The star-studded, $15m-an-episode series is a scramble of bad dialogue and thinly sketched characters yet its handling of sexual politics is grimly transfixing
It takes until over halfway through the second episode of
Apple TV+’s The Morning Show – after Jennifer Aniston’s genuinely impressive return to TV as an exposure-steeled morning news anchor, after the reveal of her co-star Reese Witherspoon’s bad brunette wig, after 90 minutes of taking in what an alleged $15m an episode can buy in set design — for me to knee-jerk pause the show.
I needed extra time to ponder a line delivered by Chip Black (Mark Duplass), the fictional Morning Show’s executive producer, who arrives on his #MeToo-deposed former anchor Mitch Kessler’s (Steve Carell) doorstep to beg him to stand down days after his firing. Kessler – clearly based on the former Today show host Matt Lauer and, at this point, fired for undisclosed reports of sexual misconduct – compares the #MeToo movement to McCarthyism, a spineless mob with no regard for his own defense. Fine, Black responds: “I’ll say it – we’re being too fast to judge men in the court of public opinion. I agree with you. The whole #MeToo movement is probably an overcorrection for centuries of bad behavior that more enlightened men like you and me had nothing to do with.”