“Jumping the shark” is bound to happen on any TV series if it goes on long enough. And maybe, after a mere three seasons, The Morning Show has exhibited itself to have done just that. Even if it took Jennifer Aniston’s “other” major show, Friends, slightly longer. Arguably not until season eight, when the writers decided to drag out Ross (David Schwimmer) and Rachel’s (Aniston) “will they or won’t they get together?” plotline by throwing Joey (Matt LeBlanc) as yet another wrench into the mix to delay the inevitable. The worst, most ill-conceived one yet. In season three of The Morning Show, Paul Marks a.k.a. Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is that wrench delaying the inevitable. In this instance, that UBA is doomed to shutter after its endless sputter.
Although, initially, it felt as though the addition of Hamm (whose last name couldn’t be more ideal for an actor) as an Elon Musk-esque billionaire (minus the autism) would be a welcome “shake-up” to The Morning Show, things took a quick nosedive after the episode wherein a chasm in the TV space-time continuum occurred by way of Rachel Green fucking Don Draper. With four episodes left to go after that happened in “The Stanford Student,” it didn’t take long for the season to devolve quite quickly, with Alex Levy (Aniston) turning into the tone deaf, blinded-by-peen, villainous white woman to complement Paul Marks as a villainous white man. In fact, the suspension of disbelief viewers must invoke in order to believe that someone as “smart” and “shrewd” as Alex would go for Paul just because of the supposed “Hepburn-Tracy” dynamic they have at first is all but impossible to maintain for much longer after the seventh episode, “Strict Scrutiny.” The latter immediately commences with some cringeworthy moments between the two, complete with Paul making her a frittata for breakfast (as if even the most romantic of billionaires would ever) and Alex already looking upon this gesture as a reason to fall in total love with the man who has a nefarious reputation. One that leads the latest TMS co-anchor, Chris Jackson (Nicole Beharie), to casually mention to Alex while they’re both in the makeup chair, “There are studies that show power…it actually changes the brain. It erases the ability to empathize. It makes me wonder: what does Paul Marks really care about?”
Why, amassing more power of course. And how does one do that by any other method but quashing all opposition to his money-making potential? For money is power in this thing called “life,” alternately known as capitalism (hadn’t you heard? Capitalism is life). Alex, too moneyed for too long to remember that there are actually people—nay, men—like Paul who still care about racking up a higher and higher “worth,” has always been more concerned with prestige and respect rather than the money that comes with it. What’s more, Alex, in contrast to Paul, only seems to care about racking up her previously low orgasm count (at least as given by another human being). Hence, being irritated rather than taking it to heart when her former morning co-anchor, Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon), tells her that Paul is not only bad news just because, duh, he’s a billionaire, but because she’s been doing some digging and everything she turns up points to something very shady going on at his company, Hyperion. The one that’s supposed to launch a SpaceX-inspired rocket. And does a test version of that in episode one, “The Kármán Line,” on live TV. Except that Paul’s big morning show moment is dampened by the transmission being cut, followed by a massive cyberattack on all of UBA’s servers. These major plot points ultimately being intertwined, as the big season three reveal in the final episode, “The Overview Effect,” is that Paul was the mastermind behind the hack all along, not to mention a master in the art of surveillance that rivals J. Edgar Hoover-level scope. All of which is to say that, yes, Jennifer Aniston was starring in her own version of Sleeping With the Enemy. Indeed, the ick factor noticeably increases when one stops to think about how the “attraction” between her and Paul was likely entirely manufactured on Paul’s side of things. The greatest sign of that being that billionaires rarely, if ever, date age-appropriate women.
After their “union” is exposed by The Vault, the same online rag that outed Bradley, the better part of the season is then spent showing Alex being branded as a hypocrite with an apparent flavor for shitty men (see also: Mitch Kessler [Steve Carrell]). As Alex deals with all of the fallout for the unwanted public consumption of their relationship, UBA continues to focus its news coverage on the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. And, considering the double standard Alex faces for being in a relationship with Paul, it’s a timely parallel to the form of gross sexism she’s experiencing. Even from her “own kind.” Namely, the interview subject Chip (Mark Duplass) talks her into for Alex Unfiltered, Jess Bennett (Shannon Woodward), a co-founder of an online magazine called The Break.
Rather than focusing on women’s rights, as was the plan for their interview, Jess keeps bringing up Alex’s strange bedfellow, finally asking, “If a reporter hooks up with a billionaire who is buying her media company, people are going to ask questions. Like, ‘Is she actually capable of speaking truth to power?’” Alex, in the end, tries to prove that she still can…by giving up her precious dick in favor of doing “the right thing.” Or, more accurately, yet another desperate thing: merging with fellow “legacy media” network NBN. But hey, that’s still better than selling it to a man who plans to dismantle the whole outfit for “parts” (in a move that echoes Lukas Matsson’s [Alexander Skarsgård] on Succession) so he can make a quick few billion to pump back into his fledgling wannabe SpaceX company.
Despite knowing all this—that Paul was responsible for the hack, spied on and egregiously violated Bradley’s privacy, silenced multiple Hyperion employees, was willing to endanger people’s lives to promote his own bottom line, etc., etc.—she still manages to shed a few tears in the final scene they share together. And, after he walks away, watching Alex for almost fifteen seconds as the camera offers a close-up of her paltry tears and scrunched-up (or as scrunched-up as the fillers will allow) face, the absurdity of it all is accented when the camera shifts to a wide shot of her standing on her massive balcony with its unheard of skyline view. In other words, poor little rich girl—she lost her poor little rich boy.
In the scene that follows, she appears to have mended quickly, escorting Bradley to the FBI building so she can confess to her obstruction of justice (another “okay, what the fuck?” plotline being her brother’s involvement with January 6th) while saying that she’s not so sure about how to continue in the new UBA (/UBANBN) era without Bradley. But Bradley is there to comfort her by insisting she really will have a voice in the new company this time. Alex ominously returns, “Be careful what you fight for.” This apparently setting things up for season four, aimed at exploring what it “really means” for a woman to have power. If Margaret Thatcher was an indication, it means they end up being no better than men (harkening back to what Chris said about power altering people’s brain chemistry).
Whatever the “message” of season four might be, season three’s was, despite being occasionally all over the place, mostly on-brand with the current ongoing hate campaign against the rich. Yet that doesn’t necessarily make for the most “stellar” of television just because the themes presented are “correct.” And, although the name of The Morning Show’s game from the beginning has been to “incorporate timely things” into its narrative framework, doing so in season three has caused a more jumping the shark effect than a “pause for reflection” one. Something that doesn’t necessarily bode well for the future of the series…however many subsequent seasons there might be.
Genna Rivieccio
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