A very serious question: Do I have Stockholm Syndrome, or has The Morning Show only gotten better the more it’s distanced itself from its wannabe prestige drama beginnings and instead embraced its soapy insanity? I’m pretty sure it’s the latter, but one never knows. The season four opener certainly feels about as untethered to reality as Bradley Jackson was from the Earth’s surface in the season-three premiere (Bradley in Space forever!), but in the most delightful way. What a joy to see that it only takes but ten minutes before The Morning Show tosses our girl Alex Levy into some ridiculous shenanigans to get things rolling. Someone declaring Alex may have just set off World War III in the opening of the season premiere, and not one single person being like, hmm maybe that’s an exaggeration? Oh, The Morning Show is so back.
It’s been two years since we last spent time in the halls of UBA and much has changed. First of all, it’s not UBA anymore. Thanks to that Hail Mary pass of a merger proposal Alex brought in to block her billionaire then-boyfriend and handsome skeezeball Paul Marks from scooping up the flailing network, the merged networks of UBA and NBN are now known as UBN. With that merger, we’re learning, came a whole lot of layoffs and buyouts as the two entities had to shed departments and personnel to have any shot at actually functioning.
Former CEO of UBA Cory Ellison, you’ll recall, was pushed out when Paul leaked a story about Cory grooming Bradley and outing her to get revenge; in his place, Stella Bak nabbed the role of UBN’s overlord. She’s working closely with new head of the board, Celine (Marion Cotillard was made for this show), who does things like get angry over the fact she had to swim in shit in the Seine to win the big Olympics contract for UBN and declares that her phrase “fuckcluster” is better than the original and, like, I think everyone is going to go along with it? Celine is basically Regina George, and it’s kind of awesome. Meanwhile, Mia is still at the helm of TMS, though she’s growing more and more annoyed that Stella has yet to come through on her two-year promise to give Mia the Director of the News Division gig.
In addition to her Alex Unfiltered streaming show and part-time anchor gig on TMS, Alex is also Head of Talent (which means she’s had to fire a lot of people) and generally involved in everything having to do with UBN and the merger. When does she sleep? Who feeds her dog? No one knows. Alex is set to interview an Iranian fencer named Roya and her father as a leadup to the 2024 Paris Olympics. When Roya’s father Arsham slips her a note that says they want to defect, she sort of flails around (Alex has no chill) until she can cause some chaos in the studio regarding her line of questioning and then pulls the fire alarm to create a diversion and has them escape in her private car. One giant car accident in the middle of Manhattan that never seems to make the news later, and Roya and Arsham are getting interviewed by the State Department. The UBN team, realizing that Arsham is actually a scientist in Iran’s nuclear program, begins to spin out over that fact that Alex’s actions may have set fire to a very fragile geopolitical situation, but also that the IOC might rescind their contract with UBN, which would effectively mean an end to the network. Guess which one they are all more stressed about! So maybe The Morning Show’s season four vibe is more of a “the more things change, the more they stay the same” situation.
Oh, Alex. Already stepping in some deep shit, and we’ve only just begun. What a gift! Stella and Mia are left to do damage control in regards to keeping the Olympics coverage contract, which mostly means pushing Alex off anything having to do with that. Alex, while pissed off about being benched, is more concerned about the well-being of Roya and her father. She’s so worried that she does something she had mostly sworn off: She goes to talk to her father.
We meet Martin Levy, a Yale law professor and the root of 87 percent of Alex’s deep-seated insecurities. He is wildly condescending about Alex’s chosen career path, deeming it “frothy and light,” and feels so above it all he can’t even be bothered to remember Mitch Kessler’s name. When Alex asks him for advice with the State Department, since he’s had experience with defectors before, he brushes her off, declaring it above her pay grade and not something she should get involved with. And then he immediately launches into announcing that he’s about to be made Dean of the law school and he needs her help with a student magazine profile. Jeremy Irons is so deliciously smarmy here, I’m already looking forward to a much bigger showdown between him and Jennifer Aniston in the future.
While Alex is stewing over her giant pot of daddy issues, Mia and Stella have their own problem now that Alex is being removed from pre-Olympics coverage. Stella wants, or, rather, demands that Chris Hunter take over the interviews Alex was going to do with Olympic athletes. This means that Chris, who is thriving on TMS by the way, will be on the road for two months and they’ll need someone to fill in at the anchor desk. Stella and Mia agree, there’s really only one good option: Bradley Jackson. This is hilarious for many reasons, the main one being that it’s debatable whether Bradley ever was a good anchor. Does everyone on this show have collective amnesia? If so, what a twist. Regardless, Mia and Stella are practically giddy over the thought of having a “red-state-friendly face” on the network during an election year since, according to Stella, “the tide is turning with the Jan 6 stuff.” Oof, if Stella only knew what lies ahead in 2025, maybe she wouldn’t be so glib about the whole thing. Or maybe she would! She does seem a little horny with her new power at the network. What is it about that CEO chair that causes people to make dramatic declarations very loudly?
While there are a whole host of reasons bringing Bradley back to TMS seems like a silly idea, the main one you might be thinking about at this point is the fact that last we saw Bradley, she and her brother Hal were turning themselves over to the FBI because of the Jan 6 stuff. We had to sit through that whole emo cover of “Three Little Birds” that has haunted me ever since. Well, as we learn, Hal is serving time in prison, and Bradley ended up making a deal: She handed over information she had on Paul Marks, and in return, the FBI didn’t charge her, and they kept her name out of the press. No one knows about her little whoopsie with the January 6 video of her brother except for the people she told. Everyone back at UBN, save for Alex, thinks Bradley left simply to get away from everything once her brother was sentenced and the story about her and Cory came out. She’s still under some type of federal parole, but she is teaching journalism courses at a local community college in West Virginia and is generally doing okay. She hasn’t dyed her hair back to that brown color, so, like, that’s a win.
Mia heads down to West Virginia and makes a pitch in person, but Bradley turns her down. She isn’t ready to go back there. Or, so she thinks. That night, she gets a message on her phone from an anonymous sender who knows she turned Mia down. This person needs Bradley to come back to UBN. They tell her about a massive cover-up that went down there in regards to a story about a chemical plant infecting an entire town. They send Bradley videos of birds dropping dead out of the sky, a report about birth defects, and a video of a kid from the area with black gums. People are dying and someone at UBN killed the story. They need Bradley to blow this story up — she’s the only one who can help. Bradley has no idea who this person is, even though she asks twice and once in all caps, so you know she really did try, but she just cannot help herself. She informs her FBI handler, who does not seem friendly at all, and reminds her that if she lies to them about anything, her deal to stay out of prison is in jeopardy. (You know this is going to happen.) Then, she heads to New York City.
She actually seems pretty excited about getting back to work she loves… but then she goes to see Alex. It is very awkward. Alex pours two very full glasses of wine and almost immediately launches into how Bradley shouldn’t be reporting the news. She crossed a line and she knows it and if the truth of what happened comes out, they’re all fucked. The network is hanging on by a thread! Alex isn’t wrong, but Bradley’s also correct to point out how rich that is coming from a woman who doesn’t know how to do anything but cross the line when it comes to journalistic ethics. She’s also not wrong when she accuses Alex of being worried about how the truth of what Bradley did might make Alex look bad. For good measure, Bradley also tosses in a quick note that she can’t believe Alex didn’t report on all the dirt they had discovered about Paul Marks. Alex gives certain people a pass, but not others. Listen, I’m all for sisterhood on TV, but The Morning Show is always better when Alex and Bradley are at odds. And that’s my truth, okay?
As if Alex is just going to take Bradley walking back into UBN without a fight. After that “discussion” goes poorly, Alex calls in some backup: Cory Ellison. Cory is currently in Los Angeles attempting to get a movie that he describes as “Chinatown for the post-truth era” off the ground but is failing spectacularly. His lead actress has quit because of a toxic work environment, people still don’t want to touch him because of the Bradley Jackson story (he was, as he points out, cleared by the investigation), and he’s running out of time and money. He can’t even monologue himself into a win. My how far he has fallen. But then Alex calls with news of Bradley’s return. “You and I are overdue for a catch-up, don’t you think?” she asks.
In Other News!
• Okay, now this is the soapy drama I live for: Stella is having a torrid affair with a man named Miles who seems to enjoy watching Stella slowly eat cake while she eye-fucks him from across the bar before they go home to rail each other all night. While that’s kinky, that’s not the exciting part: Miles is Celine’s husband.
• Don’t worry about Chip, friends! Chip is getting lots of buzz for a documentary he’s screening at Cannes. Naturally, this annoys Alex to no end.
• Aside from possibly reaching the “alternative facts demo,” Stella is pretty hyped about introducing AI tech to UBN. Tech that she says “can reproduce any anchor’s voice in over 40 languages” so that they can reach a global audience. The fact that even Alex Levy is on board with this is both terrifying and laughable. There’s no way this doesn’t blow up in their faces at some point.
• The fact that The Morning Show literally named its famous manosphere podcaster Bro Hamilton? It’s perfect. No notes.