While The Morning Show Season 2 ended as chaos began (does March 2020 sound significant to anyone?), Season 3 has picked up on a glorious note of satisfaction. Everyone seems, dare I say it, happy at UBA. The pandemic has come and gone (although, is it ever really gone), assignments around the newsroom have shifted, new anchors have been hired, and everyone is… well, content. But something is bound to go wrong.
(Warning: Spoilers for Episodes 1 and 2 of The Morning Show Season 3.)
Because the last season of The Morning Show was released two years ago, a refresher: Season 2 ended as the pandemic began. Alex (Jennifer Aniston), after having visited (the since-deceased) Mitch (Steve Carell) in Italy, tested positive for coronavirus. Bradley (Reese Witherspoon) was on the hunt for her missing brother, joined by UBA prez Cory (Billy Crudup), who only agreed to help because he was in love with the anchor. Now, TMS picks up two years later in 2022, where COVID has become an afterthought. We didn’t want to see all these dazzling stars in masks, did we?
The biggest red flag hurtling towards UBA is Jon Hamm, who plays dashing and clever billionaire—an oxymoron—Paul Marks, who is looking to buy UBA for $40 billion. This is a pretty heavy-handed satirization of Elon Musk (another rocket guy, who notably just bought Twitter for $44 billion), but what’s TMS without heavy-handed satirization? I’m in. Hamm is the only “billionaire” I’m willing to say is sexy.
Paul needs some convincing on the UBA deal, but Cory is too caught up in goofy metaphors (Cory likens Paul to the giant taking the reins in Jack and the Beanstalk; Paul counters, “The giant dies in the end.” Good going, Cory.) to persuade his new pal. To sweeten the deal, Cory offers up Alex Levy to be one of the headliners boarding Paul’s new venture into space via his Hyperion One rocket. Hell, even Cory wants to join. Paul, Cory, and Alex will now shoot the breeze (literally) while being thrust into the heavens.
Literally no one in the newsroom is on board with the Paul plan. Cory does everything he can to convince staffers—the internet will be “3D” in the future! (Whatever that means.) UBA needs to keep up with that, and to do so, they’re going to need “more money than God.” Broadcast news needs a time machine to keep up with all of these innovations surrounding the news. Okay, but has Cory taken a single second to consider the implications of a widely maligned billionaire having complete control over one of the biggest news stations in the country? What would happen to, you know, free press?
Alex and her executive producer Chip (Mark Duplass) are so upset that they do everything short of murdering Paul Marks in cold blood to stop the deal from going through. They protest to Cory. They tell everyone in the newsroom to start a mass wave of antagonism angled at Paul. Alex is particularly upset because, now, she knows that this whole Hyperion One situation is only to convince Paul to finalize the UBA deal.
Meanwhile, Bradley—or should I say Reese, seeing as Southern princess “Bradley Jackson” has ditched the twang entirely and now sports wavy blonde hair—is continuing to fight the good fight for hard-hitting journalism. So she’s upset when she’s told that her idea to cover upended abortion rights doesn’t really fit with the network’s goal of appealing to viewers on both sides of the aisle..
When Bradley and Alex commiserate over their joint dissatisfaction with UBA and, more specifically, Cory, they agree that they need to go rogue together to show him who’s boss. As we know from Morning Show season’s past—see the gala where Alex announced Bradley as her co-anchor, the finale of the first season of TMS, etc.—Alex and Bradley are a loose cannon when they pair up. Whatever they’re planning, it will be chaotic, melodramatic, and enthralling.
The ladies end up doing a body swap. Bradley dons the astronaut gear and greets Paul aboard the Hyperion One, while Alex (who has way more sway in the newsroom) travels to Texas to cover abortion protests. Cory is peeved, but it’s not like he can do anything at this point—he greets Bradley and pretends like this was the plan all along. Alex spotlights abortion rights (woohoo!) and Bradley rockets into space (ahhh!) with Paul and Cory.
But right as Bradley, Cory, and Paul float into the stratosphere, the feed at UBA cuts out. UBA loses all communication with Hyperion One. They’re floating in space somewhere—are they gone forever?
This cliffhanger is as good as gold, but Apple TV+ ruins the suspense by having Episode 2 already available to watch. What a bummer. I would’ve loved to share predictions on this and fretted over the lost rocket for a week on social media; alas, we’ll all press play on Episode 2 to immediately find out what happens.
It turns out that UBA only lost signal for a second—Bradley, Cory, and Paul are all happy as clams, doing flips as they linger in open air. The trio come back down to earth and all is fine; it was just a blip in UBA’s system. Maybe. In a scene a few minutes later, though, we see a mouse moving around a computer screen without one of UBA’s tech room operators controlling it. Someone is living inside the computers at UBA. Cool, cool, cool.
Everyone is too frustrated with Alex and Bradley for the body swap to notice any of the impending doom on their computer screens. Alex wants head exec Cybil (Holland Taylor) to help her take down Cory. “These men, they think they’re the masters of the universe,” Alex says, waxing poetic. “It pisses me off!” You would think that, after this was the entire thesis of Season 1, The Morning Show would think of something new to say. But I digress—Cybil promises that Alex won’t face any consequences and, a scene later, breaks her promise.
Cory, Cybil, and UBA’s News Division President Stella (Greta Lee) all agree: The best way to punish Alex is to make her put in more time on TMS. Alex hates working. (Okay, I’ll bite: If Alex hates her job as much as she says, and still has a high profile, couldn’t she quit?) The way to make her pay is to put her on TMS every morning for a few months. But right as Cybil reveals the punishment to Alex, there’s a huge black out at UBA.
What starts with a teleprompter flub ends up being complete destruction. The entire UBA building loses power. Cory starts receiving ominous messages from an unknown hacker, who demands $50 million within 48 hours. There’s some sort of hack expert who is called in, but even he can’t figure out what’s going on, as everyone in the newsroom demands updates. “[The hackers] are sophisticated and the penetration is deep,” the expert informs the execs.
“Maybe the French, then?” Cory cracks. Har dee har har, Cory.
Cory—who, as always, is frighteningly unserious—celebrates the hack. This is wonderful news! A hack on UBA would mean good press. Everyone would see the company as a victim. UBA would tie the hack into this year’s Emmy campaign. It’s a nuisance for literally everyone else, sure, but Cory has dollar signs in his eyes. Until he gets the biggest threat of all.
The hacker’s biggest data breach is the affair between Laura Peterson (Julianna Margulies) and Bradley. They have all the details of their secret relationship. Cory knows that the $50 million decision will be left to the board, but he still asks for Bradley’s opinion—she doesn’t want it leaked. She’s still in the closet. But paying the $50 million starts a precedent that UBA is willing to stoop to the hacker’s demands. Plus, there’s no guarantee that the hacker won’t come back with more requests. This could go on forever. UBA votes to not pay the ransom. Bradley is outed, and everything ever said at UBA is published on an online database available to the public.
The last big bombshell revealed this episode is unrelated to the hack, but rather takes us back to Paul Marks. Once Stella is given her phone back, she flips through her camera roll. She has a photo with Paul that looks to be taken ages ago. The pair have some sort of history that, because Stella has been pushing back against the deal, seems concerning. At the same time, why is she hiding it?
Between the hack and Paul Marks, Alex and Bradley have become the least noteworthy part of The Morning Show as Season 3 kicks off. We’ve come a long way since Season 1—Mitch is barely mentioned in the first two episodes—so let’s see where this (Russian?) data hack and megalomaniac billionaire take us.
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