THE MORNING SHOW S4 Review: Backstabbers and Blackmailers Unite!

Watch out, corporate media overlords!

The Morning Show S4
The first episode of Season 4 debuts worldwide Wednesday, September 17, exclusively on Apple TV+ . Subsequent episodes will premiere every Wednesday. I've seen the first nine of ten episodes.

Debuting in November 2019 as one of the first shows on the fledgling Apple TV+ streaming service, the first season of The Morning Show felt fresh and vibrant. Informed by a non-fiction offering by media analyst Brian Stelter, its timely look behind the scenes at a broadcast television staple was inherently interesting; it truly felt as though the curtains were pulled back and we could see The Wizard in action, to make an obscure reference. The show also featured terrific supporting performances by the likes of Gugu Mbatha-Raw.

As Season 2 (2021) and Season 3 (2023) progressed, however, the soapier elements pushed the fascinating nuts and bolts to the back burner. Storylines featuring the putative leads, Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, felt increasingly less pertinent, and the show as a whole became less revelatory and more obligatory.

Season 4 continues the show's tendency to shoot itself in the foot, due to its insistence on romantic developments that, at best, are odd distractions, and at worst, anti-romantic melodrama. What I liked best about Season 1 was that it felt like it was really going behind the scenes of a morning TV talk show.

The first episode of Season 4 begins two years after the events in Season 3, which brings us to the year 2024. The show revolves around a fictional network that recently merged with another network, and imagines that this new entity has somehow picked up the broadcast rights to the Paris Olympics on short notice.

The premise of the season highlights the challenges for the streaming age of television, in which episodic shows are limited to eight or ten episodes and debut every two years, instead of annually. It seems like the first few episodes are spent re-introducing the audience to surviving cast members in their new circumstances, which strains whatever ties existed in past seasons, which may have been tenuous to begin with.

And so Season 4 keeps bringing back characters from the first three seasons who mean something to the main cast members, but not very much, if anything, to viewers, who are left befuddled and confused by the swaying emotional reactions of the current main cast. Although I have not seen all the new episodes yet, I'd still love to see Season 4 as a whole get back on its original narrative track: how legacy media outlets handle news stories.

The third episode spends a portion of its run time devoted to that angle, and it's quite wonderful. Otherwise, the show As it is, the show is a glossy, elevated soap opera, which should go down easier on a weekly watching schedule.

All that being said, without any spoilers, the conclusion of the upcoming Episode 3 made me stand up and applaud, even though I was alone in my living room.

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