The Morning Show Finally Became Must-See TV By Going Absolutely Bonkers

There’s really no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to get it out now: Reese Witherspoon goes into space in the third season of The Morning Show.

Yes, in the first episode of the Apple TV+ series’ most recent season, Witherspoon’s character gets into a rocket and is yeeted into the stars, where she spends a blissful few minutes floating in zero gravity as Léo Delibes’ “Flower Duet” plays. Then, after a sudden and scary technical malfunction, she returns to Earth and barely mentions this life-altering experience ever again. Incredible.

If you’re like me, you might have fallen behind in watching the high-budget drama about the dramas behind the scenes at a morning news program. Admittedly, I had become somewhat bored by its slow pace and overt self-importance. But in this latest season—the finale of which dropped on Wednesday—I can assure you the show’s creative team has been, to borrow a rocket term, firing on all cylinders of crazy. The result? It’s the most gripping and entertaining version of The Morning Show yet.

The Morning Show has always been somewhat confused about exactly what it is. Back in November 2017, when Apple announced a two-season order of the show, it was said to be a salacious drama based on former CNN reporter Brian Stelter’s 2013 book about the “cutthroat world of morning TV.” The New York Times described the show as “one of the most sought-after new projects in television.”

But just weeks later, U.S. media was jolted when morning news anchors Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose were fired from NBC and CBS, respectively, for alleged sexual misconduct. Suddenly, morning television didn’t seem like such a sunny place to many viewers.

The Morning Show was subsequently reworked to become a more serious show about the #MeToo movement—a worthy topic, but one which hung heavy across every episode. If fans had gone into the program hoping for some fun Succession-style media scheming, they were instead confronted with weighty explorations of sexual abuse, systemic misogyny, and suicide. (If that all sounds too light for you, don’t worry: The COVID pandemic was introduced in Season 2 to really add some dramatic heft.)

Two characters in particular seemed especially adrift in this darker version of the show. The first was Witherspoon’s Bradley Jackson, a small-town, red-state TV reporter who was suddenly, inexplicably elevated to the biggest job in news. What I imagined was originally envisaged as a fish-out-of-water role positioned as a foe to Jennifer Aniston’s liberal elite TV legend Alex Levy instead turned into someone who felt sidelined in her own show. (Perhaps to give Witherspoon something to do in the second season, the writers made Bradley bisexual. OK!)

The second, oddly enough, was Steve Carell’s Mitch Kessler, the co-anchor whose bad behavior served as the catalyst for the events of the series. After firing him in the first minutes, it felt as if the writers didn’t know what to do with Mitch (and they had to do something after signing such a big name for the show!), apart from showing him wallowing in his own despair for a season and a half. Mercifully, this came to an end when they killed him off in Season 2 in a car crash in Italy at the start of the pandemic. Ciao!

Now in Season 3, with much of the sexual misconduct and COVID arcs finally behind them, the show’s writers have apparently thrown everything they had at the wall. I can only surmise that no idea has been rejected. We’ve jumped two years into the future, and Withersoon has evidently become tired of wearing a brunette wig to set each day, because she’s now sporting her usual blond hair. She doesn’t even host the titular morning show anymore! But that’s no matter, because the Apple series has evolved into a bigger show about the power struggles and existential crises among the (fake) United Broadcast Association network and the (real) media industry itself. Yes, The Morning Show has finally become the Succession-style show I’d dreamed of, albeit one that is also now apparently set partially in space.

Whether you are now trying to hop back on the TMS bandwagon after hearing so much about Reese Witherspoon in space, or you’ve finished the season finale and need to relive some of the most bonkers moments of a show that is so subtle it once ended an episode with a background actor sneezing prominently as the ball dropped in Times Square on New Year’s Eve 2020, just three words: I’ve got you.

Bradley Jackson Goes to Space

At the risk of sounding repetitive, I cannot emphasize this enough. Reese Witherspoon. Space.

The context, such as it is, for this celestial quest involves a rocket launch from a SpaceX-style company named Hyperion and owned by Paul Marks, a tech billionaire clearly modeled on Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, but one who is hot enough to be played by Jon Hamm. To promote this event, Paul has agreed to take Alex into space live on television, but she decides at the last minute to bail on this extraordinarily expensive stunt in order to cover the arrest of an abortion activist. Bradley is thus given about 30 minutes’ notice that she will be going into space with apparently no real training or preparation. No one on the show ever really brings this up ever again. (Kudos to The Other Two for somehow pre-parodying this plotline in its final season back in May.)

Bradley Jackson Was at the Capitol on Jan. 6

Bradley is presented with a major journalism award for what we are told are her actions inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, where she became separated from her crew but still managed to capture “some of the most indelible images we have of that day.”

Evidently not content to merely plant that image in viewers’ minds, The Morning Show even re-creates the chaos that day in a mid-season flashback episode by showing Trump supporters storming the Capitol building, where Bradley, dressed in all black like she’s a member of antifa, shoves an iPhone in their faces as they beat up police officers.

Bradley Jackson Is Also Secretly the Villain of Jan. 6

Surprise! As Bradley films the Jan. 6 chaos, she sees that one of the right-wing chuds beating up cops is her own redneck brother. To protect him from the ensuing investigation, Bradley deletes this footage and enlists her network CEO boss Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) into lying to the FBI about its existence, thereby covering up one felony with another. Despite this, she still manages to leverage her Capitol coverage into a promotion to evening news anchor, so, yeah, let’s say she comes out of this mess about even.

UBA Is the Victim of a Massive Cyberattack

In a bad case of the Mondays, UBA falls prey to cybercriminals who hack the network’s private servers, cut live shows off the air, and trap people who are dumb enough to use elevators during an emergency inside said elevators. When the company’s board refuses to fork over a $50 million ransom, all the network’s emails are published online, leading to embarrassing revelations about racism within UBA.

Later, Bradley’s girlfriend, Laura Peterson (Julianna Margulies), is able to figure out the secret about Bradley’s Capitol-storming brother by searching through the leaked emails because apparently nobody else is nosy enough to snoop. Laura gets upset, not because Bradley lied to the government and betrayed viewer trust, but because she enlisted Cory to help her, and this makes Laura a little jealous.

Alex Levy Sleeps With a Billionaire Immediately After Interviewing Him

After Cory tells Alex to charm billionaire Paul so that he might buy UBA and save them from financial disaster, Alex decides to do this by kidnapping him to Coney Island, before grilling him during a television interview about him stealing technology from others. Naturally, they end up in bed together minutes later.

Alex Levy Is Stunned That Sleeping With a Billionaire Might Be Seen as a Conflict of Interest

When a paparazzi photo emerges of Alex and Paul getting intimate, Alex decides not to say anything about her new relationship with her soon-to-be powerful boss (I am begging you to recall that this show was once entirely about the #MeToo movement). Instead, she makes the Surprised Pikachu face when a guest confronts her during an interview with the completely reasonable contention that “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?’ ”

Later, when Bradley tells Alex about potential wrongdoing at Hyperion, she also tells her that it’s probably hard for her to be objective about her own boyfriend. Again, Alex is somehow stunned by this.

Cory Ellison Holds Bradley Jackson Hostage at His Family Home as He Sings “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” on the Piano With His Mother, Who Hates Him

I feel like this one is pretty self-explanatory. But I’ll just add that this is all so moving to Bradley that she cries, thinking about her own mother, who died because she didn’t take COVID seriously. RIP.

Stephen Fry Is Now Here?

The veteran British actor portrays Leonard Cromwell, who takes over as UBA chairman following a racism scandal involving predecessor Cybil Reynolds (Holland Taylor). I don’t know what else to say about this except that his character dresses like a foppish slob for some reason, and that his posh accent feels completely out of place in a show that—again—sent Reese Witherspoon to space.

Paul Marks Was Actually Spying on Everyone

In a twist that will only be stunning to those naïve enough to think billionaires might actually be saviors for the media industry, we learn Paul has been spying on Bradley as she investigates his company. His cronies were also most likely behind the massive hack in order to cover up the fact that Hyperion is secretly a shit show.

Not One but Two Characters Go Crazy on Live TV

Paul threatens to ruin Bradley’s and Laura’s careers by revealing what they knew about Bradley’s brother unless she drops her investigation into Hyperion. During a live broadcast, Bradley then goes off-script for a second time (recall she ended Season 1 by going postal on TV with Alex against her network’s sexist culture) and resigns on air.

Within a day, Alex’s former producer Chip Black (Mark Duplass), whom she fired because he was also pretty mad she was sleeping with a billionaire, is invited to speak on the network he’s just been fired from to rail against Paul’s impending takeover of UBA. Chip reveals to audiences that Paul is secretly preparing to break up the network and sell off its parts in order to fund the struggling Hyperion. “Fuck you, motherfucker,” Chip says in a screed that would make the FCC switchboard light up like a Christmas tree. “Fuck you and the fucking rocket you rode in on, which, by the way, looks like a giant fucking metal dick!”

We are told his words are so moving and powerful, striking such “a populist nerve,” that they win over both Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ted Cruz, and make the impending takeover falter.

Alex Levy Saves the Day by Merging UBA With Another Network

After discovering that her boyfriend has been spying on Bradley, Alex convinces the UBA board to no longer accept Hyperion’s takeover but instead merge with the rival network NBN. Alex, who has zero corporate experience, manages to put this massive business merger together in the middle of the night in a matter of hours. She tells a shocked Paul that she betrayed him because he tried to “silence a journalist” (shoutout to Bradley), which is apparently extremely galling to a woman who just an episode ago was aghast that their relationship could be seen as a journalistic conflict of interest.

Bradley Jackson Is Going to Prison

The third season of this wonderful and baffling series ends with Bradley and her deadbeat brother turning themselves in to the FBI—apparently with no lawyers present. Bradley’s likely facing some prison time and her career is probably over, but hey, that’s what they said about Martha Stewart once.

Bring on Season 4!