This review contains spoilers for the entire season three of "The Morning Show."
After nearly two years, Apple TV’s The Morning Show is back on air — and it is not picking up where it left off.
We spend the season premiere playing catch-up: Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) is hosting a talk show called Alex Unfiltered; Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) has graduated from morning to evening news; Laura Peterson (Julianna Margulies) is back at her old stomping grounds, Your Day America; and Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) is being Cory Ellison, charming tech titan Paul Marks (Jon Hamm) with his Cheshire Cat smile a never-ending stream of metaphors. The future of the network is, quite literally, up in the air.
Paul is an Elon-esque entrepreneur (he even has a fictionalized equivalent of SpaceX) with money to spare, and an interest in a majority stake in UBA. The season addresses the consequences of billionaires who buy their way to the top of industries in which they have little experience, and in this case, what it would mean for an egomaniac mogul to decide which news is and isn’t put in front of the public.
In the midst of negotiations, and in a more literal example of what happens when America’s morning newsroom is put in the hands of bad actors, a hacker takes over The Morning Show. The hack, which compromised the private data of the TMS staff, is particularly personal to Bradley — intimate footage of her and her ex-girlfriend, esteemed anchor Laura Peterson — has been leaked. Soon, we learn that this issue takes a backseat to another mysterious secret Bradley worries will be revealed in the data leak, and that Cory is some kind of accomplice.
The show’s ensemble cast, though jam-packed, gives each of its members a moment to shine. In season three, UBA network executive Cybil Reynolds (Holland Taylor) is agonizing to watch as she tries to dampen a media firestorm sparked by her comments about The Morning Show’s new anchor, Christina Hunter (Nicole Beharie). Stephen Fry is Leonard Cromwell, a ruthless UBA board member trying to pull the company through financial woes. And since we are so used to seeing Stella Bak (Greta Lee) in full business mode, watching her navigate a personal matter involving her former best friend Kate Danton (Natalie Morales) and Paul Marks is even more captivating than her journey to replace Cory as a UBA president. In other news: Mia Jordan (Karen Pittman) is dating a freelance photojournalist who is contributing to TMS’ coverage of the war in Ukraine, and tension grows between work husband and wife, TMS executive producer Charlie Black (Mark Duplass) and Alex. Meanwhile, Paul, hiding major skeletons in his closet, becomes Alex's turbulent answer to her longing for personal connection.
If you are anything like us and are pulling for endgame for Bradley and Laura, the season puts you through the wringer as the two confront painful truths about their dynamic which threaten to blow it up.
Laura in season three is more raw than we’ve ever seen her, played with stunning depth by Margulies. She’s nearly impossible to pin down: both vulnerable and stoic, serene and volatile, brilliant and detached. We’ve heard her drop plenty of nuggets of wisdom, but in season three, we get to see her live them — confronting the issues weighing most heavily on her heart head-on, and walking away when the chaos becomes too much.
Bradley is nearly unrecognizable from the brash local news correspondent fresh out of Virginia we met in season one. She is still led and often carried away by emotion, but anger about coal mine erasure is a distant memory, as now her focus is on everyone she holds close slipping through her fingers.
We see a more emotionally-fragile side of Laura, who, for a moment, seems willing to ride out Bradley’s family chaos for the sake of their relationship. Bradley and Laura’s partnership is, time after time, strained by Bradley’s ties to her southern conservative family, and, for the first time, Laura is really trying to bridge the gap instead of burning the bridge.
In one of the more explosive moments of the season, Laura finds emails on Bradley’s computer that call into question Bradley's journalistic integrity. Laura’s anger is threefold: disgust, betrayal, and the gut punch that she seems to have gotten it all wrong. Bradley’s desperation and devastation is palpable. Reese Witherspoon has an uncanny ability to portray all-encompassing love just as poignantly through a smile as she does through tears.
For a long time, Bradley was oblivious about one damning truth: in the second season, we watched as Cory arranged for a tabloid story to be released about her and Laura’s new romance, thus outing Bradley to the public. Viewers have been waiting for the blowout between Bradley and Cory, when Bradley inevitably learns the truth: but it comes and goes so quickly, you’ll blink and miss it. On a show that addresses the importance of one being held accountable for their harmful behavior, the resolution of this issue was simply not satisfying.
There’s an almost-indescribably bizarre mother-son duet scene in episode seven, in which Cory brings Bradley home to meet his mother under the guise of a potential business opportunity. Cory wines and dines Bradley before hopping behind the piano for a continuation of his now almost literal song and dance, his mother happily singing along. We’ll leave the moment the situation turns on a dime for you to witness for yourself, but the subtle David Lynch-ness of it all comes so spectacularly out of left field that we couldn’t go without giving it a nod here.
For us, one of the strengths of The Morning Show is the way its writers handle nuance: nobody is fully bad, but nobody is without flaws, either. Cory professed his love for Bradley when she was his subordinate, but he did not try to sleep with her when she was drunk. Cory outed Bradley, but he did it to save the reputation of a late staffer, who died by suicide in the wake of Mitch’s harassment. Laura might be cold, even cruel, toward Bradley at the season’s end, but it stems from feelings of disappointment, not malice.
Whether you love or hate a character, they are far from one-dimensional, and they each leave plenty of room for self-improvement, or self-sabotage, even as season three comes to a close. The finale ends on a cliffhanger that would be maddening if there wasn’t already a confirmed fourth in the works.
A gentle cover of Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” breathes an ironic sigh of relief into the final moments of episode 10. On the surface, there has never been more for the TMS crew to worry about, yet all the little birds have arrived at a crossroads that they can only reach when their greatest fears have already been realized. The Morning Show has laid the groundwork for a riveting fourth season, for which we’ll have to wait to learn whether every little thing is truly going to be alright.
"The Morning Show" is now streaming on Apple TV+.