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It’s fitting this week’s season premiere of Morning Wars is titled My Roman Empire because this absolutely bonkers TV show is my Roman Empire.
I often find myself thinking about the way that this glossy series was a coup for Apple TV+ when it was announced in 2017 – a prestige project fronted by Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon uncovering the reality of morning TV based on the bestselling expose of a CNN media correspondent – and how it was hurriedly rewritten with a new showrunner to focus on #MeToo following allegations against Today host Matt Lauer.
Reese Witherspoon returns in season four of Morning Wars.
I think about how that first season, focused on a fictional Lauer stand-in played by Steve Carell, was actually a compelling (albeit Sorkin-lite) portrait of the aftermath of that phenomenon and the introspection (or lack thereof) that it provoked. And I think about how it then embraced madness, becoming a fully unhinged melodrama sending Carell off a cliff in Italy, having Aniston’s Alex Levy livestream her COVID, and catapulting Witherspoon’s Bradley Jackson into space with an Elon Musk-style billionaire played by Jon Hamm and the January 6 Capitol insurrection in one single season of television.
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I can’t quit it. I have to see what happens next. I need to know what ridiculous new fodder Apple has ripped from the headlines and spun through a multimillion-dollar content machine, and I long for it to be even worse than before. And that’s why I was so happy to see that, within 10 minutes of this week’s season four premiere, breakfast TV presenter-turned-girlboss, corporate overlord Alex Levy is involved in the defection of an Iranian nuclear scientist and under investigation by the feds.
We’re back, baby. As disgraced UBN chief executive Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) says while pleading to an empty trailer on the set of his failing movie: “I believe in the unifying power of great storytelling … We are making Chinatown for the post-truth era. It’s relevant. It’s elevated. It’s essential.”
Let’s recap this episode’s most insane moments.
Alex Levy might have started ‘World War III’
Jennifer Aniston returns in Morning Wars, the best worst show on television.
The show picks up two years after the events of season three, in the lead-up to the Paris Olympics. The UBA-NBN merger – that last-minute deal Alex negotiated to thwart her billionaire boyfriend Paul Marks (Hamm) – is complete, but the company is still servicing massive debt, many jobs have been lost in the process and execs have made an $8 billion bet on the Olympics coverage getting them in the black.
I give this show a lot of grief but, full credit where it’s due: a media company going through redundancies before the 2024 Olympics is practically cinema verite for the journalists at this masthead ... Then comes the chaos. Within seconds of conducting a hard-won interview with a young, female Iranian fencer – pre-event coverage to prove the broadcaster can be “apolitical” – Alex is embroiled in the teen’s attempted defection to the US. The teen’s dad slips Alex a note saying she wants to escape and chase Timothée Chalamet through Brooklyn. What’s a girl to do? This new network is supposed to be a “feminist utopia where women lift each other up”, so Alex pulls the fire alarm and sends the pair downstairs to escape.
The only trouble is that it turns out the girl’s dad works for Iran’s nuclear program, and America’s sweetheart has caused an “international incident” that could worsen tensions with Israel in Gaza (imagine!), “start World War III” and of course, worst of all, sink the network. I haven’t screamed at a reveal like this since M3GAN 2.0 unexpectedly opened at a weapons-testing centre on the Iranian border less than a fortnight after Israel attacked Tehran this year. What I would have given to be in the PR crisis meetings about these plot points.
Our girl Bradley is back
Reese Witherspoon as Bradley Jackson.
Remember the anguish over Bradley Jackson’s involvement in the attack on the Capitol last season? What did she see? Who did she tell? What did she cover up? How was it being used against her? The season ended with the once-principled journalist confessing the events to the FBI. She covered up her brother’s involvement by deleting news footage of him assaulting a police officer, it destroyed her relationship with Laura (Julianna Margulies) and the information was being used to blackmail her to stop pursuing a story.
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Well, honestly, don’t worry about all that! This time-jump has treated Bradley well. Her banishment to West Virginia lasts about five minutes, with acting news boss Mia (Karen Pittman) making the trip down south to lure her back to The Morning Show. “The tide is turning on the Jan 6 stuff”! “The centre moved”! They need “a red-state-friendly face”! I guess this is still the timeline where Trump gets re-elected so it tracks. But it does undermine the drama.
Bradley – partly pardoned by the FBI for exchanging information about Paul Marks (Hamm) – is considering Mia’s proposal when she starts getting needlessly vague messages from a source with videos of birds dying and teenagers with rotting teeth.
“There’s a story,” the source says. “You need to chase it”. The journalism stirs within her. She must return to report the TRUTH. (This is also the feeling I had when pitching this recap).
Jeremy Irons and Marion Cotillard have joined the cast
Jeremy Irons as Alex’s father, Martin Levy.
A shout-out to Apple’s casting budget. This show has just scored itself two more Academy Award winners. Jeremy Irons (Reversal of Fortune) and Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose) join the cast this season, with the former playing Alex’s disapproving father – an incoming dean of a law school, who she hopes can help her out of this Iranian scientist bind – and the latter the corporate “Marie Antoinette” of the new UBN “f---cluster”.
Unfortunately for Cotillard’s character, Celine, her hot artist husband (Aaron Pierre) is off cheating on her with Stella (Greta Lee). That steamy scene includes the most sexual eating of a chocolate cake ever put to screen – at a bar, no less. It’s like the love triangle from Past Lives, but 500 million times hornier.
UBN being reinvigorated by a man-fluencer
Boyd Holbrook as Brodie in Morning Wars.
Look, this one checks out. It totally tracks that a US news company would be buoyed by the streaming success of a podcaster called “Bro” (Boyd Holbrook) who hocks testosterone pills and spreads misinformation that “Bill Gates invented COVID”. I can’t wait until Alex has a full-blown identity crisis after inevitably hooking up with him.
Morning Wars is streaming weekly on Apple TV+.
What do you think of Morning Wars? Are you still watching or did you jump off? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
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