52 Time November 11, 2019
REVIEW
Jennifer minus Steve
in the morning
By Judy Berman
On nOv. 29, 2017, Savannah GuThrie and hOda KOTb
greeted Today viewers with the news that NBC had fired their
co-host Matt Lauer amid reports of sexual misconduct. “We
are heartbroken,” said Guthrie, in a speech that expressed sym-
pathy for Lauer’s alleged victims as well as sorrow over the loss
of a colleague. Both women appeared to be fighting tears.
It was an arresting moment, one that felt raw and brave
enough to cut through the daily onslaught of #MeToo rev-
elations in the fall of 2017. But, as genuine as Guthrie and
Kotb might’ve been, the announcement also functioned as
a savvy attempt to reinstill trust in a news organization that
had apparently failed to protect its staff from chilling abuses
of power. That uncomfortable mix of real emotion and cal-
culated crisis PR is a subject of fascination for The Morning
Show, which enlists Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon
and Steve Carell in the flagship offering from Apple TV+.
The most polished of a handful of series debuting with
the Nov. 1 launch of Apple’s streaming service, the drama
follows the cutthroat cast and crew of a Today-like show.
The project, based on media reporter Brian Stelter’s 2013
nonfiction book Top of the Morning, was greenlighted
before the Lauer bombshell dropped. But its creative
team (which includes executive producers Aniston
and Witherspoon) made drastic changes in response
to #MeToo, hiring a female showrunner, Friday Night
Lights vet Kerry Ehrin, and shifting the story’s focus to
a sexual-misconduct scandal involving a male anchor
(Carell’s Mitch Kessler). In the premiere, Aniston, who
plays Mitch’s longtime co-host Alex Levy, gives a mono-
With cameras
rolling, Bradley
(Witherspoon)
speaks her mind
▽logue clearly inspired by Guthrie’s. What
Alex’s viewers don’t know is that her per-
formance is, in large part, a woman’s des-
perate ploy to save her job—and that her
feelings about Mitch are actually quite
complicated.
As she jockeys for an advantage in
contract negotiations with suits who see
her as an over-the-hill ice queen, a new
face appears at the office: local-news re-
porter Bradley Jackson (Witherspoon,
in an impressive 180-degree pivot from
her officious Big Little Lies character),
a smart, blunt libertarian with a quick
temper and a working-class mom and
brother who rely on her support. Brad-
ley’s politics and personality have cost
her plenty of jobs—making her both an
unlikely Morning Show hire and an ideal
foil for Alex, whose poised veneer con-
ceals years of simmering rage.You can see whY Apple is leading with
The Morning Show: it’s a sophisticated
drama with A-list stars that capitalizes
on hot topics and hot gossip. It goes all-
in on prestige-TV signifiers, investing in
a dream supporting cast (Mark Duplass,
Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Billy Crudup, Néstor
Carbonell, Bel Powley) and music from
Oscar nominee Carter Burwell. If it takes
a while to get a feel for most characters,
Alex and Bradley come off as logical ex-
tensions of Aniston’s girls’-girl relatabil-
ity and Witherspoon’s intensity.
Yet the show doesn’t have the same
depth or experimental spirit as the top
tier of TV in 2019. Rather, it resembles
a more muted Shonda Rhimes serial
or a less smug Aaron Sorkin joint—it’s
pithy and easy to watch but rarely as
thought-provoking as you’d hope, given
the topic. Mitch’s murky, sub-Lauer
sins and Carell’s operatic tears hint at
moral ambiguity without confronting it,
and Ehrin adds little (in the three epi-
sodes sent to critics) to the #MeToo
discourse. The Morning Show could
make a great core program for
Apple TV+, if only its scripts had
the courage of its lead characters.THE MORNING SHOW premieres Nov.
1 on Apple TV+TimeOff Television
THE MORNING SHOW (2): APPLE; APOLLO THEATER: GETTY IMAGES; HIS DARK MATERIALS: HBO
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When #MeToo comes for Mitch (Carell),
Alex (Aniston) is left without a co-host