use to eliciting sympathy from Cory (and maybe others) in order to get what she wants. We also know so little about her background, what happened to Cory's dad, her upbringing, etc., so just much more difficult to assess. But the enmeshment and narcissism are the main components to her character from what we've seen.

I will need you to recap every episode of every show I like from now on, thank you

If there is genuine interest in this, I think I might need to look into a newsletter because this is pretty much my dream job.

Get good at making Instagram and TikTok reels with your psychoanalysis of fictional characters and start growing an audience. I'm serious.

[Anonymous]

Just got caught up on the episodes.
I can’t believe they hired someone to choreograph the sex scenes. How many of us lay on our partners back like Alex did with Paul? Not realistic.
How many of us sit in the couch the way Paul and Alex did? Not realistic but poetic. Usually you spoon or lay facing each other. Also, since the paps already pictured them there, wouldn’t you have your blinds closed?

We’ve already seen the promo where Laura blows up at Bradley. BUT, Laura can only guess at what she did. I don’t think Laura has seen the unedited film.

And why is Stella so protective of Cory? Just weird.

[Anonymous]

I’m not loving the big time leaps. In one episode it’s pre vaccines, masks everywhere, and then like 2 episodes later Dobbs is leaked (June 2022).

Time is moving on but the characters aren’t evolving in any way and still seem to be stuck in dynamics from a year earlier…. it’s like they want to keep the characters the same but they want the news cycle to jump so they can cover different things but it just doesn’t feel organic to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just got caught up on the episodes.
I can’t believe they hired someone to choreograph the sex scenes. How many of us lay on our partners back like Alex did with Paul? Not realistic.
How many of us sit in the couch the way Paul and Alex did? Not realistic but poetic. Usually you spoon or lay facing each other. Also, since the paps already pictured them there, wouldn’t you have your blinds closed?

We’ve already seen the promo where Laura blows up at Bradley. BUT, Laura can only guess at what she did. I don’t think Laura has seen the unedited film.

And why is Stella so protective of Cory? Just weird.

I love Jen and will watch her in anything, but there is a reason we have never seen her in a sex scene until this show… It was really terrible. So awkward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just got caught up on the episodes.
I can’t believe they hired someone to choreograph the sex scenes. How many of us lay on our partners back like Alex did with Paul? Not realistic.
How many of us sit in the couch the way Paul and Alex did? Not realistic but poetic. Usually you spoon or lay facing each other. Also, since the paps already pictured them there, wouldn’t you have your blinds closed?

We’ve already seen the promo where Laura blows up at Bradley. BUT, Laura can only guess at what she did. I don’t think Laura has seen the unedited film.

And why is Stella so protective of Cory? Just weird.

I love Jen and will watch her in anything, but there is a reason we have never seen her in a sex scene until this show… It was really terrible. So awkward.

What about The Good Girl? I saw it years ago but don’t remember much but there have been discussions where she has a “pillow” down there for that movie. I assume she does them for others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m not loving the big time leaps. In one episode it’s pre vaccines, masks everywhere, and then like 2 episodes later Dobbs is leaked (June 2022).

Time is moving on but the characters aren’t evolving in any way and still seem to be stuck in dynamics from a year earlier…. it’s like they want to keep the characters the same but they want the news cycle to jump so they can cover different things but it just doesn’t feel organic to me.

That episode pre-vaccines was a flashback episode. All the episodes this season except that one have taken place in the same few months in 2022. That was a flashback to show us what happened between Bradley & Laura, Mia & her BF, and then some back story on Cory and Stella and UBA during the height of the pandemic and J6.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m not loving the big time leaps. In one episode it’s pre vaccines, masks everywhere, and then like 2 episodes later Dobbs is leaked (June 2022).

Time is moving on but the characters aren’t evolving in any way and still seem to be stuck in dynamics from a year earlier…. it’s like they want to keep the characters the same but they want the news cycle to jump so they can cover different things but it just doesn’t feel organic to me.

That episode pre-vaccines was a flashback episode. All the episodes this season except that one have taken place in the same few months in 2022. That was a flashback to show us what happened between Bradley & Laura, Mia & her BF, and then some back story on Cory and Stella and UBA during the height of the pandemic and J6.

Ah ok then makes sense. I’m used to binging shows and I’m watching this one weekly as it comes out and it’s really throwing me. If they do any more seasons I’m going to wait until I can watch a bunch of episodes at once.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m not loving the big time leaps. In one episode it’s pre vaccines, masks everywhere, and then like 2 episodes later Dobbs is leaked (June 2022).

Time is moving on but the characters aren’t evolving in any way and still seem to be stuck in dynamics from a year earlier…. it’s like they want to keep the characters the same but they want the news cycle to jump so they can cover different things but it just doesn’t feel organic to me.

That episode pre-vaccines was a flashback episode. All the episodes this season except that one have taken place in the same few months in 2022. That was a flashback to show us what happened between Bradley & Laura, Mia & her BF, and then some back story on Cory and Stella and UBA during the height of the pandemic and J6.

Ah ok then makes sense. I’m used to binging shows and I’m watching this one weekly as it comes out and it’s really throwing me. If they do any more seasons I’m going to wait until I can watch a bunch of episodes at once.

I get it, I also find some of it confusing because they are setting it in the recent past which is still pretty vivid for most of us, and even jumping around a little is confusing. Also the flashback episode covered a huge amount of time in one episode. I think almost a year (March 2020 to February/March of 2021, since they get into the aftermath of J6). Whereas most episodes will cover just a handful of days. So the shift in pacing is a bit disorienting too, especially since they jumped from March 2020 all the way 2022 between Seasons 2 and 3. By comparison, Seasons 1 and 2 were fairly sequential with more similar pacing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thoughts about this weeks episode:

- Alex is definitely in the wrong (IMO) regarding her relationship with Paul, but I actually sort of love how Aniston and the show are playing her arrogance/cluelessness about it. I find it entirely believable that someone at Alex's level would truly believe she could have a relationship with the billionaire buying her network and that everyone should just trust that she is objective. It makes Alex an interesting, if less likable, character, which I appreciate.

- The wheels are coming off Paul Marks, btw. Whatever is going on with his rocket launch and the drinking and the money problems... I like that we've seen him as ultra-controlled and powerful until this point and now we get to see him in over his head and acting impulsively.

- Mia's boyfriend coming back without a word was messed up. Their relationship is very dysfunctional and I'm pretty over it.

- The whole plot line with Laura getting suspicious about Bradley and Cory, then Audra telling her to search the hacked data for evidence of a relationship, and that leading Laura to single-handedly uncovering the Hal/J6 coverup because she's just perfectly positioned to know what she was looking at, was sort of genius. That was actually some pretty good plotting work by the show and I LOVE the idea of Laura being the person in possession of that info -- she loves Bradley, she's very ambitious, but she also takes journalistic integrity more seriously than pretty much anyone on the show. I really don't know what she's going to do which is great.

- Speaking of Bradley, I really don't get what the point was of dragging her out to that theater in Brooklyn only for Kate to stand her up. Something about that whole situation isn't adding up, I hope it gets explained.

I like the show. It’s entertaining. But I find the character development to be off.

After all the guilt she had with Mitch (yes he wasn’t her boss) I find it strange she would do it AGAIN with Paul and actually create a #metoo “issue”. Same with a Paul.

Bradley was ferocious in the beginning of TMS getting to the issues and truths but she hides DC footage for her crap brother. No.

Cory may be the most steadfast character.

TMS has been renewed for S4. Reese and Jen may go for a S5 but I can’t see it going much further than a S4/S5. Whenever it ends, I hope Jen finds another project so we can see more of her.